Mother Of Teen In Citi Bike Video Speaks Out: 'No One Bothered To Ask Him What Happened'

[Jedi Guy]

65. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "Jesus Christ bananas."

This whole situation is just fucking wild. The incident breaks, there's a huge rush to judgment, people initially vilify and demonize the woman, and then... whoops, now the facts are coming out. Turns out the kid and his friends were in the wrong here, and the receipts released by both sides prove that pretty conclusively.

The fucking wild part is that a bunch of the people who initially vilified Comrie have doubled down and continue to do so, despite all evidence to the contrary. They're so invested in this narrative that she must be the villain and the kids must be the victims because of their respective ethnicities. It's just stock characters straight out of the Central Casting department in their heads, and no amount of evidence or nuance is going to dislodge that perception. It just has to be that way, because if it isn't, a central pillar of their worldview shivers alarmingly.

It's frankly terrifying that this is where we're at in America today. The rush to judgment without any actual facts in hand is the first problem. The unwillingness to admit that one was wrong is the second problem. The willful denial of reality and fact in order to cling to a preconceived notion and narrative is the third problem. The three combine into this toxic soup that is by no means a good omen for where we're headed as a nation and a society.

Insofar as where Michael is coming from... well, kid, you made a mistake. You thought the bike was yours when it wasn't. You then accosted someone else without justification because you had a mistaken notion of ownership. The smart thing to do would be to admit you misunderstood how the rental situation with those bikes worked and apologize. We shall see if that course of action is forthcoming, I suppose.

But goddamn, this entire situation is a microcosm of a lot of things that are wrong with 21st-century American society. From a sociological perspective, it'd be fascinating if it weren't so damn worrisome.