Anyone else hate the quote "in the wrong place at the wrong time"

[SleepDreamThinkHuge]

You hear it for rapes, murders, muggings etc..

What do you think of the quote?

Well sometimes you are just in the wrong place at the wrong time - like if a bird shits on you.

I think it just mean they weren't a premeditated target. If someone else had been there instead, it would have happened to them. It's about the randomness of life - which sometimes has massive,.massive consequences. Thinking about it, I suppose it also implies that the victim wasn't in any way responsible for what happened.

I think it can sound twee but in those terrible events reflects the victim was just going about their life and by bad fortune ended up in the circumstances where they were subjected to something awful. It does encapsulate the random nature of when/where such things can occur and the unpredictability.

Agree with this. What is there to hate about it? It’s just saying that something bad that happens like that is different to someone who has been specifically targeted/involved in crime/injured by an accident they could have prevented. It’s just a person who was unlucky.

Two of my friends were killed by a drunk driver losing control around a bend in the road. If they weren't in that place, or at that exact time, they'd still be here today and not killed at 18. What's the problem with the phrase in the wrong place at the wrong time?

OMG I was going to start a thread on exactly the same thing!!!!!! It really infuriates me when people say this after a dreadful crime has been committed on some innocent person.
No they weren't they were exactly where they were meant to be at exactly the right time until some fucking piece of shit turned up.

Exactly people were just going on their day to day usual life expecting to be safe and something tragic happens. The only person to blame is the criminal.

I think I don't like it, because it seems to trivialise things as though you were just saying, Oh that's chance, isn't it?

The problem is that sometimes that is exactly the case. It can be fantastic if you're in the right place at the right time and a tragedy if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As a victim of “wrong place wrong time” the phrase fits and actually helps. Makes me feel it was less about me are more about chance/circumstance.

As a victim of “wrong place wrong time” the phrase fits and actually helps. Makes me feel it was less about me are more about chance/circumstance.

Exactly.

100% agree

It isn’t blaming the victim though is it. This is just picking a perfectly logical saying apart for the sake of it.

There was a quote in a programme called Little Boy Blue about the murder of Rhys Jones which stuck with me. The character playing Rhys's mum said something like; I hate people saying he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time he wasn't, he was exactly where he was meant to be walking home from his football training.

If there is nothing wrong with the quote say someone close to you got murdered would you actually tell them "Billy was in the wrong place at the wrong time." I can never say that to someone. So what makes it okay to tell them that indirectly. If you can say something indirectly then that means it is not that bad and you can also say it directly to someone.

What do you even mean? Direct or indirect it’s relevant sometimes. You think it’s an offensive saying, but it’s incredibly common so obviously not everybody does.

Exactly it is trying to find some justification for a crime which there can never be any. Would anyone say children that died at a school shooting were in the wrong place they weren't they were doing their day to day life - learning.

If it was a random, non premeditated murder, that's what you would say surely? If that happened to one of my family members, I would take a sort of comfort in that, to know they weren't specifically targeted. I can't really explain why.

I can agree it doesn’t always make sense to say it. But sometimes it does, drunk women stumbling into a rapists car instead of a taxi is absolutely wrong place wrong time, it doesn’t make it her fault, but this saying is relevant. It has its place I guess.

But regardless of if it’s used clumsily or not, nobody uses it as ‘justification’ for murder, that’s just daft.

The reason you hate it is that it unnerves you to think of life as something you cannot fully control. It threatens you, so you feel angry with the phrase which is understandable but pointless.

The phrase isn't about blaming victims or their actions as 'wrong'. It is acknowledging that life is unpredictable and brutal at times and shite things happen to ordinary people just trying to go about their business.

This was used when a child was battered to death by three older boys for racist reasons. The judge (I think) said that the child was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone pointed out that this meant it could then just as easily been a different child that was murdered when the truth is it should NEVER have happened to any child.

I think the phrase is used to trivialise the enormity of some crimes. YANBU

I guess it’s all in how someone perceives the quote. I interpret it as - through no fault of their own something awful happened to them.
I don’t think it’s trivialising things, I think it is what it is.

It's fascinating how we all read into things differently. I have never read it as trivialising horrific crimes.

We were almost killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time but for the fact that my husband was being an absolute cunt we weren't

Basically we were supposed to leave the caravan he fucked around I saw people leaving we should have been right behind them we left late as we got around the corner a caravan had just cut loose and slammed into a wall the family we should have been behind was just infront of the accident we would have been right in its path no way we would have been missed no way we could have got out of its way there was a high wall to the left a car to the right couldn't outrun it and it slid right along the path we were very nearly a statistic wrong place wrong time

This. 100%
I've just finished reading a book by someone who was involved with some highly reported crime scenes. He said that in one of the cases the offender knew where and when he was going to commit the crime but not who the victim would be. I think in that instance the victim was in the wrong place at the wrong time.