In San Francisco, don't call someone who steals your bike a "criminal."

[+ purplekow]

I doubt the word criminal hurts the person riding away on your bicycle enough for him or her to slow down and reconsider his actions as you lie prone on the street after running after him to get your bike back only to fall over the curb and scrape your face and hands.

[Rudynate]

I'll throw my hat in the ring:

 

"Criminal" may, indeed, be too harsh of a word. "Thief" seems perfectly fitted for this crime.

"You may put your car in the multi-level parking structure."

"What? Oh, you mean the garage."

 

"Do you have your personnel identification-authorization modules?"

"Yes, I have my keys."

 

 

Both words, "criminal" and "thief" are abstractions, loaded with implication and otherwise unstated meaning. "The person who stole my bicycle" eliminates all the abstraction of the other two words.

[+ purplekow]

I doubt the word criminal hurts the person riding away on your bicycle enough for him or her to slow down and reconsider his actions as you lie prone on the street after running after him to get your bike back only to fall over the curb and scrape your face and hands.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but this bike score me today's fix.

[+ purplekow]

Both words, "criminal" and "thief" are abstractions, loaded with implication and otherwise unstated meaning. "The person who stole my bicycle" eliminates all the abstraction of the other two words.

The person who stole my bicycle, broke into my house, rummaged through my belonging, and broke the window on the way out and did the same thing to my next door neighbor, now feels it is more respectful to enumerate his transgressions so as to avoid painting him with a broad brush. Criminal seems more efficient.

[RM]

Well, we really had no choice. No Democrat but the lieutenant governor would run in the combination recall election/gubernatorial election. He was no prize and the alternatives to Schwarzenegger were pretty crappy. The Governator was really the best of a bad lot. However, there is no excuse for the second term.

 

That being said, I don't think that one voice speaks for the entire state. Would a similar comment made by someone from Tulsa been as widely broadcast? I highly doubt it.

Hey don't complain about the Lt. Governor. I still have a pot holder with his name on it. I still wonder how he ever got elected.

[Rudynate]

Hey don't complain about the Lt. Governor. I still have a pot holder with his name on it. I still wonder how he ever got elected.

 

 

California, in its entirety, is a somewhat conservative state politically. The Bay area and the entertainment industry in the Southland lean way left; the gay, Latino and Asian communities also lean left, but there remains an enormous conservative constituency.

[Juan Vancouver]

I was going to write this whole thing was meshugas, but then I started reading all the responses and it made me think.

 

Sure, I don't think we should start using "fatal gunshot perpetrator" for someone who shoots you in the face, but I think this is more complex than it appears at first.

 

Society has two incompatible definitions of a criminal, 'someone who breaks a law that is defined as criminal' and 'a dangerous lawbreaker who is a threat to society'. The hypothetical bicycle thief in SF is clearly a criminal in the first case but more ambiguously so in the second. I took the instance cited in the original post as being a call to stop conflating 'breaking the law' with 'criminality', and the reason behind the call being that the word 'criminal' implies that a serial killer is the same as someone who steals your bowl of cornflakes.

 

You make a great point but I think it's even more complicated than that. This is a pervasive issue, but it's specially true in the US; a poor man who steals your cereal is a criminal. A rich man who robs thousands of people of their money through selling them a lie in form of a credit, is called a banker. One could face jail, the other gets fired from his job after receiving a huge bonus.

 

A society that exploits their poor making sure they remain unhealthy, uneducated and discriminated to facilitate their submission while rewards their few rich with tax exemptions and allowing them to perpetrate crimes towards the majority IS a criminal society. The laws of that society, are without a doubt, criminal laws.

 

There is legal criminality and there is ethical criminality and they don't always converge.

