6 ms·

The racial aspect of paying your black friends to pretend to be thieves is really troubling here. The whole thing stinks.

utopcell 8y ago
Someone paid them ?!
- 64738 8y ago
  That wasn't the way I read it. He said the "thieves" were acquaintances of the friends he paid. He likely doesn't even know the acquaintances.
  - utopcell 8y ago
    That's how I read it as well. Not cool spreading such rumors..
  - ggggtez 8y ago
    Some of the questions are overt: Did the friends chose the actors who looked and sounded more like a "thief" (aka minority stereotype)? Some are less overt: Was he fooled by the actors because of his own preconceptions about what a thief looks and sounds like? He had the full GPS tracking and footage, after all. Did he ignore evidence that might have clued him in that it wasn't real, because of those biases? By setting it up so they get paid if an only if it gets stolen, did he unintentionally incentivise his friends to fake the footage that matched his own preconceptions of what a real thief looks like? After all, we know he was stolen from multiple times. We know he has footage, and knows what they look like. Was he convinced because of his preconceptions? That's what we are talking about here. Once it's revealed it's fake, we suddenly are approached by a whole tangle of messy racial bias in how this made it from conception to production to consumption.
- ggggtez 8y ago
  Yes, he paid his friends. It's not clear if his friends paid the actors, but presumably they did (or else, they just enjoy spraying glitter all over their car/bed for fun). At the end of the day, the result was that he paid money in exchange for videos of black people pretending to be thieves.
dqpb 8y ago
I think this is the worst part. If you read through the YouTube comments, there is a tangible sense of rage toward "porch pirates", and you know people watching these videos will integrate the footage of the "thieves" into their own personal stereotype of who these thieves tend to be.
- weberc2 8y ago
  What race should the sort-of-fake-thieves have been? What is the "right race" to artificially associate with theft? :)
  - ggggtez 8y ago
    Once you acknowledge they were actors, you have to ask: Why was this person chosen to play that role? Why have your next door neighbor do it? You know the guy is tracking the GPS. Was it because your neighbor was black and you thought it would be more convincing than your white friend across town?
    - Karunamon 8y ago
      Good relationship with said neighbor? Trying to tie race baiting into this is an extremely bad look (and not to mention a really disgusting accusation) without further concrete evidence.
      - ggggtez 8y ago
        Ok, I look forward to when his friends come forward and say they selected the actors at random from their Christmas Card list.

utopcell 8y ago

Someone paid them ?!

64738 8y ago
That wasn't the way I read it. He said the "thieves" were acquaintances of the friends he paid. He likely doesn't even know the acquaintances.
- utopcell 8y ago
  That's how I read it as well. Not cool spreading such rumors..
- ggggtez 8y ago
  Some of the questions are overt: Did the friends chose the actors who looked and sounded more like a "thief" (aka minority stereotype)? Some are less overt: Was he fooled by the actors because of his own preconceptions about what a thief looks and sounds like? He had the full GPS tracking and footage, after all. Did he ignore evidence that might have clued him in that it wasn't real, because of those biases? By setting it up so they get paid if an only if it gets stolen, did he unintentionally incentivise his friends to fake the footage that matched his own preconceptions of what a real thief looks like? After all, we know he was stolen from multiple times. We know he has footage, and knows what they look like. Was he convinced because of his preconceptions? That's what we are talking about here. Once it's revealed it's fake, we suddenly are approached by a whole tangle of messy racial bias in how this made it from conception to production to consumption.
ggggtez 8y ago
Yes, he paid his friends. It's not clear if his friends paid the actors, but presumably they did (or else, they just enjoy spraying glitter all over their car/bed for fun). At the end of the day, the result was that he paid money in exchange for videos of black people pretending to be thieves.

dqpb 8y ago

I think this is the worst part. If you read through the YouTube comments, there is a tangible sense of rage toward "porch pirates", and you know people watching these videos will integrate the footage of the "thieves" into their own personal stereotype of who these thieves tend to be.

weberc2 8y ago
What race should the sort-of-fake-thieves have been? What is the "right race" to artificially associate with theft? :)
- ggggtez 8y ago
  Once you acknowledge they were actors, you have to ask: Why was this person chosen to play that role? Why have your next door neighbor do it? You know the guy is tracking the GPS. Was it because your neighbor was black and you thought it would be more convincing than your white friend across town?
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    Good relationship with said neighbor? Trying to tie race baiting into this is an extremely bad look (and not to mention a really disgusting accusation) without further concrete evidence.
    - ggggtez 8y ago
      Ok, I look forward to when his friends come forward and say they selected the actors at random from their Christmas Card list.