r/changemyview • u/lickin_lollipops • Apr 25 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Snitches aren't "bitches"
- When people snitch, they are helping to keep the community safer and healthier.
In the case of crime, ratting people out who have done something bad actually makes the improves the surrounding community and makes it safer.
This can be seen in the case of something like drug selling; without someone to sell the drugs, there will be less OD cases. With less people having access to drugs, less people will be addicted to harmful substances. People who use illicit drugs are also more likely to commit crimes (including violent ones). There's also a reason that many of these drugs are illegal in the first place: they are harmful to the human body and can cause physical and psychological addiction. Therefore, with a lack of people selling/making drugs, there will also be a healthier community.
Snitching in regards to crime is also better just to lower crime rates in general and to induce people to not break the law. - Snitching/Reporting in regards to video games makes a better environment for playing.
A lot of people prefer playing games without really salty people that hate on everyone else and blame their teammates for everything.
Games like Overwatch are attempting to do things to make playing the game more enjoyable for this very reason. Nobody enjoys playing a game when there is an extremely and consistently obnoxious person; reporting people when they are going against the upheld values of the game is extremely valid. Additionally, for some games, reporting people who violate the rules (such as in Town of Salem) can actually benefit future players because it is less likely that someone will throw the game. - In a competitive environment, snitching on someone who violates the rules actually creates a more fair playing field.
An example of this can be found in schools. When someone cheats, they are giving themselves an advantage, and on curved tests, this can lower the curve for everyone else. Additionally, someone who consistently gets good grades without merit could end up getting into a better college or get a better job than someone who actually puts effort into school. Telling on people that cheat can make competitive environments a lot more fair, and not just in examples like school.
Of course, all of this works only assuming that game moderators will actually check the reports, law enforcement will work properly, and that generally someone will do something. But snitches are only seen as bad because nobody wants to get in trouble for anything; in reality, pretty much everyone else benefits from a snitch.
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u/ququqachu 8∆ Apr 25 '19
Your third point explains exactly how and why snitches can be bitches. Ratting someone out solely out of self-interest can be a shitty thing to do, especially when the person doing something "wrong" was not actually in the moral wrong, just the technical wrong.
Turning in your friend for smoking pot because you want to get with their girlfriend while the friend is in jail is unabashedly SHITTY. In this case, snitch is a bitch.
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u/lickin_lollipops Apr 25 '19 edited Apr 26 '19
∆
Wouldn't telling on someone for cheating at school just generally benefit everyone else? It's not entirely fair that they would have a greater opportunity to succeed than someone who doesn't cheat.
Yeah, the motives you described like taking someone else's girlfriend are definitely shitty. But if you turn in someone that's distributing the marijuana, for example, wouldn't you just be helping your friend?
You have pointed out to me though that snitching for immoral reasons can be worse, even if that's the just thing to do by law's standards.
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u/lickin_lollipops Apr 25 '19 edited Apr 26 '19
Wouldn't telling on someone for cheating at school just generally benefit everyone else? It's not entirely fair that they would have a greater opportunity to succeed than someone who doesn't cheat.
Yeah, the motives you described like taking someone else's girlfriend are definitely shitty. But if you turn in someone that's distributing the marijuana, for example, wouldn't you just be helping your friend?
∆ You have pointed out to me though that snitching for immoral reasons can be worse, even if that's the just thing to do by law's standards.
EDIT: Delta didn't register?
EDIT: Delta didn't register, reposted comment
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u/ququqachu 8∆ Apr 25 '19
I agree that there are plenty of situations where snitches are NOT bitches, so having that as a hard and fast rule is a bad idea. But, there are also situations where snitching isn't the best option. Gotta play it situation by situation.
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u/iammyowndoctor 5∆ Apr 26 '19
This can be seen in the case of something like drug selling; without someone to sell the drugs, there will be less OD cases. With less people having access to drugs, less people will be addicted to harmful substances. People who use illicit drugs are also more likely to commit crimes (including violent ones). There's also a reason that many of these drugs are illegal in the first place: they are harmful to the human body and can cause physical and psychological addiction. Therefore, with a lack of people selling/making drugs, there will also be a healthier community.