 

People who engage in criminal activities are criminals. Adjective, noun. This is the English language. There is nothing pejorative about the word, some people just do not care for people who engage in criminal activities. The people who engage in criminal activities cost each one of us lots and lots of time and money. The people who engage in criminal activities are mostly people who need money but most people who need money do not engage in criminal activities because they are not fucking criminals. Calling an egg a duck will not make it quack.

 

It's not these kind of criminals that cost you money. It's the other kind. Your media, however, has it in its best interest to convince you otherwise. Putting people in jail is nothing but a great business designed to make the rich richer.

 

Eradicate the white collar criminals and your society will equalize. Calling a poor person a felon will not solve the real criminal problem.

[MrMiniver]

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck.

[mattr]

Someone who commits a crime is a criminal.... the criminal may be a thief and/or a murder but he/she is still a criminal. If being called a criminal offends you, don't commit a crime. White washing the act with PC jargon only serves to legitimize crime and criminals. Think about this.... the single mother who holds down two jobs and saves for months to by her child her first bicycle. The bicycle is then stolen. Is that a crime? Yes! Is the person who perpetrated this crime a criminal? Yes!

[Lookin]

While we're sorting all this out, I'll fall back on gonif to tide me over. http://www.boytoy.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif

[Guy Fawkes]

Could we not repost ISIS Propaganda Photos? It gives the kids nightmares.

 

Well, I'd like to call him "hand-less inmate":

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270619/Sharia-saw-Iran-releases-pictures-brutal-amputation-machine-chopping-mans-fingers-bid-clamp-election-dissent.html

 

http://www.rawa.org/handcut3.htm

[Nvr2Thick]

This is what my students would call a FIRST WORLD PROBLEM. LOL.

 

"First world problem" is one of the lamest, laziest non-observations to be perpetuated in social media. Translated it means, "Yawn... If I could just get my brain up off the couch I'd be above it all."

[+ FreshFluff]

Could we not repost ISIS Propaganda Photos? It give the kids nightmares.

 

No kidding. Not to be a wuss, but please post links to photos like this instead of hot linking. I've been thinking about that photo all afternoon.

 

Hopefully, some of these ISIS guys wil someday be beaten and then thrown off tall buildings. ("Oops, we were unable to control the rage of the Syrian people! Sorry about that.")

[MrMiniver]

Both words, "criminal" and "thief" are abstractions, loaded with implication and otherwise unstated meaning. "The person who stole my bicycle" eliminates all the abstraction of the other two words.

 

Economy of words. Economy of words. Someone takes something that doesn't belong to them ... that's called a thief.

[Rudynate]

Economy of words. Economy of words. Someone takes something that doesn't belong to them ... that's called a thief.

 

 

Is economy of words an absolute good, then? Even when achieved at the expense of clarity?

[marylander1940]

Stupid!

 

Shall we laugh about it?

 

 

http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7qmm3wZQu1rpur03o1_500.jpg

 

 

http://www.bikenorfolk.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/bike_lock.jpg

 

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1334348/original.jpg

[+ purplekow]

 

It's not these kind of criminals that cost you money. It's the other kind. Your media, however, has it in its best interest to convince you otherwise. Putting people in jail is nothing but a great business designed to make the rich richer.

 

Eradicate the white collar criminals and your society will equalize. Calling a poor person a felon will not solve the real criminal problem.

I am not ignorant of the fact the white collar crime is pervasive and destructive to the economy. Bankers who have defrauded and walked away have perpetrated a societal crime and those people are criminals. They deserve to be appropriately punished.

Some steals my bicycle, that is a personal crime and that person is a criminal. They deserve to be appropriately punished.

Calling the first group criminals, unfortunately does not change the fact that they walked away.

Calling the second person "the person who stole my bike" does not change the fact that they are indeed a criminal and they took my goddamned bike and now I got to buy another one or do without.

The fact that the crime was intensely personal, is what makes that second perpetrator a criminal.

The first group are criminal because their acts were heinous,

That some people get preferential justice does not absolve other criminals from being cited as such.

