- With the Gotham TV show in full swing,
that age old question comes up once more.
We see terrible things happening in this city,
from weaponized hallucinogens,
exploding hospitals, neon paint,
bombs you just can't get rid of,
and of course, Bat Nipples.
So why in the world do people choose
to stay and live in Gotham City?
Well, let's find out.
(rock music)
Welcome to Comic Misconceptions,
the show that takes you into detail
about the things you think you know about comics.
I'm your host, Scott Niswander,
and I'm sure you've thought about this question
or encountered it somewhere online
or among your friends about why,
with all the terrible things that happen in Gotham City,
do people choose to stay and live there?
Well, today I want to try and answer that question.
Just to be clear, though, I'm not going to list
why people should stay,
but rather why they do stay and why we,
as outside viewers, think that they are crazy for it.
These arguments could probably also be applied
to other cities where fictional disasters happen,
like Metropolis or Marvel's New York City.
- So, this all seems horrible.
- Let's start it off with the big one.
Optimism bias, or comparative optimism,
otherwise known as the
"well, it's not gonna happen to me" mindset.
We've all had this thought in one way or another,
whether it's something simple like,
well, I don't need a case on my phone
because I'm not gonna drop it.
Or something even bigger like,
I'm not gonna wear a seatbelt
'cause I'm a careful driver.
As a citizen of Gotham, it could be something like,
sure, criminals are constantly going on killing sprees,
but I'm a good person, I'll keep my head down, do my job.
I mean, what's the worst that can happen? I'll be fine.
People tend to focus on what they want to happen
instead of what will likely happen.
The more that you don't want something,
the less likely you see it happening to you.
You don't wanna die by the hands of some psychopath
that escaped from Arkham, so your mind tells you
that that's not gonna happen.
As the desire to live increases, the perceived likelihood
of you dying decreases.
And again, that's the perceived likelihood,
not the actual likelihood.
You really, really want to live, so your mind tells you
that you will be perfectly fine.
But it actually goes a bit further than that.
This bias isn't just to make you feel safer
in dangerous situations,
it actually makes you more reckless.
In negative scenarios, comparative optimism can actually
make you more likely to engage in risky behavior,
or fail to take the necessary safety precautions.
If you're a Blackgate prison guard,
or in some other position where you watch over
dangerous people as a part of your job,
it's actually pretty likely that you will get sloppy
with the safety procedures counterintuitively
and put you or someone else at risk because of it.
You know that the Joker's a threatening criminal,
but that's not gonna stop your brain from telling you
that you'll be fine taking on this lunatic
by yourself in an enclosed space.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Again, the basis of comparative optimism
is the belief that negative scenarios are less likely
to happen to you as opposed to other people,
even though they could totally happen to you just as easily.
As an average citizen, the Gothamist type of thinking
might just be enough to keep you
from moving out of Gotham,
even though we as outside viewers think
that you are crazy for staying.
Positive illusions can be very helpful when facing
life-threatening or stressful scenarios
and can even help build up your psychological resilience,
aka the ability to adapt to difficult or traumatic events.
So over time, Gothamites could just get used
to these things happening frequently.
But I think the biggest factor in why we,
as outsiders, think it's crazy that people would live
in Gotham after all that's happened there
has got to be our own cognitive biases.
We do this a lot in our lives.
We establish a point of view or belief,
and then we seek out information that supports
that belief and ignore or at least
don't put a lot of weight in opposing facts.
As a YouTuber, I know this pretty well.
You see one negative comment amongst a sea of compliments,
and that's all you can focus on.
As comic fans, you might have a friend
who hates your favorite character.
You try to explain all the good in them
and why they're so awesome,
but your friend just doesn't care.
They fixate on the bad and the flaws,
and don't care about anything
that discredits their point of view.
A lot of us are pretty stubborn,
and it's really hard to get past that.
So now allow me to propose this idea.
Gotham City isn't actually as bad as we think it is.
I know what you're thinking,
"Scott, Gotham is terrible.
"There are so many awful things that happen there
"on such a regular basis, how could it be
"anything less than agony to live there?"
You're absolutely right, there are a lot of awful things
that happen in Gotham.
But there's also a lot of good that happens there.
The problem is that we as readers aren't exposed
to the good nearly as much as we are with the bad
because a story without conflict isn't terribly interesting.
We wanna see Batman beating people up,
and places exploding, and psychopaths creating trouble,
and that can skew our idea of Gotham
as this gritty, wretched place where death
and destruction just means it's another Tuesday.
We, as readers, for the most part are only subjected
to the horrible, absurd and bizarre crimes and disasters
that happen in Gotham and not really subjected
to all the good that happens there.
No news place covers
"Joe the construction worker who had a productive day today
"and went home to visit his family and had a lovely dinner."
It's not news, the idea of nothing happening
isn't something to report on, so nobody does.
- Coming up next, can bees think?
A new study confirms that no, they cannot.
- And when nobody reports on it,
you don't get exposed to it as much
as when crazy things happen.
Your mind tells you in kind of this weird paradox
that crime is the norm because that's all
anyone's reporting on, but they're only reporting on it
because it's not the norm.
And I know comic books aren't newspapers,
but I wanna believe that a similar
way of thinking applies here.
Depending on the timeline of Batman,
Gotham could have anywhere between
two million to ten million people.
That's a lot of people.
How many of those people do you think
have zero run-ins with criminals on a daily basis?
I would argue probably a majority.
But again, we don't often hear from those people,
because if Batman's taken down Clayface,
let's just focus on that.
That sounds a lot more interesting.
Gotham City probably isn't that bad of a place to live.
The Thomas and Martha Wayne Foundations,
for instance, provide much needed help
to many different areas and aspects of life in Gotham,
but all you're presented with are the appalling stories
of tragedy and we skip over the fact that there's a lot
of normal people just living normal lives.
But that doesn't really fit with our belief
of what Gotham City is,
so we discredit any information that opposes
what we consider to be true.
Like when I was a kid and I found out
that it snows in Australia, or when I visited Texas,
and found that people's main mode of transportation
is cars instead of the majestic horse.
Those did not correspond with my beliefs
about those places, and if you just told me that,
I would not believe you.
I had to go to Texas myself and see that people
don't ride around on horseback everywhere.
I still choose not to believe the thing about Australia
because that, that doesn't make sense to me.
But hopefully, an Australian Nerdsync viewer
can set the record straight.
The point is that we as readers will never know
what it's like to live in Gotham City.
We can only view it from an outside angle
that has been crafted by the writers and the artists
to depict exactly what they want to show about Gotham City.
The same way that movies and TV shows
might reinforce what you think a place
you've never been to should look like,
instead of how it actually is.
What do you guys think?
Is it reasonable to believe that people of Gotham could stay
and live there if they developed the right mindset?
Is Gotham even that bad of a place to live in
in the first place, or does all of this mean
absolutely nothing and people should move out
as soon as possible?
Let me know in the comments.
And make sure you all listen to this week's podcast
with Ricky from Stewdippin.
We talked about the future of the DC Cinematic Universe
and the big announcement that DC made recently
about all of their movies.
Super fun podcast, really funny.
You can check it out on iTunes, Stitcher,
SoundCloud, and right here on YouTube,
if one of those things is your thing.
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Once again, I'm Scott, you can find me
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and we'll see you right here next week
for more things that you thought
you knew about comics. See ya.