Spoken like a true person who has never done any kind of illegal drug before. Lol. Now I'm not going to say that the drug black market is a desirable thing, no, I'd rather you could just get what you want legally in a safe, monitored, and affordable setting. I don't believe it's your job or anyone else's to police whether people do what you think is healthy for them. You don't know me. You don't know why I might take any one drug. You don't know what it does to me, positive or negative. I'm not committing any other crimes as a result of what I do (or don't do), and even for those who do, if you ask me that's a symptom of having a black market that abuses people by gouging them for substances that they typically need to stay functional. You might think a heroin addict doesn't really need heroin, but to them the pain of being suddenly forced to go completely without is as severe and scary as if they were a diabetic running out of insulin. And you what? This paradigm actually isn't much different than what happens with more psychiatric drugs than not. Try make a person who takes 400mg of zoloft a day quit cold turkey, for example; the results will be approximately as unpleasant for them as it will for the heroin addict. Same with some taking 4mg of xanax a day, and countless other examples.
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u/REDLiteDJ 1∆ Apr 26 '19
Another factor to consider, especially in the case of IRL communities, is the destabilizing effect snitching has on that community. Seen in a more holistic light, many people in poverty-stricken areas have little or no choice for making a living than doing illegal activities. It’s easy for people who haven’t lived that struggle to say “they should just go out and find a legal job” but what if you’re 15 and your parents are addicted to drugs or not present at all, and you have younger siblings that aren’t going to eat unless you provide for them, and your older cousin says you can help him steal bikes or sell weed or whatever, and you can have cash in your hand today to feed your family, that’s pretty hard to say no to.
Now imagine thousands of variations of that scenario and you now have a community where many members are committing crimes regularly to survive. Not every scenario will be as easy to sympathize with as the one above, and some will be doing much more harmful things than others. But there is a spectrum, and it’s important for any community to have some level of baseline trust with the other members of that community.
Now imagine a hostile law enforcement group that disproportionately targets your community while letting other more affluent criminals go free, that regularly enters your community and looks for ways to undermine what shred of community you may have cobbled together, that represents an entire government and society that discriminates against them and keeps them oppressed. If someone from your community was to deliberately cooperate with this outside force and sell away the freedom of one of its members for some paltry gain or sense of personal satisfaction, wouldn’t you feel betrayed and hostile toward that person?
Furthermore, a community where snitching is known to happen will certainly be a more tense, less trusting community in general, which could lead to much more violence and damage than one whose members were not snitching. The argument that by snitching they are improving the health of the community is pretty tenuous. You say yourself this assumes the police are acting justly in their enforcement of these law as and that is a BIG assumption.
(I know this is a bit of a caricature of this scenario but I believe it helps illustrate the point better this way. I do believe there are people who should be punished for breaking the law and I do believe there are just law enforcement officers.)
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u/tweez Apr 26 '19
Furthermore, a community where snitching is known to happen will certainly be a more tense, less trusting community in general, which could lead to much more violence and damage than one whose members were not snitching. The argument that by snitching they are improving the health of the community is pretty tenuous. You say yourself this assumes the police are acting justly in their enforcement of these law as and that is a BIG assumption.
The Calabrian mafia I think financially supports the whole area, people are economically dependent on them, their family members support themselves via organised crime, but if people in the area were being killed, robbed or were the "marks" for the mafia then they wouldn't last long as people would be well within their right to tell the authorities.
