To be confused about people's priorities?

[MelonSlice]

Name changed as potentially outing.

I'm on a couple of community Facebook groups for various areas of my country.

Quite often somebody will post about a dog or cat that has gone missing. These types of posts always gain a lot of popularity with various groups going as far as to organise search parties to find these animals.

Recently, there has been a couple of posts about people who have gone missing. One being a 73 year old grandfather with dementia and another being a 35 year old suicidal female. These posts have either been ignored or in the case of the suicidal female, had critical responses about being attention seeking, etc.

Aibu to think people in general have their priorities all wrong to be putting the lives of pets above their human neighbours?

Animal abuse is rife. I could readily find countless examples of it. I think that you underestimate how common it is and the maximum sentences for animal cruelty are disgustingly low, though it looks like they may be set to increase(still too low though).

The charities and people that deal with animal abuse are not equipped with the resources to deal with child abuse. They are different issues and need different methods of dealing with them. We have a lot of laws in place to protect children(perhaps not enough) but those resources are not being utilised or funded enough. That isn't the fault of animal lovers but that of the authorities and others in power

Of course child abuse matters hugely but it is possible to care about both and people are allowed to feel that certain issues mean more to them on a personal level.

Yes, I do worry about that when I see reports of a woman missing. There's concern that an abusive partner may be looking for her, especially one that I saw that asked people to contact the man who posted the alert, directly and not to contact the police. That made me extremely suspicious.

Yes animals are ‘innocent’.
Whereas humans, even children..., how on earth can you ever see them as innocent victims

FWIW, that sort if attitude is very british. There are many other countries where animals don’t attract more ‘caring attitudes’ than humans.
It’s a very cultural thing.

Sometimes you can't win. I had someone criticise me because I was volunteering with the elderly and charities for the elderly and said person was incensed that I was 'wasting' my time on the elderly when children were supposedly so much more deserving.

One of my bugbears is people who think that you stop mattering once you reach 18/21 and that adults don't need or deserve help, but I don't criticise or have any issue with people who only help children because almost all causes are worthy of assistance and I don't expect others to share my personal priorities.

YABU (though probably because you weren't aware) - www.doglost.co.uk (which has an enormous nationwide following and shares info through the internet), will accept and has accepted lost humans posted on it sometimes (also does cats, tortoises, parrots, raccoon dogs, foxes, ferrets, etc so it isn't just for dogs). Doglost followers have sympathised and shared such posts and, if in the appropriate area of the UK, put up posters and looked for these missing folk themselves.

I don't think OP is suggesting that all people prioitise animals over people. Just that some do.

That's up to them of course.

Personally, I don't like it on MN animals threads which can get a bit bonkers when people start saying they hate children but maybe they're getting carried away (or maybe they mean it, who knows).

I'm always a little skeptical of sharing missing person posts - I read an article once on how an abusive ex tracked down his wife by posting missing person pics online etc.
This!
I will only share if the post is from an official source. Too much risk of people tracing someone for nefarious purposes otherwise.

The local police helicopter here is always out looking for missing people. Last night it was searching the local nature reserve for a missing elderly gentleman with dementia. The nature reserve used to be industrial so has deep rivers, holes, cordoned off areas etc. So awful place to be lost at night. Anyway I believe he was eventually found on the street, poor chap.

I think (and I hope this comes out ok) there are different sorts of missing people. Some missing people are frequent flyers, for want of a better word, and run off as soon as returned. There may be very good reasons for that, but there is no denying it affects the police response.

In terms of animals, I guess we all think we could see that animal wandering down the street and return it. You don’t think the same for missing people really.

Why exactly is the person more important than the (other|) animal? As a race we are so arrogant

Other people's priorities and their use of their resources and spare time aren't really your business. How many search parties have you set up for the missing people you're so concerned about?

@MenuPlant
It actually hurts my heart if anything happened to my bright beautiful DC they would be less worthy of police time and attention because of their colour.

I'm in the same position as PP. I'll only share alerts posted by the police regarding missing persons, and because I DO care, not because I don't.

We have regular pets going missing and occasional people going missing on our location FB pages.

The difference here is for a missing dog you will be told x has gone missing from backgarden/or park when walking 1/2hr ago and fellow dog walkers will say I'll take ddog for his walk up that way and keep an eye out.

For a missing adult, it is usually at least a day later before its posted and for all I know they could be on a bus/train to anywhere, I wouldn't even know where to start looking unless I knew them personally.

I don't think it is to do with wrong priorities, its to do with not knowing where to look.

@FlowersInMotion

YABVU. I hate all this virtue signalling bs where people can't seem to discuss one cause or issue without playing down another, see Notre Dame for a recent example when people were whining about Grenfell or poverty or whatever which had little relation to the others. Of course Grenfell, poverty etc matter but there's no need to dismiss other issues that matter to people in order to raise awareness. We all have different priorities and issues that mean more to us, and I'm sure that yours could be equally criticised if you're going to play top trumps.

