It’s less a commonly held belief and more an urban myth that gets circulated via Facebook copypasta and local news elevated crime gossip.
Makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.
The theory is that you ring the doorbell a number of times and if nobody answers the door then the person must not be home. It is therefore safe to do a break-in and steal all the stuff. More elaborate and sinister theories entail a burglar who is exhausting their prey with sleepless anxiety, hoping to break in an assault/rape the homeowner once they’ve been burned out from sleeplessly monitoring their front door night after night.
Slap on some fluff about this being a cartel strategy or the sign of a kidnapping ring in your area or whatever other bells and whistles you want to throw on the tale. If it’s a TikTok meme, they’ve brainwashed kids to gather information on behalf of the Chinese/Russian government. This is a prelude to an MS-13 blockwide invasion. Lizardpeople. The sky is the limit.
“If someone rings my doorbell and runs away, they’re targeting my house for a burglary” is a thing lots of people unironically believe.
God help me, I’m going to lose it with the next idiot that I hear this shit from. My parents constantly regurgitate simulacrums of that line. Somehow we’ve moved on foolish grans mass spamming the emails about people putting tags on your car at the gas station to follow you home… but it’s ‘moved on’ to the insidious new middle-aged twats on facebook losing their minds about shit like kids being kidnapped from their school by secret russian/chinese/iranian/democrat black-ops teams.
More that they’ve got a house full of guns, an ear full of “crime wave!!!” media, and a not insignificant amount of mental illness.
“If someone rings my doorbell and runs away, they’re targeting my house for a burglary” is a thing lots of people unironically believe.
Definitely elements of that, too. But in the sense of feeling like they want to be the hero of a story they’ve heard on Talk Radio.
A lot of these people are legit delusional.
Is this really a commonly held belief? The fuck? Makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.
It’s less a commonly held belief and more an urban myth that gets circulated via Facebook copypasta and local news elevated crime gossip.
The theory is that you ring the doorbell a number of times and if nobody answers the door then the person must not be home. It is therefore safe to do a break-in and steal all the stuff. More elaborate and sinister theories entail a burglar who is exhausting their prey with sleepless anxiety, hoping to break in an assault/rape the homeowner once they’ve been burned out from sleeplessly monitoring their front door night after night.
Slap on some fluff about this being a cartel strategy or the sign of a kidnapping ring in your area or whatever other bells and whistles you want to throw on the tale. If it’s a TikTok meme, they’ve brainwashed kids to gather information on behalf of the Chinese/Russian government. This is a prelude to an MS-13 blockwide invasion. Lizardpeople. The sky is the limit.
Plays on mental illness like a fiddle.
I call it the Facebook Fear. People share everything remotely fearful on Facebook. The algorithm loves fear as it generates engagement.
The app Nextdoor is filled with fear mongering.
People are obsessed about being fearful over crime.
God help me, I’m going to lose it with the next idiot that I hear this shit from. My parents constantly regurgitate simulacrums of that line. Somehow we’ve moved on foolish grans mass spamming the emails about people putting tags on your car at the gas station to follow you home… but it’s ‘moved on’ to the insidious new middle-aged twats on facebook losing their minds about shit like kids being kidnapped from their school by secret russian/chinese/iranian/democrat black-ops teams.