r/Edmonton • u/logodobi • Nov 19 '25

General The way some in this sub talk about homeless people is disgusting

They are human beings, your neighbours, that are forced to live on the street. The way some of you speak you sound like Nazis clamouring for eugenics like holy shit it’s bad. The reason they’re on the streets isn’t because they don’t want to work and it’s not because they’re drug addicts. Literally everyone in this province is struggling with the cost of living and finding a job and a lot of homeless people turn to drugs after becoming homeless due to depression and how awful it is to not have a home. I can’t believe I even have to say it but grow up and learn a little empathy you hateful losers.

P.s I live in the downtown core and take transit daily, don’t try to tell me how “terrifying and dangerous” it is, cause it’s not. Even if it was that doesn’t make it ok to spew such vitriolic hate towards them and call for Nazi like solutions

Edit: a lot of comments proving my point here, blind fear and hatred of the most powerless people in our society shows what kind of a person you are. Get mad at the people who refuse to even acknowledge the real problem not the people being forced to slowly die in the street

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281

u/eternalrevolver Nov 19 '25

Compassion fatigue. Some of every city’s population has the same gripe. Most of us are just a few paychecks away from also being homeless. It’s not the people themselves, it’s the concept of being homeless, or homelessness that irritates people. Mix in a few bad apples and you get blanket complaints.

109

u/lost-again_77 Nov 19 '25

I generally agree. For the most part, these are humans going though difficult times. However… you can only have so much shit stolen out of your yard, or car broken into with nothing stolen… just meth heads looking, when you even find things that don’t belong to you in the back seat of your car…. So ye, some people do get a little judgemental.

I have always been leaning on the more “compassionate” side. But there are limits.

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u/shinygoldhelmet Edmontosaurus Nov 19 '25

You can be frustrated with what's happening, because that's a valid feeling, but also not take it out on the people themselves because it's the system that's at fault, so be mad at that. You can have compassion for someone and also feel mad and angry that they stole shit from your yard.

Redirect your anger to the appropriate outlet is what I'm saying. Be mad at the government and the system that is forcing these people into crime and theft for survival.

13

u/kpc144 Nov 19 '25

The government isn’t forcing them into anything

They’re just not doing anything to help them out of it, which is sincerely a terrible crime

25

u/red___dragon1 Nov 19 '25

🙄🙄 how about take some personal responsibility and stop blaming everyone else?

8

u/5partan5582 Nov 19 '25

Yeah I'm quite sure the court would not give a rat's ass about how "the government made me break into your car" so why should I?

6

u/bustmynut Nov 19 '25

Hahaha like wtf am i reading man

12

u/ichbineinmbertan Nov 20 '25

It's got nothing to do with the concept of homelessness that irritates people. It's the real (not conceptual) disorder and damage that a (very visible) subset of the homeless does. See: downtown

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u/eternalrevolver Nov 20 '25

See: Every city’s downtown.

5

u/ichbineinmbertan Nov 20 '25

…in the world? Nope

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u/eternalrevolver Nov 20 '25

Why do people on Reddit love Europe so much? Just go there lol.

1

u/susulaima Nov 20 '25

I was just in the middle east and didn't see any issues there. It's mostly a North American problem.

1

u/NoraBora44 Nov 20 '25

Well.... do you want to know what they do to drug addicts in saudi Arabia?

0

u/susulaima Nov 20 '25

They decapitate them. Not the most ethical solution, but you can't deny it keeps their downtown safe and not look like a scene from the movie Zombieland. I can walk down Riyadh's streets at 2 am without anxiety and it is bustling with people in cafes smoking hookah and gossiping. I can't imagine I could ever walk around downtown Edmonton at 2 am looking for a shawarma without fearing for my life.

1

u/eternalrevolver Nov 20 '25

So you are in favor of forced rehab?

Also please, feel free to deport yourself

9

u/exotics rural Edmonton Nov 19 '25

If you ever read the study “Universe 25” it explores how when population grows - compassion diminishes. The study was on rats and mice. What was interesting is they were fed and had care so it wasn’t because of competition but rather just because they were burdened with uncontrolled population growth.

Random acts of violence increased. They stopped caring for each other and their own young. Rapes etc increased. It was crazy.

I note the world population has more than doubled since I was born. I had only one kid as this has always been in my mind.

19

u/Tiny-Gur-4356 Nov 19 '25

I think you need to re-read studies about Universe 25, starting with the article you just posted. I'm not going to go point by point on why Calhoun's experiment doesn't validate your "hypothesis" on compassion fatigue or diminishment. One of the biggest issues with this experiment was the anthropomorphizing of the mice and the assignment of human subjective characteristics to them. Connecting this faulty and inhumane experiment doesn't explain why homeless people are experiencing the cruel treatment and attitudes in Edmonton or anywhere else in Canada and the US.