[rvwnsd]

Hey don't complain about the Lt. Governor. I still have a pot holder with his name on it. I still wonder how he ever got elected.

A friend of mine was struggling with his name and instead of saying "Cruz Bustamante" she said "Booze Cruise." We still laugh about that.

[MrMiniver]

I am not ignorant of the fact the white collar crime is pervasive and destructive to the economy. Bankers who have defrauded and walked away have perpetrated a societal crime and those people are criminals. They deserve to be appropriately punished.

Some steals my bicycle, that is a personal crime and that person is a criminal. They deserve to be appropriately punished.

Calling the first group criminals, unfortunately does not change the fact that they walked away.

Calling the second person "the person who stole my bike" does not change the fact that they are indeed a criminal and they took my goddamned bike and now I got to buy another one or do without.

The fact that the crime was intensely personal, is what makes that second perpetrator a criminal.

The first group are criminal because their acts were heinous,

That some people get preferential justice does not absolve other criminals from being cited as such.

 

Can't we just all agree that people who steal are people who steal -- regardless of whether they are white collar or blue collar -- and should be punished? Let's stop dividing by trying to decide who should be punished more.

[MrMiniver]

Is economy of words an absolute good, then? Even when achieved at the expense of clarity?

 

Clarity? When discussing someone who has committed a crime? Seriously?

[MrMiniver]

"First world problem" is one of the lamest, laziest non-observations to be perpetuated in social media. Translated it means, "Yawn... If I could just get my brain up off the couch I'd be above it all."

 

Not lame when you think we have a huge drug addiction problem, an economy in the tank, ISIS on the move, and more people out of the work force than at anytime since the great depression and we're worried about whether one should call a thief a criminal?

[Rudynate]

Not lame when you think we have a huge drug addiction problem, an economy in the tank, ISIS on the move, and more people out of the work force than at anytime since the great depression and we're worried about whether one should call a thief a criminal?

 

Can you, personally, do anything about those things, right now? I doubt it. Can you, personally, make the world a slightly better place by introducing greater precision to your daily speech? I imagine so.

[MrMiniver]

Can you, personally, do anything about those things, right now? I doubt it. Can you, personally, make the world a slightly better place by introducing greater precision to your daily speech? I imagine so.

 

C'mon. Don't you think that's just a little ridiculous? Let's focus on real problems not "introducing greater precision to your daily speech." And I don't buy the premise. Someone who steals your bike is a criminal. How much more precision does one need?

[Rudynate]

C'mon. Don't you think that's just a little ridiculous? Let's focus on real problems not "introducing greater precision to your daily speech." And I don't buy the premise. Someone who steals your bike is a criminal. How much more precision does one need?

 

 

You're entitled to your viewpoint, of course. Good luck having any impact on those "real problems."

[Nvr2Thick]

This is what my students would call a FIRST WORLD PROBLEM. LOL.

 

"First world problem" is one of the lamest, laziest non-observations to be perpetuated in social media. Translated it means, "Yawn... If I could just get my brain up off the couch I'd be above it all."

 

Not lame when you think we have a huge drug addiction problem, an economy in the tank, ISIS on the move, and more people out of the work force than at anytime since the great depression and we're worried about whether one should call a thief a criminal?

 

Definitely lame and trite. At any point in time the laziest response to a discussion is a thoroughly uninvested observation that there are bigger problems. Of course there are bigger problems. We're discussing social and political issues in social media, on a forum created to discuss male escorts. Whether we discuss someone else's social media discussion about crime in San Francisco or we discuss ISIS these posts are just gum wrappers in the landfill.

 

Calling out "First world problems" because our idle chatter isn't addressing a bigger issue is pretty darn stupid. The First World Problems card became tired the second time it was played in social media.

 

trite

trīt/

adjective

1. (of a remark, opinion, or idea) overused and consequently of little import; lacking originality or freshness.
   "this point may now seem obvious and trite"