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Notes -
Update on the Black Teens Versus Pregnant Nurse story.
This twitter thread seems like a reasonable summary. I know it's not entirely unbiased, but absent additional contradictory evidence, the story seems to basically check out like this:
Kids had checked out the ebikes for a ride, and docked them before the 45-minute "free" period ended, planning to undock them to resume riding. (This is apparently a pretty common practice?)
They're sitting on the bikes chilling, when Comrie, the pregnant nurse, approaches and asks to have one of the bikes.
The teens say no, unmoved by her appeals for consideration for her pregnancy.
She scans (checks out) a bike one of the kids is sitting on, and tries to take it.
The kerfluffle we saw on video ensues. The kids apparently filmed it with a legitimate fear that she would turn it into "gang of teens harasses pregnant white lady."
So basically, no one looks like an entirely innocent victim here. The kids were just hanging out in preparation to check out the bikes again, but since they were docked, you don't really get to "call dibs" on a bike you are not currently renting. Technically Comrie was entitled to take an available bike; the kids shouldn't have been squatting on them. They were also kind of jerks for not showing a little compassion for an obviously pregnant woman (their version is that if they'd given up the bike, one of them would have had to find some other way to get back to the Bronx).
That said, deciding "Screw you, I'm taking your bike anyway, get off" wasn't great behavior on her part, even if legally justified. I cut her more slack because apparently she just got off a 12-hour shift, and she was pregnant.
However, even if the teens were perhaps being inconsiderate and less than gentlemanly, the narrative that's basically portrayed them as ganging up on her and trying to steal her bike appears to be inaccurate.
Don't you? I don't live in New York, but if someone was doing this I would think extremely bad form to try and take one they were obviously just about to take out, especially if you've already asked and they've said no. Indeed, the very fact that she asked surely implies she recognises they do have some sort of 'dibs' on it.
They're perverting the very reason the lock in is required. The whole point is so that the people on the annual pass have to give up the bikes to people who are paying the higher per ride cost. You're not even supposed to be able to use the ebikes on the annual pass.
You can use the ebikes on the annual pass, you just have to pay a surcharge. The game the kids were playing is that if you get an ebike out from a dock which has only ebikes, the surcharge is waived. So they camp on the ebikes until the pedal bikes are gone, then take the ebikes.
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I feel like some of the disagreement here is what I would term “adult privileges”. As adults we have money but are often short on time. So we can buy stuff to move up in the queu. But adults also have to do things like have jobs and responsibilities.
Everything has social norms. I can think of pick up basketball and people respect who called next if they’ve waited their turn even if their next causes a weak kind of boring game.
I don’t know the norms on Citi bikes. I do know in broader society he who has the cash usually gets to make the rules. Perhaps there are other norms in the bikes but my first prior as a capitalistic American is the one with the cash is in the right.
The weird thing is America is so obsessed with race and see this as a race discussion. But I think the correct frame is adult versus kid. And I believe this is one of the benefits of being an adult. Being a kid has a lot of benefits (lack of responsibilities) but the negative is waiting for adults time schedule.
But yes with race today. Blacks some times get to break existing social norms (adult privilege).
Adult vs. kid makes no sense when you realize that most groups of teens would never do this. Kids will rebel against systems, yes. But a group of well adjusted teenage boys would not lash out against a 30 year old woman like this, basically ever. And if the races were reversed, goddamn they'd be socially dead and their moms would not be defending them.
But this isn't merely rebelling against the system. It is cheating the system (fair, sort of) while also abusing a singular person. It is the difference between sneaking back into line at lunch to get a second dessert and stealing a classmate's dessert.
I don't think the idea of adults vs teens is that there is animosity, it's that adults, by dint of being at the game where they're actively contributing to society and thus have money, have many privileges set up to let them trade off this productivity to save time. As kids have very little productivity and quite a bit of time they frequently take the opposite end of that trade. Situations like the free bikes are supposed to enforce this time vs productivity trade off. Most kids do respect this, but these teens in particular are defecting on the system.
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I'm not American, but I am in the Anglosphere and this seems entirely alien to me.
I think this is one reason why it was also rude of the kids not to let a pregnant nurse just have the bike, they are in the wrong too, but if they were breaking a social rule in keeping the bike the answer to that is not break some social rules yourself but to act graciously and move on. You do have an obligation to be, within reason, polite to the impolite.
This is terrible game theory and terrible incentives.
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I thru up a couple frames right? Pure capitalists. Adult vs kid. Who gets higher priority black or white pregnant chick.
This story would have been way more interesting if they did an apology and said they should recognized she was pregnant and ceded the bike. Breaking all online tribal lines.
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I don't read this as "hey, can you relinquish your moral claim on this bike and transfer it to me" and more "hey, please relinquish your physical claim on this bike because it is immoral".
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