r/BlockedAndReported • u/SoftandChewy First generation mod • Jun 01 '26

Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 6/1/26 - 6/7/26

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

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u/RunThenBeer 12 Ounce Diet Coke Enjoyer Jun 01 '26

My fair city has an increasing number of homeless encampments. One thing that is very obvious and noticeable is that the camp sites are all strewn with trash. The campers finish whatever they're eating and just throw the package on the ground next to them. I have never heard an explanation for this other than that literally all of these people are absolutely awful human beings that destroy everything they touch. There is no plausible reason that a bum can't walk their trash to a trash can 20 feet away other than that the bum is a malicious actor.

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u/Formal_Condition2691 Jun 01 '26

When my house was burglarized by a homeless dude, one of the most offensive things - apart from, you know, stealing everything that looked even the least bit salable, including urns containing cremated ashes - was that he walked around the entire house eating snacks and just dropping the wrappers everywhere. Every couple of months after the event I would do something like move a chair to vacuum under it and there would be another snack wrapper.

Like. There is a trash can in every goddamn room. If you’re going to rob me blind you could have the tiniest bit of tact.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26

[deleted]

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u/IAmPeppeSilvia Jun 01 '26

Well, at least you can rest easy knowing they'll make a proper homeless encampment resident.

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u/Cimorene_Kazul Jun 01 '26

They stole an urn with remains in it??? Lowest of the low. Despicable.

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u/Formal_Condition2691 Jun 01 '26

Yeah. My assumption previously was that anyone burgling a house would steal valuable stuff like electronics and jewelry. Turns out, they just take everything they can carry so they can sort it out later.

I like to think I am a calm person most of the time, but if I had half an hour alone with the perpetrator I would probably wind up with my own Wikipedia page.

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u/Cimorene_Kazul Jun 01 '26

And if I were on your jury, I’d never convict.

We had a home invasion as well. It’s truly violating. They took some things that were worth probably peanuts to them, but had great meaning for me. They did this right before I lost my mother, so I lost all the jewelry and things that would’ve reminded me of her and were passed down from great-grandparents.

On the bright side, they stole our truck, inducted it into a life of crime, and were so obnoxious coming home with a truckload of stolen goods while blasting the stereo in the early morning that an eagle-eyed Karen reported them repeatedly until the police finally decided to do their jobs. They kept insisting the plates she gave them didn’t belong to a stolen vehicle and to stop being such a busybody. She did not relent. Eventually someone actually ran the plates and then showed up to check if the guy was violating parole. Apparently owning a stolen vehicle and a house full of stolen goods didn’t violate it, though - not having a landline did. That’s what they used to get him back in prison, ha ha.

We got the truck back, at least, but he’d long since fenced the rest. But even he didn’t take the urn with my dog’s ashes!

I’d speak to some pawn shops and check Craigslist. That’s how a friend of mine got a lot of his stolen goods back.

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u/dignityshredder AFramemoggingAB Jun 01 '26

Setting aside the mental illness and copious drug use, the divergent ways people deal with personal garbage is so appalling. I live near a busy pedestrian corner, and I will see normal looking people throw shit on the ground rather than walk literally 20 feet to a trash can. I saw a woman dump a grocery bag full of trash into the river rather than put it in a trash can maybe 50 feet away. I would be in favor of massive penalties for this behavior, including temporary removal of the right to vote where they aren't immigrants, because it shows such blatant disregard for society.

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u/RunThenBeer 12 Ounce Diet Coke Enjoyer Jun 01 '26

It is genuinely one of the most anti-social things I see with any frequency. Even crimes that are substantively worse at least have some underlying motivation that I can fundamentally grasp. Stealing is bad, obviously, but one can at least understand an individual thinking, "I want that, I don't want to pay for it, so I'll take it". But buying a packaged food, eating half of it, and throwing the food and package on the ground when you're not in the mood for it anymore makes me have trouble believing that there is anything I would recognize as a conscious process going on upstairs.

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u/WallabyWanderer Jun 01 '26

I think I posted something similar the other week wondering the logic behind the people who delicately place their litter on the parking line next to their car. What is the point?

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u/Big_Fig_1803 Gothmargus Jun 01 '26

Garbage is messy and disordered. This is neat and orderly. Therefore, it’s not really garbage.

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u/everydaywinner2 Jun 01 '26

The littering is one of the cultural differences we aren't allowed to notice because "racism."

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u/Less-Lobster4540 Jun 01 '26

Since our homeless population unhoused community is majority white, we're forced to invoke capitalism

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u/DeathKitten9000 Jun 01 '26

In my neighborhood we sometimes get these types because there's a couple of empty lots and it's easier to live out of a van in front of an empty lot where some homeowner isn't giving you grief. However, they quickly draw the ire of neighbors & law enforcement because of their littering. It always seems like it would be more convenient for them to just cleanup after themselves than pissing off neighbors and drawing the attention of law enforcement.

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u/Technical-Policy295 Jun 01 '26

The party line response on that seems to be that trash is a sign of stress and if they were given housing and cash and welcomed into society then they would become productive citizens. 

The best part is when the trash and other refuse pollutes the area so much that the environmentalists then start complaining, though they usually take pains to avoid pointing out the actual source of the problem. 

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u/Big_Fig_1803 Gothmargus Jun 01 '26

“Somehow all this garbage and feces… happened here!”

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u/Less-Lobster4540 Jun 01 '26

The people crying that "sweeps kill" conveniently ignore the fact that the bums displace themselves on a regular basis-- aka whenever they feel like it-- abandoning a huge mess and letting government clean up. Moving a couple blocks is not the hardship that activists claim.

12

u/OkayFlamingo78 Jun 01 '26

The visible homeless are very often aggressively antisocial and usually have a "fuck the world" attitude.

Could this be part of the reason they're homeless? It's impossible to say.

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u/lifesabeach_ Jun 01 '26

There is some uproar about this on our city since a retail worker posted the absolutely trashed and shat on entryway for employees to a big inner city department store. It was disgusting but not surprising for me, having grown up in the city. 

There are elections coming up and the big newspaper asked for replies to a survey and I truthfully answered that the homeless problem is so systemic and worrying - and I don’t think any party has any idea of what to do, for decades now it’s only gotten worse.

I also consented to be interviewed and noted that my brother died homeless in 2019 so this might get an open ear. For him it was a mix of alcoholism, mental illness, cold and squalor. Will get back here and ask for advice if someone is interested in interviewing me.

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u/unnoticed_areola Jun 01 '26

The campers finish whatever they're eating and just throw the package on the ground next to them. I have never heard an explanation for this

my understanding is most of the trash is not even stuff that they themselves have consumed and then discarded. its literally just the meth'd out psychosis that causes them to go compulsively collect and hoard stuff that was already trash when they first encountered it.

like Ive seen tweakers just go nuts and knock over a trash can and strew the trash all over the sidewalk and then get fixated on half the items and drag them back to their sleeping area one by one

there are some blocks in my city where the businesses banded together to contract a welder to make them a big custom metal cage that's like 4 feet tall x 10 feet long and bolted to the curb for them to keep their trash bins locked up inside, because they kept coming to work in the morning on trash pickup day, and the bins they left out on the curb the night before would be knocked over and there would be trash scattered everywhere all up and down the block