I mean, modern suburban planning is definitely not helping, but I was going house to house in the suburbs in the 90s and 00s. It's not like land development was radically different back then.
In a lot of these goofy ass suburbs, everyone is either afraid of or hates their neighbors. Shit like Nextdoor and the myriad of doorbell surveillance devices poison the fuck out of people's brains and makes them paranoid. Step into the Nextdoor division of a suburb full of mayos and it will be flooded with busybodies calling out every non-white person they see in the neighborhood like they're about to do a home invasion. Additionally, a lot of these same people have their paranoia stoked by ghouls in the media that will take one anecdotal story and treat it as though it's endemic.
One of my Fox-pilled boomer relatives is like that. He lives in a tiny town of ~5K people that's 95%+ white and fucking conceal carries a handgun to the church he attends inside of a gated community in the most affluent suburb in the entire town. He thinks that a fucking antifa trans immigrant is going to march into the building, play the knock out game on everyone, and declare communism or some shit (based, if true). Dude's nuts.
A street my mom used to live on installed a speed bump in front of her house and she was convinced it increased the chances of being robbed because people would now be driving by real slow, wondering what she had in there. When I was in high school she didn't want me in that same lower middle class area in the middle of the day to meet some people for a concert because she thought I may get shanked.
I think it's equally as much the progressive alienation and culture of fear that permeates parenting these days.
Parenting magazines have ads that promote background checks on other parents.
What a world we live in.
people do trick or treat with cars in parking lots now?
that's ridiculously sad
It’s called “Trunk or treat” and at least in my day it was mostly reserved for the super sheltered and horribly abused kids of the most deranged christofascist suburbanites. Usually happened in church parking lots, that way you don’t have to possibly risk your children interacting with the outside world or positive influences.
If you’ve ever taken your child to a trunk or treat you need reeducation
I helped a relative with a daytime trick-or-treat event a few years back, and yeah, all the kids were super skittish while most of their parents were deranged. There was a point where a parent asked me to take off my mask because their kid was terrified to approach our stand - took the mask off, and more kids flipped their shit.
Walked down to the ice cream parlor - wearing the aforementioned mask because it was cold - a few hours later and some lady got really pissy at me for scaring her children.
I went to them as a kid sometimes, but it was never as a replacement for Halloween. It was usually just another event that was kinda like a church or school social. Some of the setups were kinda fun, everyone completed to make the craziest setup, lots of fog machines and spaghetti bowls behind curtains.
Always saw it as a bonus Halloween
i used to live in the mountainous boonies. like you would have to walk down a sketch highway that logging trucks used with a cliff on one side for about half a mile to get to your nearest neighbor. the people in the area would come together at the largest parking lot in the vicinity (the tiny post office + a convenience/supply store, both managed by the same person) and do a trunk or treat for the kids.
:capitalist-laugh: nobody wants to live in a house anymore
I think more blame falls on razor-blades in candy type fearmongering
there was a definitely brief period of time in the late 80s where the now-dead malls were trick or treat sites. like there was some shit at the food court for parents to hang out and eat while the kids went from store to store where the workers gave out candy. i remember doing it one year as a little kid in florida, because there was a west nile outbreak concern. in later years, they just let us out from school early so we could trick or treat in daylight before it got buggy out.
malarial zone halloween!
