A while back here on HN and reddit I started noticing accounts in US / China threads with some amusingly similar or identical stories.
They would mention how at least while in China they could walk around without wearing their backpack backwards to protect themselves from thieves. It was almost like a musical refrain that would pop up in comments.
It's interesting how when we hear something about another country we assume it is incredibly pervasive / everywhere and how people of that country must be terribly preoccupied with with that problem at all times.
I suspect there is more propaganda warfare (online) between ideological different countries everyday than we think. Spend enough time online and you'd think Ukraine is populated by not so undercover Nazis, everyone wakes up stabbing each other in the UK, China is about collapse economically today, Dubai is the only place worth living on earth, Australia is just one big disability scam paradise etc....
It's not sudden. The suffering of the proletariat crushed under the heel of the capitalist oppressor has always been a main theme of communist propaganda. It's not really any different from the capitalist propaganda of the victims of communism hopelessly enslaved to the government and starving to death in grey featureless surroundings.
> Those stories were not invented, but they lacked context and were presented as the dominant experiences in American society.