Städte sind sicherer als die Leute denken. London zeigt, wie soziale Medien die Angst verzerren

I have lived almost exactly in the center of London since 2003. My gf walks home from work, in the dark, every night for 1 hour, and has done so since 2009. She has never once been accosted or attacked by anyone and I do not worry about her safety.

Now, I probably wouldn’t feel the same were she making that walk through North London, but that probably says more about me than anything else.

Over the last four years or so, I’ve been repeatedly told online that I’m scared to walk outside in my own city.

Yet somehow, this has never been the case regardless of the location and the time of day. I’ve never been a victim of a crime, having lived my life in a EU capital.

I lived in South London for 38 years and aside from a couple of dodgy pubs I never felt afraid, never got mugged and hardly ever got any hassle from anyone (outside of riding a bike!). My wife walked home from the train station every night with zero issues and even wobbling round some supposedly bad areas off my face in the early hours, I never attracted any attention. More to the point – whenever anything bad happened, like when my wife fell and snapped her wrist, someone always stepped up to help.

The power of misinformation is huge..

Its really weird how London is portrayed in social media, its one of the safest major cities in Europe, and safer than almost all US cities, yet people talk like you need a stab vest just to walk down the street.

Most large cities are safer now than they’ve ever been. That’s the truth that people don’t want to accept. Arguably cleaner too. People only believe what they want to believe.

I live in Tallaght which is a part of Dublin with a bad reputation and I’ve never been stabbed or mugged.

I’ve lost my phone twice here and the first time someone put it up on Facebook that they found it and even asked me what the wallpaper was to ensure I wasn’t some randomer trying to steal it, the second time was when I lost it in a shop and somebody literally handed it in to the staff.

I went to school in a „nicer“ area and most of my phones got stolen in school.

Really paints a picture.

Ok. Lived in London. Shooting incident next door. Drug dealers in building. Threatened with a face-stabbing. Other areas were probably gun/knife free.

Everyone outside of London’s always been afraid of London as far as I can tell. I miss the anarchic anonymity it used to offer in the 70s & early 80s, could do fking anything as a kid in central London back then and it was like we were invisible.

I would have believed this article if they didn’t tried to steal me twice when I was in London in 2024.

And a close friend of mine went there in 2025 and his wallet with all his credit cards also got stolen while he was ordering a coffee.

There’s literally guys with bikes running all around London city trying to steal phones and wallets since the pandemic.

First time I started hearing about no-go zones in Dutch cities was in 2016 from Russian colleagues at that time. It was mind boggling because I was living in one of those neighborhoods they were describing at that time. Now we’re reading that bullshit everywhere. It’s fucking cities, of course there is crime and pickpockets etc. It’s not urban post apocalyptic hellscapes. 

People really have no idea what our cities were like in the 60’s-70’s-80’s or before that. Look back at old pictures and the whole center of cities like amsterdam are full of derelict buildings and junkies. Nearly unimaginable now.

Yeah, having a million camera angles of every single event has made people fearful of everything.

It’s terrible but also kind of impressive how much the dynamic has shifted over the years (from regional news, to 24 x 7 news cycles on cable, to non-stop news of every single event everywhere as a scroll on your phone.)

Exactly the same thing happening in Paris. And it’s so infuriating seeing how unapologetically racist Americans get when it comes to describing European cities while they play BLM supporter at home.

The multiple comments „I come from a rough US city but I’ve never felt so unsafe as in Paris. It was like Africa and I feared for my life the whole time“ meanwhile it’s just an average neighborhood with a strong African population and has been for the past 40 years

I wonder if there may be some group of people who benefit from you fearing and hating your neighbors.