Never had a bad view of homeless people, even as a child, you gotta lack empathy to be in the position where you are adult and realise that they're not bad.
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
1814 points (99.3% liked)
Political Memes
7585 readers
3169 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It's the people who pretend to be homeless and collect money that are the real scum and ruin it for the actual homeless
I've been homeless twice. Thankfully I had a car and I could live out of it temporarily while I found some family to save my ass while I got back on my feet.
If I hadn't had family keep me from rock bottom it's hard to say if I would have pulled out of those situations on my own.
Unfortunately for many people they have little to no empathy for homeless because they have been lied to or attacked by homeless and they then view all homeless that way.
I remember once in my teens I skateboarded over to a sandwich place to get lunch for myself and my brother. On the way there I passed a homeless guy with a sign asking for "anything". I decided to get him a sandwich while I was there. Just a basic turkey sandwich or something as plain as I could think of. When I tried to give him the sandwich he threw it back at me and told me I should have just given him the money so he could get drunk.
That experience really tainted my view of the homeless from that day onwards. Then later in life I would have two different girlfriends get grabbed by homeless people over the years.
I have a buddy that lived downtown and the homeless people there were always breaking their windows and stealing their stuff. One of them set fire to the side of their house out of boredom. When the police came they just escorted him to the street and then left. He didn't get tried for arson or anything. The cops don't care. They have no system in place to deal with those people.
Its easy for people to have empathy for a group that they have never interacted with. Anyone who lives near homeless or regularly interacts with homeless people will tell you that not all of them are good people who just got abandoned by society. Some of them are evil bad people who have refused help or just don't want it. Most of them need mental support.
It's a very complicated issue and I dont think it has any easy or cheap solutions.
Same here on a few bad experiences trying to help
- a guy asked for money to get a meal combo from McDonalds. I bought him the meal combo, so he keyed my car for not giving him cash
- I suppose I can see this being taken the wrong way, but I tried emptying my pockets a few times, only for them to throw the counts on the ground. After that I started noticing homeless with coins on the ground around them
Realistically, it doesn’t matter anymore since I almost never have cash. They seem to know that world has gone too, as I’m rarely solicited anymore
load more comments
(2 replies)
Homelessness is not only living on the street either. There are lots of housing insecurities. Some people may move back in with family but the location isn't safe or welcoming.
I've seen many young mothers face this exact situation, often even when that same family pressured her to carry the pregnancy to term.
My mom died when I was 20 and the old man sold the house and took off with anything of value while I was just out of electrical engineering and there was a big economic downturn in the early 90s .. I crashed on people's couches in crack house neighborhoods and sometimes slept under bridges or highway overpasses... Had no car - no job and lucked into a job at Sears selling PC's back when windows 3.11 was king. I earned enough to buy a bike and bike my way to work from wherever I was crashing and bought a damned pink barbie backpack from a tag sale for 2 bucks so I could bring my suit jacket and tie required in those days and I took a damned ribbing until I could get a better situation. People that have a fallback are lucky as hell and should consider themselves so.
Point taken... also ouch...
For real. And I don’t. I always feel humbled when I see a homeless person because I’m just a hop and a skip away from being in their predicament. All it would take is an unfortunate event or two.
It's almost like they're just regular people who simply experienced some bad luck.
it’s not bad luck. saying that is disingenuous.
homelessness of the societal nature and scale that is present in america rn is not the historical norm. it is absolutely despicable how western culture encourages extremist individualism to such a degree as to destroy communities. even today, in the fucking present, people not from the west often think it’s bonkers how callous and unfeeling the west is. it is not some sort of natural condition for society to hatefully cast aside its most vulnerable individuals to the wolves.
the oklahoma state government encouraged on their tourism board website a halloween themed “roadtrip” through all the “sp0oooOky OK ghost towns”… my friends and i saw it that year in high school and decided to go. do you know what we saw in these abandoned towns? a whole separate shadow society. there are millions, yes zero hyperbole, millions of unaccounted for people just here in america alone; having to build a community off the disgusting scraps of industrial civilization. millions of people not included in any sort of statistic or thought about by you or i. they’re forgotten in the most despicably sinful act against the sanctity of life itself. if there is a god, i can only hope he punishes the transgressions of our society that allowed this to come to term, normalized it even.
wake tf up. this is an attack on you, your friends, and your family. this is class warfare and these people are on the front lines. homelessness is a civil dunkirk. the images of the brother dying to overdose alone in the wilderness on the cold hard ground, the mother suffering the birth of her bastard of rape in the arms of only the cold & dark unfeeling city, the father attempting to slash his throat and leaking into a pathetic puddle of pitiful death on the alley floor, the sister wandering the wilds as her body gradually decays in spite of her divine spark of soulful life - these all should inspire a sense of community and pride that are ruthlessly held up by a white-hot rage against the machine. these people are not others. they are you. the beast prefers you not recognize yourself as its prey.
i’d consider myself an atheist. maybe a pantheist at most. but to so brazenly violate the tenet of love thy neighbor will be our greatest downfall. as the walls of modern society crumble down to the ebb of time people will not recognize their mistakes. people will run around, like headless chickens, in fear of consequences that have already came. if it is possible that some cosmic force will relent and save us some which way, i can only pray.