Explorers with (bad) attitudes

There are many criticisms of urban explorers and what they do. Some are pretty unfounded; others have more validity. One with some substance to it which doesn’t often merit mention is the sense of entitlement complacent explorers sometimes get after a while.

When things are going well, it’s easy to let your guard down and lessen the slightly paranoid edge a bit. That’s understandable. What’s bad is getting cocky, becoming too confident in your ability to explore without danger of consequences, or becoming cynical about your chances of running into trouble.

What’s worse is the feeling some explorers develop that they’re entitled to explore where they want to, without consequence. Urban exploration is not a right, it’s a privilege. In a lot of senses, it’s a stolen privilege.

The rambunctious crowd at Consumer Gods explored the JN Adams hospital near Brooklyn some time ago; reading their account reminded me of the dangers of copping an attitude about UE. Lines like “we’ve played this game before and waited out the cops and security so we’ll do it again” are symptomatic of the problem: when you start treating it like a game, you’ve lost sight of the risks, and consequences, of urban exploration. Oh, you may think you’re cool, and your posturing might impress the kiddies, but the truth of the matter is, you’re out of touch with the reality of the situation.

The need for attitude adjustment is also evident in the last three paragraphs; it’s one degree of stupidity to lie to law enforcement, if you haven’t done anything seriously wrong, but not having a story agreed upon beforehand is just ridiculous overconfidence. It’s a pure form of hubris to admit you were seen acting suspicious, then become antagonistic towards law enforcement for doing their jobs. Trying to play the victim by ignorantly complaining “We go from a trespassing charge to a burglary charge and now to a drug possession charge?” doesn’t impress anyone. Most of the time, adversarial encounters with law enforcement only happen because you cause them to; lieing and copping an attitude are great ways to indirectly feed your persecution complex; it’s unfortunate that encounters like this never seem to have the expected result of diminishing people’s overconfidence. Then again, when you feel a sense of entitlement to break the law, it’s painfully difficult to admit to making mistakes, let alone learn from those mistakes.

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