Another Washington Post article talks about the various criminal records of uber drivers.
I really don't get how his occupation is relevant or why media is focusing on that. How many nurses/cab drivers/personal care givers/doctors/lawyers etc. have been convicted of violent crimes? It's innumerable. The WP article also contains mostly allegations and not even convictions (three that I counted) so IMO that should be mostly irrelevant. There are apparently over one million Uber drivers and 22K in Canada so of course some are going to commit illegal activity, just like any other profession/person. There was a story posted on here recently about a worker at a health food store that abducted, assaulted and held captive 2 women from his place of employment. That was after he had served his time for murdering another woman. Can't find the post but here is a cite. I did not really see a lot of focus on his place of employment then. Because it is irrelevant IMO as violence can happen anywhere. It has happened at dry cleaners, churches, baseball fields, convenience stores and all kinds of other places. I am not really understanding the relevance of the Uber angle other than it is a hot topic of the day/week/month/year.
Google "Craigslist killer." Autocomplete will give you "craigslist killer movie" "craigslist killer TV" "craigslist killer Seattle..." We have a titillation and fear whenever we are asked to trust someone outside of our typical trust structures. With a classified ad it's assumed that "the police" have some sort of Columbo-like relationship with the newspaper and any nefarious deeds will be traced back to whoever posted that classified ad post-haste. With Craigslist HOLY SHIT THERE'S NOBODY IN THE MIDDLE YOU COULD BE BUYING A COUCH FROM A SERIAL KILLER! Likewise, Uber. With Taxis there's medallions and livery licenses and dispatch and all that shit. But with Uber there's an app run by some of the most flamboyantly shady dotcom assholes in the Valley and we're all eager to make the leap to the worst-case scenario provided by the near-total lack of our (mostly apocryphal) safety net. The outsided attention, in short, comes from the fact that "nurses/cab drivers/personal care givers/doctors/lawyers etc." have some sort of professional organization, some sort of licensing structure that permits them to reside within our "professional" sphere while Uber is anybody with a car and a smart phone... yet we allow them into our "professional" microcosm. There's something unsettling about that and stories such as this play directly into the place of that unsettlement. Not saying it's sensible, not saying it's logical, not saying it's rational, just pointing out where the titillation and sensationalism comes from.
Googling "Classified Killer" and you get dozens of different cases including serial killers. Lonely Hearts Killer Classified Ad Rapist So the obvious solution to this problem is to ban newspapers. I bet if I can make a katchy title and a list of prime number data points I can write the article and sell it to Vice or Buzzfeed.
Hey, I'm not saying there's a problem or a solution. Put it this way - I've heard of plenty of "lonely hearts killers" and until the Craigslist guy there hadn't really been one since the '50s. All I'm saying is it's a key that fits in a very precise mental lock. But yes. Give Vice a try.
All good points. As we know, non-Uber cab drivers can go non-linear. Even a Lufthansa pilot can want to die and take 150 people with him.
It is completely irrelevant to the facts of what happened, but that is not how the media works. Bring up Uber and you get people reading the article and making comments on it. That drives traffic. If the guy was a sanitation worker, nobody cares. But since Uber is all over the news and is something new and disruptive, that becomes the hook to get us reading the shitty article. This is the same Washington Post that ran a story on how taxi drivers are racists without disclosing that Uber paid for the study and the article. Why would they do that? They got paid to. The media sucks, and it is getting worse at every level.I really don't get how his occupation is relevant or why media is focusing on that. How many nurses/cab drivers/personal care givers/doctors/lawyers etc. have been convicted of violent crimes? It's innumerable.