Reply #16: The Lovejoy: "Oh, won't someone PLEASE think the children!"

[TheWraith]

A classic among the pretentious and the "morally outraged." The people who've forgotten that, despite their rose colored glasses about the qualities of the past, the world used to be a lot WORSE, not a lot better. People see ridiculously rare events on the TV news, and they think that because they see them, they must be common. Like the people who live in fear of their child being kidnapped. You know how many kidnappings by strangers take place in the US every year? Between 100 and 150 on average. The odds against it are so low as to be staggering--but it's on the news, therefore it must happen right under your nose every day.

People hyperventilate in fear of kidnappers, school shootings, and forget that a kid is thousands upon thousands of times more likely to be killed in a car accident, let alone the insanely low odds of being seriously injured playing tag or dodgeball. But nobody is afraid to put their kids in the car and drive them around for whatever minor reason. Because car accidents aren't news, so nobody cares, and if nobody cares, they must not be anything to be afraid of. The media's interest in rare stories ironically makes people think they're more common than the things which actually are common.