Why does America break nice things?

We are just a violent society. It is so sad. And I’m not even sure how it came about. GQ.

I remember reading a story about some college students fashioning a realistic-looking turtle out of plastic. They placed it in the center of various roads, and figured up what percentage of people went out of their way to run over it. The percentage of people who did was depressingly high.

I wish I knew the answer to that. There is so much I love about living in America but so much that we just fuck up. It saddens me greatly.

Great question. I’m not sure I have an answer (not that this has stopped me in the past from rambling on about a topic). I just want to comment that it might be pretty difficult to answer this. My own immediate reflexive response was to go on about a culture that discourages responsibility – from the celebration of the disposable and destruction of the environment, to the selling of group-over-individual as evil, to its religious ideology that defines this life as a meaningless waiting room that can be trashed while waiting for the afterlife. But I’m likely wrong.

What I’d like to see would be some data from social experiments done on people from different cultures. If we had some data, we could maybe discuss how best to interpret this and apply it to the robot situation. But even then, we’re talking about a single instance. It makes sense to us because we know that Americans are pretty awful, so when we hear about this, our response can easily be, “Of course!”. But a single event shouldn’t tell us too much. Sure, it was fine in Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany. But it’s possible that this could have happened in one of those countries by someone not on their medication. And it’s also possible that it could have had a great time for much longer in the US had it not run into some maniac on a bad day.

To me, however, it’s the “Of course” thing that bothers me. We all have a (justifiable) sense that something’s not right here. But try and explain what is wrong, and it reads like we’re making a case for a people beyond repair.

Sending anything into the urban combat zones/metropolitan areas of:
Philly; Flint, Michigan; Bronx, NY; Newark, NJ. Stand good chance of been stolen or broken.

But why, @Tropical_Willie? Why didn’t the same thing happen in the metro areas of other countries?

“Sport” or “playing” come to mind because those areas have little to entertain, other cities out of USA could be the same try Moscow or Amsterdam. ( Amsterdam is one of highest murder rates cities for in western Europe.)

I’m trying to remember that Hitler’s birth and activities were not my fault – we can’t, as individuals, be held responsible for the actions of our fellow countrymen.

No one is holding you personally accountable @longgone.

@Dutchess_III Oh, loads of people have tried to.

I have difficulty with questions like this because I can’t be certain of my perspective. My initial reaction is that the robot suffered the same fate that it’s human counterpart would merit hitch hiking in today’s America. In other words, the mindset of the country has changed considerably. A full 10 years ago, I remember how alarmed my neighbor & I were to witness the young mother across the street allowing her 6 year old to walk the block and a half to school unescorted. So is America really a meaner and nastier place than I remember when I & my siblings (and everyone else) would hike to school at age 5, men, women & teenagers would hitchhike routinely without giving it any thought, & child abductions were about as common as the Lindbergh kidnapping? Are we that bad, or have we been trained to be paranoid? My impression is that we are, but the problem with growing older is that the past ALWAYS looks better. The image of my dad telling me when I was 10 that “the country’s going to hell” hovers above my verdict that we’ve “arrived”. I remember thinking at the time (to myself) “he’s just old”.

I think we’ve been trained to be paranoid.

We tend to have a very open, free, and permissive culture. Which also means evil peeps and vandals are free to express themselves.

I enjoy Geocaching, a treasure hunt type activity. that is played all over the world.
One of the sub-activites in Geocaching is the movement of Travel Bugs. They are basically charm-like tokens with tracking numbers. The owner names it, attaches something to the tag, and gives the Travel Bug a mission or goal. Then it is put in a geocache to be moved along by other cachers. It is fun.
About 10 years ago I started one, a costume jewelry ring, with a mission to head around the world and to be photographed with other rings along the way. It went all over the world: all around the US, Canada, Europe, Asia.. Some folks took pictures of it on the Hong Kong ferry. Another made a little Tea party, with other rings. It was a fun activity. Until it landed in Kentucky where the Geocache was robbed. Some lowlife took the whole box and kept all the travel bugs. Incredible. I can’t figure out why. They are useless and have no value. They can never be reregistered. They serve no purpose. I hope whoever has them is reminded every day that they are untrustworthy crooks
On the other hand, it has also restored some of my faith in human kind. The travel bug moved successfully ~100 times. That meant 99% of people were honest and could be trusted. We only need to worry about the 1%.