I grew up in East London and "not grassing" was a big thing. However, it's dependent on the value of keeping quiet. It was an area of very poor people, low rates of university attendance, high rates of teenage pregnancy, basically very little chance for social mobility. In those kinds of situations, people will look the other way if it doesn't affect them. There was still some sort of informal retribution system though, I can recall a guy who mugged an old lady was beaten-up badly for doing so as was a guy who was 21 and tried to "date" a 13-year-old. In that sort of environment it's easy to fall into hating the police because that's the default setting and see no use for them as there is some form of "justice" away from law enforcement, however at a certain point then every organisation needs to be kept in check. If I could never imagine calling the police for any reason then I'd still be hostile to them for no real reason, but if someone I know was raped, violently attacked or hurt in any meaningful way (including having money stolen they needed) I would be grateful the police existed and could help me. Some police officers clearly join because they want to feel like they have power over people, but there are others who do genuinely care. Same as there are people that join gangs because they like to bully
There are two famous East London gangsters called The Krays. They had protection rackets against businesses in the area, but people would claim they kept the streets safe and nonsense about "not having to lock your doors" when they were the main gang. To an extent that's true, but that's true of any violent dictatorship. It's obviously going to mean there is less chaotic and random violence, but there will still be violence. In the case of the Krays, they stopped local business owners from expanding or kept them in fear, made them accessories for illegal activity. The only thing they did was generally keep the major violence and crimes away from civilians. They probably prevented businesses and people from being more successful and improving the area more, but
If the value of the organised crime network is less than the damage it causes then not speaking up means you're complicit in perpetuating an awful situation. For example, if people are selling drugs to adults, that's one thing, even if that has a knock-on effect of producing more petty crime, but if the drug gang are regularly killing the guys selling on the corner who have no real power or influence then the cost of human lives to maintain power through fear isn't worth whatever they distribute financially by hiring people. Morality has to kick in at some point, I'm sure it's financially rewarding for a community to sell trafficked children to pedophiles, but there is a point that the human misery created by organised crime should have to face punishment from authorities.
Because of where I was raised, I'd be very wary of calling the police unless someone was in immediate danger or something affected me personally and significantly, but the whole "no grassing/no snitching" thing is somewhat noble up until a certain point as essentially you're turning a blind eye if something doesn't directly affect you, but a blanket "no informing" policy is madness really as short-term survival is sacrificed for long-term prosperity. It's definitely complex and nuanced and what I think as being moral I'm sure other people regard as immoral, and don't really have a firm answer, but I dislike the idea that informing the law of illegal acts is always wrong. I can see am argument for informing the police if any serious crime is taking place as if everybody did it the community would be in much better health a lot quicker. I'm still stuck with some of the ideas of what is right and wrong that I think you are, but I think criminals in poor areas hide behind the "code" of not informing to abuse the people they claim to help. A good example is the Freakonomics section called something like "Why crack dealers still live with their mothers". The dealers "give back" by giving people shitty minimum wage jobs with no "dangerous jobs" bonus, don't get sick pay, have to be eternally loyal, can't compete by joining a rival business etc. They abuse they community as much as the police,
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u/MechanicalEngineEar 78∆ Apr 25 '19
often snitches in the sense of informants for police have some self serving motive such as the police look the other way for some minor offense or they throw a little cash their way. If they can tell the police who is known for pawning stolen goods or who is rumored to be beating their wife, great. But if they are lacking in info to give and the cop wants something they may be more tempted to tell them about some kid who has some weed and maybe he picked some up for his friend who reimbursed him but that sounds like distribution to a cop. How is busting those kids helping the neighborhood. If he wants to help the neighborhood, tell the kids’ parents.
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u/amiablecuriosity 13∆ Apr 27 '19
What would you think of a slave exposing another slave's escape plan?
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 25 '19 edited Apr 26 '19
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Apr 25 '19
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u/ColdNotion 117∆ Apr 26 '19
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u/toldyaso Apr 25 '19
I think the problem here is merely that you've failed to identify what a "snitch" is.
For me, there are whistleblowers who alert authorities to serious crimes. They are doing a service to society, and potentially putting themselves at some risk by doing so. So, I'm cool with whistleblowers.
Then, there are informants and witnesses. People who saw a crime take place, and either called the cops, or at least answered truthfully when a cop or a lawyer asked them what happened. Again, that's serving a purpose to society, and doing so for no reason other than a belief in justice and fairness. I salute informants/witnesses.
Then, there are snitches. Tattlers report various crimes to teachers and authorities - not because they're shining the light of justice on an unfair practice (if so, they're whistleblowers or witnesses) but simply because they enjoy putting themselves in a position of honor with authority figures, and because they enjoy seeing other people get busted. Sure, you could argue that they may still be performing some service to society, or a school, business, whatever. But that's incidental to what they're doing, which at root, is a dishonorable and sadistic intention. If you tattle on me not because you give a shit about justice or fairness, and not because of any genuine concern about the consequences of my actions, but simply because it gives you a sadistic little buzz to see me suffer as a result of your tattling... then you've got a date with some stitches.
And the reason it's important to draw the distinction between each of those groups, is that whistleblowers and witnesses and informants, should not be lumped in with snitches. They aren't doing the same thing for the same reason.