Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

Re:Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of soci... by captainmuon on Thursday June 15, 2017 @11:47AM (#14561471)

You might have friends on Facebook who are not locals. When a chemical plant blew up spectacularly in Tianjin, China, I was more than an hour away in Beijing. I still got a lot of worried inquiries (from those who heard about it anyway). The same when there was a terrorist attack in Berlin. I was at the other side of the city. There was no Safety Check, but I posted about it, because events like these affect people emotionally.

The fire in London was not a catastrophe of the scale of a tsunami or a major terrorist attack, but the pictures were frightening and impressive, and it is still a huge tragedy. So I can imagine many residents of London got worried messages from friends and family abroad.

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Re:Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of soci... by alistairSH on Thursday June 15, 2017 @01:21PM (#14562368)

Why would people worry that you, in Beijing, was at risk from an explosion in Tianjin (100km distant)?

If a bomb goes off in Baltimore, I don't call all my DC friends.

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Re:Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of soci... by captainmuon on Sunday June 18, 2017 @09:14AM (#14580500)

Because people have no sense of scale in foreign countries, that is my point. Especially if you are viewing a map of all China trying to find Beijing, 100km is not much :-).

On 9/11 I was a kid living in Germany, but had relatives in California. My teachers were incredibly concerned and treated my like I was wrapped in cotton, or as if I had lost somebody personally. It's a weird thing.

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