Who Writes These Things, Seriously....

If one wants to be careful in this day and age, and not get raped or robbed, or have a kidney stolen and be left lying in an icy bathtub with a note from European Organ Black Market thieves, one has to pay careful attention to their actions.

For instance, it  has come to my attention that I could be the target of gang violence by flashing my headlights at another car.  Additionally, gangs are coming up with more and more complicated schemes to trap people in their nefarious plans.  Most recently, by putting fliers on car windows, leaving life-like babies in carseats by the side of the road, or even using old women to plead for help.   Now, I don't know about you, but as soon as I see a flyer in my window, or a baby by the side of the road, I hit the gas!  I'm not falling for one of those tricks!  And if I see some old woman yelling for help, let me tell you - I'm going the other way!

So really, who writes this stuff?  These things don't just pop into existence.  They have an origin, someone sat down and came up with this, and typed it up and sent it out.   Some of it is simple urban legend.  The "flashing your high beams and getting shot" thing has been around since at least the early '90's.  Obviously, urban legends have been around for a long long time, but the newest sub genre, the "Gangs preying on stupid white people" is particularly annoying, and in my opinion, racist.

While it could be argued that some urban legends are just morality stories, these gang related ones just seem to heighten the old "white people are afraid of black people" thing, but more than that, they reinforce a negative racial stereotype.  These folks have never heard of Occam's Razor.  In these stories, gangs seem to have ties to nefarious mustache-twirling comic book villains.  They launch hugely complicated schemes to trap people, instead of the old method of simply hitting someone over the head when they're not looking.

 White people are apparently so afraid of black folks, or street gangs, that they're willing to believe almost anything.  It would be a fascinating social experiment to see how much people would be willing to swallow.  "Yes sir, gangs are posing as real estate agents, and selling homes to people, and then once the home has sold and the deal is closed, they use a copy of the key that they made to break in to the house to rob and rape everyone!"

So if you know the dude who's writing these things, let him know that there's a beautiful woman in the hotel lobby that wants to buy him a drink.  Don't mind her faint eastern European accent.