Update: A video has surfaced of the deed in progress.

Hopefully the next hitchBot will have audio and video recording and transmitting capability with 30 second pretrigger activated by G-sensors in all 3 axes. It’s time to slap a body cam on it to catch the 1% slime.

(Note: I did not suggest RFID tagged dye packs or H2S stink bombs or a pepper spray canister.)

It’s a real good thing I am not responsible for that project. ;-)

@LuckyGuy A big self destruct device would probably reduce that 1%.

@thorninmud I hate that this has happened (along with so many real lives that America has destroyed.)

My guess is that it also wouldn’t have survived long in Russia or Mexico or other places where social order is precarious. But is that really the club we’re in?
YES, and maybe even worse so because we bamboozle ourselves to try and believe are better than them; we are just way more technical but far from more civil. In part of the culture this nation has that it is right in everything and know better what should be and should not, it is a prideful arrogance that has led to the ”me generation”, which is just getting worse. It is not even a small surprise to me. Some people will destroy it simply to prove they have the power to thwart everyone else and puff their chest out saying ”see what I did, I dare you do do something about it”.

@Adirondackwannabe I was sort of implying that.

@Hypocrisy_Central Actually, thanks to Geocaching, data is available. By far, caches hidden in much of US are undamaged for many years and enjoy hundreds of visitors. If they are damaged it is usually due to animal damage. Caches hidden in other countries are not so long lived. They get stolen.

You can do a location search and check any country you like. Look at the number of caches per unit area. Then look at each cache and see how long it has been in place and how many visitors have found it.

The Homeboy with the baggy pants and BBC (backward ball cap) recorded smashing HitchBot, is a small minority. But that minority does a lot of damage. A shock triggered squib that sprayed the perp with a stickly long lasting goo, could go a long way in making the world better for the other 99%.
Obviously Ii do not know the gentleman recorded engaging with HitchBot in a less than kind manner. But if one had to wager their own money on it, the smart money would bet that he is a violent offender that has already been arrested multiple times for other crimes.

I drive by a geocache place in another town pretty regularly. I always grin when I see someone on their hands and knees, crawling around the tractor!

@Dutchess_III There you go! A perfect example! How many people have found it and put it back exactly as originally placed? 100? 200? 300? (Obviously I don’t know the specific cache but you can easily check it yourself.)
I truly believe you can get an idea of the safety and social comfort of an area from the number of geocaches placed and how long they last undisturbed.

But it’s kind of a select club, too. I’m sure there are hoodlums who would trash it just to trash it if they knew about them.

@LuckyGuy Actually, thanks to Geocaching, data is available.
I do not know of that, but I do know of what I see. Once someone left a diorama outside the Catholic Church, my friend and I did not know if some kid did it as part of a church function and forgot it, left it there to share with passersby, or perhaps left it there for someone to adopt. On the return trip while still away off we spied three teens run up to the side of the building in frenzy, then run off. When we got back to the diorama was stomped and kicked into many pieces, un-savable from that point. Why did they do it? Maybe because they felt they had the power to destroy someone else’s hard work, making them mini gods.

If the Geocaches were left out in the open they’d be destroyed too. People can be assholes.

It is learned behavior. We send reporters and medical volunteers to other countries, and sometimes they get their heads cut off.
Monkey see, monkey do.

@Hypocrisy_Central But how many people walked by and didn’t damage the diorama? I’ll bet many more. 99%. Three dickwads do not a whole country make.

Ah! Not seeing Hitchbot in the title of any questions, I was winding my way into asking this question when I opened yours.

I’m guessing that the people of Canada were more protective of the little guy. He traveled 10,000 km in Canada in 26 days, but with only 19 rides.

The German trip was 9 days, so technically he survived 4–5 days longer in the US than he did in Germany.

Netherlands was 3 weeks. There are no details as to the number of rides he took, but from the activities he shared, he must have been chaperoned the majority of the time.

Looks to me like it was simply a case of someone in America being a little to liberal (read careless) in where and when they left him. Now that he’s had some exposure and people have an idea of what it’s all about, I suspect he would likely be fine.
I wasn’t nearly so upset about it after I spent some time on the Hitchbot site. I think it was a mistake to hitch from east to west in the US. If he’d started in the west he would have traveled longer distances and seen a lot less urban areas. Mind you he averaged nearly 400 km a day in Canada.
Watching the video, I almost have to think someone that picked him up set him up for a mugging. I think the mistrust is somewhat rational. Knowing nothing about Hitchbot, I would not have picked him up and put him in my vehicle. I might have sat with him curbside and chatted long enough that I felt comfortable, but it’s doubtful. And this from a guy that has been known to pick up hitchpeople.

