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Bystanders Paranoia

To feel fear, or to feel threatened, from a situation that you have little control over or that you are not directly affected by. The overwhelming fear is usually not caused by the situation itself but by people exaggerating information to make you obsess over what's going on.

Bystanders Paranoia (or Citizens Paranoia) is different from feeling legitimate fear for yourself and your loved ones due to an outside force that has a significant of hurting you.

Bystanders Paranoia is fear that is, most of the time, brought on by political discourse, in which news sources and journalists over-hype to get you to feel more dependent on said news sources.

The fear will then cause the affected to spend every moment of their time focusing on nothing but how the news tells them to feel about the situation, afraid and unsafe.

Those affected by Bystanders Paranoia will be unable to recognize that the people telling them these stories are only manipulating their fear to get them to listen to more monotonous, disingenuous reports on the situation.

Boy 1: I'm kind of worried about Leann, she been doing nothing but watching CNN and reading ABC News for days. She always seems like she's terrified of something.
Girl 1: I think those news channels gave her Bystanders Paranoia. Poor thing.
Boy 2: I fucking hate journalists. All of them are fags.

by chatterbug779 August 1, 2021


bystander Google-search

Humorous term to describe where you "publicly" solicit the knowledge ("Excuse me, everyone --- do any of you happen to know anything about ___?", or, ""Hey, Folks --- are any of you familiar with the technical properties of ___?") of anyone within yelling-distance about a particular question or problem that you encounter at that time and place.

Doing a bystander Google-search can yield surprising results --- more than once I have gotten out of a perplexing dilemma in this way.

by QuacksO April 15, 2019


Indecent Bystander

1. Someone who observes an an improper action but fails to do anything about it.

2. Similar to an individual acting like a douchebag.

3. Mispronunciation for "Innocent Bystander"

Scott was standing there and saw everything that happened and didn't do anything to fix it. He's such an Indecent Bystander

by Streakster June 12, 2018


Bro bystander

Is a Male with privilege that complains about his entitlement to better neighborhood without offering any real substantial solutions or a desire to use his privilege to aid in the cause he's complaining about. Bro bystanders are usually those who are gentrifying neighborhoods and do not understand inequality, inequity, recognize racism and their own privilege.

Justin Keller is a bro bystander.

by Socialjustice16 February 20, 2016