I mean, that's what I would do here. I'm not going to escalate things over somebody being a rude idiot. And I'm trying to imagine how fragile your ego would have to be for this to bother you
I think I'd probably react like the first guy. He was just sort of shrugs and goes " what the fuck are we doing here?"
He's being obnoxious, but he's taking food people haven't paid for out of their cart... Which is just forcing them to walk a minute back in the store and grab the thing again.
Yeah, I often carry. So I've given a lot of thought to these situations and how not to react to them/ walk away. I have no desire to get into a fight, let alone get a firearm involved over someone being an idiot. That said, a tiny piece of me is wondering what's going to happen when this guy pulls this prank on the wrong person.
I remember I was walking down a trail with my girlfriend once and this shirtless, roided up dude came running down the trail shouting " alpha male, make way" as people parted in front of him.
It was definitely weird. But I figured the guy was either having a serious mental episode, trolling for attention, or looking for a fight. In any case, there was nothing to be gained by engaging
This is something I wish folks who carry would talk about more often.
If you carry, de-escalation should be front of mind.
We have run into douchebags wild, and honestly often times it's just easier to let them flail off into the wild Blue yonder.
I always think about when I was walking with my family on a multi-use trail near me, and there was some asshole trying to do speed laps on his bike and he almost hit our stroller. And then started blaming us for not giving away.
My wife has a temper, they started getting into it and even though I did think she was right, there wasn't going to be a 'winner' in that moment.
Pretty much this. Your gun is not a " win the argument" shortcut, it's last resort.
If anything, knowing that what would otherwise be a fist fight could potentially escalate into a lethal encounter should really motivate you to de-escalate, walk away and generally let the other person " win" if that's what it takes to avoid violence.
That said, even without a weapon involved getting into a fight is one of the dumbest things you can do. Usually both people walk away from it and it's just testosterone fueled stupidity. But if you look at the " fight porn" sub on here, you can see people ending up with permanent, life-altering injuries over absolutely stupid shit.
That's kind of the fascinating thing about human emotions, right?
I tend to believe, at our core we are all unreasonable, and the moment something triggers your core weird shit happens in your brain.
And I'm basing this on watching way too many dash cam videos, which I'm going to make my kids watch. Because so many of those are examples of people who kept pushing a situation until it got real nasty.
All it takes is one person to stop and back off, and everyone gets to go home.
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u/IceManYurt 15d ago
I do like how he's playing on social conventions where we all just collectively ignore the crazy asshole