Yeah this.

The virtue signalling with Notre Damn really pissed me off.

'oooh, all these millionaires giving money to an old Church, when they don't care about the starving millions/other disasters? What a pearl-clutching outrage!!!'

How do they know these millionaires don't give money to many other causes too?

Really pisses me off. As has been said, people can care about more than one thing at the same time. As also (as has been said,) it's not always a good idea to share pics of women, as they may be 'lost' for a reason...

*I mean did anyone even read the links

eg

"Data obtained through a parliamentary question by the MP shows an increase of 1,000 children going missing from care homes since 2015, after being moved to new areas often miles from their homes, known as an “out of area placement”.

Numbers have more than doubled from 990 in 2015, to 1,990 in 2018. This compares with a 31% increase for children who go missing from homes within their own borough.

Coffey said: “It shames us all that thousands of vulnerable children continue to be farmed out to live miles and miles away from home despite a government promise to clampdown on numbers.

“Isolated and alone without family, friends or local social workers to help protect them, they become sitting ducks for those who wish to prey on them. They are targeted by paedophiles and drugs gangs and can become trapped in a brutal world.”"

The claims that humans are well provided for is untrue. Some are. Others are not. Depending on their perceived value*

I read your links.

One claims increase in missing children in care. I agree. This does not mean they are not being actively searched for and returned home. The article is not about those going permanently missing.

The above is also true that out of area children in care go missing more frequently. The point it misses though is these children are often moved out of area due to unresolveable problems in their existing area- they could be already children that go missing frequently, or those that are at risk from cse or county lines. They are often moved to sever ties with their original network.

Children of colour I can’t comment on but I cannot say I have noticed any bias in our local force (i work closely with their sg dept)

What I will say is social media campaigns are only carried out if a missing person is classed at serious risk of harm, to themselves or others. Many children go missing often but sofa surf with friends or are in contact with social care, parents or police, so they aren’t high risk. So you won’t see them on twitter etc. It’s not that one person is more important, it’s the individual risk.

Cynara I think it's an assumption that the authorities will look after people, but often things go wrong, quite badly wrong. When you realise you pay your taxes to eg services that view CSA victims as child prostitutes I think people have a right to get angry / complain etc.

You have elderly people being abused in care homes, children with mental health issues being locked up miles away from home and the parents can't get them back (saw on the news yesterday an awful story) and so on and so forth.

I think if as animals we aren't interested in looking after our own then that's a bit of a sorry situation.

I mean humans are pretty awful but the things we do to each other beggars belief.

Newname so what you're saying is everything is rosy.

I read the news and I don't think that's true.

so what you're saying is everything is rosy

No. What I am saying is the links you posted are from mainstream media which aren’t necessarily reporting the whole story.

My force is the Met and they have a list of misconduect as long as your arm

Colluding with media / selling / leaking info
racism
Covering up murders
Investigating victims rather the the crime reported if they're the wrong sort of victims even to the extent of surveillance

And so on

I question that childrens charities etc don't need support because the authorities have it all in hand, mind you turns out the charities are complicit in abuse esp overseas so not sure what the answer is apart from humans are pretty awful so maybe people should prefer dogs, but at the same time we are where we are and why is it worse to abuse an animal than a human > it's the innocence thing. When a person is abused people search for reasons and explanations. When an animal is abused everyone says its wrong. With humans you do see it more with elderly or v young victims.

Newname >> you are calling into question the veracity of our press?

Links are independent, metro, guardian.

Okay.

I think to assume these things are being spun to discredit the authorities (is that what you mean?) is a very big stretch.

Many of the authorities over the years have done a bang up job of discrediting themselves!

• you are calling into question the veracity of our press?

Links are independent, metro, guardian.

Okay*

Media never sensationalises or presents a story from a certain angle to fit a narrative, oh no.

Do you think the above publications never print anything other than completely unbiased facts, presenting all sides of a story?

I think to assume these things are being spun to discredit the authorities (is that what you mean?) is a very big stretch

Again that is not what I said. They are not presenting all sides, as pp said. The true story is it isn’t straightforward, and there are many reasons a cic may be moved. Money may be a factor, but IME it isn’t a driving one.

I agree op, I always think on our village Facebook page people forget how many people they are talking to and the range of things that could be going on in their lives. We have a woman who lost a cat and had the whole village looking , daily posts , talk of heart break. Yes I know it's sad but I also know there's a woman in the village whose daughter has died, it's just not comparable and probably many others dealing with divorce, job loss and bereavement while you bang on about your cat.

It was Newname who said it but thanks for backing her up.

You believe the info in those 3 links is inaccurate?

They were just the first 3 off the list on google I didn't pick them specially or anything. The care homes missing and abuse has been in the news a lot recently though and missing white girl syndrome has been on the radar for ages I've read loads of stories over the years.

Why do you find it hard to believe the stats / stories in the links?

It must be nice to be able to brush aside information like that as Oh it's all lies...