There’s no confusion. People like this just don’t think a homeless person deserves anything.
I imagine they take it as an affront, that a homeless man could have the “gall” to take charity from them, while he has a phone “hidden” in his pocket, as if that means he’s a con-man, and not really in need at all.
In their mind, if a homeless man owns a phone, then he can’t be genuinely destitute. If he was then he should sell that phone to afford his next meal, instead of begging on the street.
Never mind that a phone is probably the single most important tool to in modern life to stay informed and connected, not to mention and entertained and sane.
Never mind that a phone could be the difference between staying homeless for ever, or finding work.
No - if you are homeless then you certainly aren’t allowed to own any tools that would help you get out of it.
It might also be their only way to apply for the benefits/shelter they’re legally entitled to.
My country gives free phones to the homeless because it’s mandatory to function in today’s world 🤷
When people say, “beggars can’t be choosers”, my response is always, “how do they stop being beggars, then, Karen?”
The conservative mindset believes social class is preordained. Karen believes people who have become homeless are destined to remain that way and it’d be a waste of resources to try to help them.
If you look at it through this lens, the phone is just prolonging their thrashing before they accept their fate and starve to death.
Yep. The video “Always a Bigger Fish” from Innuendo Studios helps to clarify that mentality quite well: https://youtu.be/agzNANfNlTs [21:46]
I mean, I’m a conservative and I don’t believe this stuff, but I believe you if you’re saying you’ve met someone who does.
They’re supposed to suck it up, take the first and worst job they manage to plead and grovel for, and stick with it no matter how many health and safety violations you have to ignore, no matter how hard, painful, or tiring it is. If you’d rather die than keep working there, then go die.
If you don’t, if you stick to it, if you get enough money to start renting some place, then you suck it up and live in the cheapest dump if you have to, show your gratitude to God, and you do everything in your power to fix it up and make it nice.
And it doesn’t matter what state it’s in, doesn’t matter what needs to be done, doesn’t matter what you’ve been taught or not. Just do the thing. If you prove to be bad at whatever it is, then that’s what you are. And if the landlord won’t let you do anything? Landlord who? Still your fault. Maybe you shouldn’t allow yourself to give off the impression that you’re an incompetent craftsman when you ask permission for something so crucial. It is shameful to live in a home out of order and in disrepair. So that’s the next step, be ashamed of your condition, until you can afford to be a chooser. Maybe. Unless you’ll never earn enough to live somewhere better. Then just stick with it. Live and work in shame of your incompetence.
Besides, phones are incredibly cheap now. I dropped my pixel 7 in a river a few weeks ago so I went to Walmart and asked for the cheapest android burner they had. For $100 it has a 90hz display, snapdragon 680, 5000mAh battery. I don’t need any upgrade from this
Used phones are even cheaper, dirt cheap. I don’t think he could sell his phone if he wanted to.
There’s a lot more info on this when you relate it to an older analysis that says many people are seemingly in search of the ‘deserving poor’ as an excuse to never help anyone.
they do not see and interpret reality.
they have their idea of what is, and then use visual input (for example) only as a muse to further develop that idea. you can’t argue with them, because anything that doesn’t support them just passes through (and if you trojan horse this, you are now the devil).
they’re solipsists, and its by choice. not human beings, not entities in the same world as us, sharing the same context and world and connectedness and shit. in a very real way, these fuckers are taking the world from us, in a very real way, these fuckers are invaders from another world (a world they made up and does not exist, but which their consciousness occupies, which ours infringes upon).
that’s why your uncle or whatever getting taken by fox news feels like such a loss. they are genuinely lost, the person is gone. no longer here. bricked in an unrecoverable manner.
It’s almost certainly not that deep.
The random person not thinking too much about it is almost certainly simply assuming that someone who’s homeless wouldn’t be in a position where they can save up for anything, so how could they have a smartphone, isn’t the little money they can get their hands on always necessarily spent on more immediate concerns like food, etc.
You don’t have to assume the most malicious motivation possible every time, lol.
I am not the guy above but I would give them that benefit if I hadn’t had a hundred or so conversations where they said exactly that. Also people on benefits don’t deserve anything nice. Like food stamps can only be for milk, bread, and cheese.
If you watch Fox News or read any conservative sphere media you can pretty immediately see where they get the idea from.
I think I probably would have fallen in to this group had I not read those thread first. While I wouldn’t use it as a stick to beat the less fortunate, it would probably have weighed on my mind.
I think it’s best to educate the ignorant to allow people the opportunity to be better, rather than marginalising them - I think people are more likely to dig their heels in and feel the warm embrace of the far right if we do that.
Old person mentality: smartphones are expensive and food is cheap.
If you’re homeless or low income, there are programs through DHS that will send you a free phone and plan. It’s not a great phone, but they still give people the ability to apply for jobs online, contact hospitals/case workers/ shelters, and to be safe in case of an emergency. I’m not sure if other states have it, but Michigan and Colorado do
I think maybe they meant ‘department of health and human services’ (what its called at the county level here, federal umbrella project is from… I think the FCC), not ‘department of homeland security’, which is what’s generally meant when one says DHS, and has the DHS.gov website linked in my previous comment. anyone who gets a cell phone paid for by the DHS is a fed, including undercovers, which are generally regarded as untrustworthy by people with more than three figures of brain cells.
next time just click the link so I don’t have to explain the joke.
The same person is confused that Africans also have phones: “What they are not using stone tools in Africa?”
Reminds me of my health class in high school here in the US. We had to introduce ourselves and give 2 interesting facts about ourselves. I said that I used to play voliball competitively for my school in Mexico and my second fact was that I was on TV for it. A girl blurted out ‘you have channels in Mexico?’ it was funny and I did sorta feel bad for the girl getting ridiculed by the class. Sometimes people don’t think about that sort of stuff.
Long ongoing way to undermine poverty for middle class audiences: