Well, and now the Internet - it doesn't help when Nextdoor is full of "suspicious person alerts" aka "there was a solicitor and I didn't like it", and a non-stop barrage of crime related stories.
I live in a city whose broader region is almost 10000 square miles, and the crime feeds report all crime in this area as occurring in "Houston", even though this region is larger than some US states. I feel like this contributes to panic because people feel like the crime is in their backyard. My local news station targets me on Facebook with stories because I'm in this MSA, but the story they hit me with could be a shooting that's easily a 1.5 hour drive from me.
Heck, here in Texas, my phone has buzzed from what they are calling "Blue Alerts" now, which is a riff off of Amber Alerts, where I've gotten notified that an officer was shot at, literally over 4 hours away from me, almost 300 miles away. It's not surprising that our society is inundated with panic.
Nextdoor is very revealing. I had no idea how racist my neighbors were until I read the Nextdoor post about a suspicious cherrypicker truck driver in the neighborhood, who suspiciously claimed to work for the power company.
Nextdoor post in my neighborhood complained about a "suspicious car" that "scouts the area" around 11pm at night. Whipped enough people into a frenzy to where someone decided to block the car and confront the driver one night. They wound up being a neighbor who gets off late every night, driving straight to their house. The driver made a post chastising the community for targeting them, but it got removed because it was too "political".
It's funny because you'd think this watchfulness + technology like Nextdoor would let kids be more independent, e.g. if anybody tried to snatch your kid they'd be reported by half a dozen busybodies watching through their windows.
This assumes that most users of Nextdoor or have video cameras dotting their house are interested in protecting kids. Nextdoor is a cesspool of racism, and everyone I know who has "security" cameras is afraid of people stealing their stuff. Despite crime in our area being at an all time low and property theft very uncommon.
I live in a city whose broader region is almost 10000 square miles, and the crime feeds report all crime in this area as occurring in "Houston", even though this region is larger than some US states. I feel like this contributes to panic because people feel like the crime is in their backyard. My local news station targets me on Facebook with stories because I'm in this MSA, but the story they hit me with could be a shooting that's easily a 1.5 hour drive from me.
Heck, here in Texas, my phone has buzzed from what they are calling "Blue Alerts" now, which is a riff off of Amber Alerts, where I've gotten notified that an officer was shot at, literally over 4 hours away from me, almost 300 miles away. It's not surprising that our society is inundated with panic.