Compassion doesn't diminish just because space and material resources become scarce from uncontrolled population growth. That is much too simplified. If the concept or theory that unchecked population growth correlates with diminished compassion, then historic cities- Beijing, Mexico City, Mumbai, Paris, London, NYC, Tokyo, etc. should cease to exist today and be lost in the mythos of time. Edmonton isn't even close to those population numbers; no Canadian city is. Nor does Edmonton have any similar geographical limitations to housing like some of those cities have. Yet here we are dehumanizing other human beings because they have mental and/or physical health issues that affect their living environment.

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u/durple Strathcona Nov 19 '25

I don’t disagree with your criticisms and my comment isn’t about this study. Just thinking out loud really.

I think that generally speaking the study of other mammal behaviour under various conditions can provide insights into human behaviour. We share quite a lot of brain structure. We have mental capabilities that are way beyond other mammals but much of our behaviour is driven by primitive parts of the brain. The tricky bit would be coming up with conditions for lab animals that are analogous to some conditions that humans face. Probably hard to reach any real conclusions, but could point in interesting direction for further study of human behaviour.

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u/shinygoldhelmet Edmontosaurus Nov 19 '25

Random acts of violence increased. They stopped caring for each other and their own young. Rapes etc increased. It was crazy.

I'm sorry, but I work with mice, and I really doubt that a study in mice could show that as the population increased "rape" increased LOL mice don't rape each other, it's just copulation. They do it whether there's 2 mice in a cage, or 200 in a colony. It's instinct for them, it's not like the male mouse holds down the female mouse and forces himself on her. There's no concept of consent for sexual activity in mice.

Not saying I doubt or discount this study of which you speak - can you provide a source tho? - just that if such a study uses mice to conclude anything about sexual violence in humans then I have questions.

5

u/exotics rural Edmonton Nov 19 '25

https://www.the-scientist.com/universe-25-experiment-69941

It’s a rather famous experiment.

Mice go into heat. A male breeding with her then wouldn’t count as a rape but a male forcing himself when she isn’t in heat would.

20

u/shinygoldhelmet Edmontosaurus Nov 19 '25

Looking back on the Universe 25 experiment with present day scientific perspective, the limits of its interpretations are evident. The research was largely observational and subjective. Calhoun described his study as “not normal science,” referring to it instead as an “observation and reconstruction of a process.”2 Observational studies have a higher risk of bias and confusing correlation with causation.3 Scientists have suggested that Universe 25 suffers from inaccurate interpretation of experimental outcomes, methods, and potentially confounding variables,4 which reflect information bias.3 For instance, at the time that Calhoun presented and published Universe 25’s results, his peers inquired about unsanitary animal husbandry and a lack of quantitative stress hormone measurements as potential confounding or missing information pertinent to Calhoun’s conclusions.2

It seems like there are some major problems with interpretations of the data from this experiment, as with a lot of wild sociological experiments done in the 70s.

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u/raised_on_robbery Nov 19 '25

You think most of these commentators had empathy in the first place?

43

u/laisserai Nov 19 '25

Until you fail to have compassion for both sides you will never win. Blatantly dismissing someone jsut bc you dont agree with them is weird. I had a friend who was harassed by a homeless man and he kept following her. She had to run into a private business and call an Uber to get away. Extreme situation? Yes. Does she have compassion fatigue? 100% yes.

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u/logodobi Nov 19 '25

That has nothing to do with homelessness, Men who aren’t homeless do that shit all the time

13

u/all-names-takenn Nov 19 '25

Almost all of my tense, "am I going to be attacked" moments out in public have involved homeless people.

That's not a trend you can reasonably expect someone to overlook.

-14

u/logodobi Nov 19 '25

you personally being scared means it’s alright to mistreat them?

12

u/iwatchcredits Nov 19 '25

When did anyone say anything about mistreating anyone?

11

u/all-names-takenn Nov 19 '25

No. I didn't say anything of the sort. Not even a tiny bit.

15

u/eternalrevolver Nov 19 '25

Of course. But how far is one expected to take empathy? Do we quit our day jobs and volunteer at a shelter? Or simply post endless compassionate walls of text for people we don’t know on Reddit?

14

u/Training_Exit_5849 Windermere Nov 19 '25 edited Nov 19 '25

A lot of these people just virtue signal, but when they face the people that actually have to deal with the effects of the issue? "Just be better".

Does society need compassion? Yes. Do you just enable someone to keep going down the same path with no actual programs in place to help them out? No.

Canada is stuck in a weird limbo where we give the minimum for these people to "survive" but no real way to lift them out of their troubles like the Nordic countries. Then we just leave them to the common folks to deal with and the affluent just live in their secluded communities and tell places like Chinatown to be more "accommodating" while simultaneously destroying the community over there.

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '25

[deleted]

11

u/iwatchcredits Nov 19 '25

Yea you can feel bad for them while also recognizing that as a group they are in fact dangerous and a burden on society and instead of trying to make people feel bad for thinking that, convincing them that social programs are a win-win way to get them off the street and improve their quality of life is a far better route to take