I think the whole victim blaming thing, or the bike theft QA in the post, really miss the target. ALL that advise is of zero value at the time it is offered. The cows have left the barn. Water passed under the bridge. The milk was spilled and the eggs broken. The type of advice one need ex post is how to deal with the repercussion.
Once you offer that type of advice or, if you really cannot/should not if you lack experience with the situation, you’ve offered you sympathies and moral support that they can come through okay and the person is in recovery mode—be it ready to buy a new bike or whatever—then you can start offering advice about how to prevent a recurrence of the violation.
While I agree that such advice an be very useful how, and particularly when, it is offered with matter a lot in terms of how it sounds and how it is received.
ALL that advise is of zero value at the time it is offered.
Obviously false if the situation that led to the misfortune is likely to repeat in the future (thus allowing for the possibility of taking actions to avoid repeats of said misfortune)—which is the case both for bike theft and for rape.
Don’t you think someone whose bike has been stolen realises they should have locked it afterwards without you telling them? Saying so may be fine but it actually depends how you tell them, I can imagine “Shoulda locked it” being a pretty annoying comment.
Don’t you think someone whose bike has been stolen realises they should have locked it afterwards without you telling them?
No, not necessarily.
And, as the OP describes, there is the question of how they secured the bicycle, with what sort of lock, etc. There is no reason to believe that someone who’s had their bike stolen automatically thereby knows what is the optimal method for securing a bike against theft. (If they knew, they presumably would’ve secured their bike thus, and would not have had it stolen!)
The failure mode isn’t always obvious. I had a friend that was very new to biking who used a dog collar chain to lock up a $1k bike. It got stolen within 5 minutes. A lot of times we couldn’t tell what the issue was because the bike would have vanished, so we’d ask what precautions they took and then scour the scene for clues. Sometimes we’d have no idea until and when the bike was recovered.
I think you are missing the point about the timing of the advice. If advice is offered at a time that a person is not in a suitable frame of mind to even digest the information it’s not useful to them. Save it for later is may claim.
I think the whole victim blaming thing, or the bike theft QA in the post, really miss the target. ALL that advise is of zero value at the time it is offered. The cows have left the barn. Water passed under the bridge. The milk was spilled and the eggs broken. The type of advice one need ex post is how to deal with the repercussion.
Once you offer that type of advice or, if you really cannot/should not if you lack experience with the situation, you’ve offered you sympathies and moral support that they can come through okay and the person is in recovery mode—be it ready to buy a new bike or whatever—then you can start offering advice about how to prevent a recurrence of the violation.
While I agree that such advice an be very useful how, and particularly when, it is offered with matter a lot in terms of how it sounds and how it is received.
Obviously false if the situation that led to the misfortune is likely to repeat in the future (thus allowing for the possibility of taking actions to avoid repeats of said misfortune)—which is the case both for bike theft and for rape.
Don’t you think someone whose bike has been stolen realises they should have locked it afterwards without you telling them? Saying so may be fine but it actually depends how you tell them, I can imagine “Shoulda locked it” being a pretty annoying comment.
No, not necessarily.
And, as the OP describes, there is the question of how they secured the bicycle, with what sort of lock, etc. There is no reason to believe that someone who’s had their bike stolen automatically thereby knows what is the optimal method for securing a bike against theft. (If they knew, they presumably would’ve secured their bike thus, and would not have had it stolen!)
The failure mode isn’t always obvious. I had a friend that was very new to biking who used a dog collar chain to lock up a $1k bike. It got stolen within 5 minutes. A lot of times we couldn’t tell what the issue was because the bike would have vanished, so we’d ask what precautions they took and then scour the scene for clues. Sometimes we’d have no idea until and when the bike was recovered.
I think you are missing the point about the timing of the advice. If advice is offered at a time that a person is not in a suitable frame of mind to even digest the information it’s not useful to them. Save it for later is may claim.