Someone probably thought they could make money out of it or it ran into some kids with nothing better to do. If you send either human or robot into those areas there are a good chance that they would not come back alright.
As someone who grew up in the bronx, I will say that I have seen people step in and step up for someone who is young and defend them. In the so call nice areas, I have seen people drive by and ignore when something bad is going on.
I think it couldn’ve happened anywhere. This is just where the robots luck ran out. If it had come my way, I would’ve loved to help it on its travels. I would’ve been curious about the experiment, and I live the the states and grew up in the bronx.

Probably someone thought they would be cute and leave it in the hood in Philadelphia.

Worked.

Oh, man, I just watched the video. He’s so cute.

Next time, they should make a special version for the colonies, eqipped with body armour and automatic gun turrets.

I don’t think it is a trivial question @thorninmud. It raises a lot of questions about the societies we live in. After watching the video, it looks like one person was responsible for the damage. I wonder what would have happened had the damage been inflicted during the day? Would people have stepped in to stop that angry person from causing that damage? Can you tarnish all US citizens with this person’s actions? It had been in the US for two weeks.

I’m in Europe at the moment, and I was stunned to see the amount of grafitti. Even monuments, in the centre of cities, tarnished by people’s tags. I wondered what on earth would possess people to do that too.

The guy in the video looks awfully angry. The bot was obviously the victim of frustration he couldn’t take out on who/whatever had upset him so. I think this was a case of scapegoat damage.

@Here2_4 Maybe the robot felt suicidal. LOL, Actually what is more real than meeting an untimely demise before you finish your bucket list. I would say he had a real human experience, since we were always taught not to ride with strangers.
Look for a kid with wellies and they will know what happen to the bot.

Do we presume that their aren’t hoodlums in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands or anywhere else? That this is a solely American trait?

@Darth_Algar No. From my details: “While I recognize that HitchBOT could have met with this fate anywhere, I’m also not in the least bit surprised that it survived the preceding countries and got snuffed here.”

@thorninmud

Nor am I. But neither would I have been surprised if it had survived here and got snuffed out in one of those countries. I’d attribute it’s demise to chance rather than anything inherent about this country.

@Darth Algar I’ve been thinking about that since I first read the article. While hooliganism is common everywhere, and there is some relief in the video’s revelation of the robot’s demise at the hands of a mindless juvenile delinquent, if asked beforehand, I would have predicted bad news in this country for the device. Only my guess would have been abduction (theft) or a bullet riddled “corpse”.

I find it strange that anyone would just leave it someplace – especially in a downtown setting. If it had come to me I’d be very careful about handing it off to the next person and making sure it got on its way.

I agree, @LuckyGuy, and tried to make that same point earlier.
Downtown.
After dark.
Well off the street, possibly in the dark.
Seems like a set-up You know, like some people intentionally run over turtles?

And a careful hand-off seems to have been the norm in the two previous countries. It might just be that Americans were likely to take the whole thing at face value and park him along the road. Someone irresponsible or ill-intentioned picked him up.

It would be interesting to start one in each of the regions of the US at once. I could see one fairing very well on the West Coast.

https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/v/t1.0-9/11822694_743503552442028_3002298155807722080_n.jpg?oh=4720e8fb2b03cd3b035f7b38d7b3a1d1&oe=564A5496

I have pondered this in the past and I think the answer is purpose, or more accurately, a lack of purpose.
Someone who lacks purpose has no reason to get up in the morning other than habit. They do not set goals or make plans to meet these goals and, in fact, lack a reason to do so.
Without purpose we see little value in our lives; in ourselves. If we see no value in ourselves, how can we be expected to place value on anyone or anything else. Things with no value are easily damaged and destroyed without remorse because, after all, they are worthless. Same with people, including ourselves.
And this does not just occur on an individual level, it can occur on a societal level. I think this lack of purpose has reached the level of a national crisis and I would posit possibly a global problem. Finding and achieving a purpose in a society is complicated by the need to reach a consensus among the members and at this time, here in the US, we cannot even agree as to what is an actual problem, let alone what needs to be done to resolve it.