Monday, January 26, 2009

Great Minds...?

On a recent Slashdot thread (I nearly said "discussion". Hah!) posters reacted to HR.414, which purports to protect children from camera phone-wielding "predators" by forcing all new camera phones to make a noise when a photo is taken, which noise cannot be muted or turned down. ... Yeah.

Well, at one point (read: many points, repeatedly, but I only noticed one at first) someone asked about dead victims. I replied, " Clearly in addition to a piercing shriek (to alert the merely hard of hearing), the flash should be required at all times." and then added, "Oh no! What about the deaf *and* blind?!" (What? Don't you judge me, it's Slashdot. We don't evaluate etiquette independent of its context at this here blog. I bet you do lots of things at the orgies you habitually attend that we might snicker at over coffee)

Where was I? Anyway, the point of admitting that I post to Slashdot is to bring up the fact that right now fully half of the replies advocate the use of tasers. Looking elsewhere on the thread, where many other people made similar points, this is the commonest response. Now, those of you who know Slashdot understand that this is not mere agreement: posters there rarely even read the articles, let alone the mostly-invisible responses of their fellow posters. It's fair to assume that most of those people came up with this little gem on their own.

On the one hand, I think tasing strangers is funny. On the other hand, why tasers? Why not projectiles or a flame thrower? There are other suggestions in there: One AC suggested simulated flatulence. Shouldn't we expect to see a broader range of suggestions, if they're all independent? Is there some cultural element of the Slashdot mind that predisposes them to think of electric shock before all else?

I don't know, but I shall be thinking about it. At least until I bring myself to turn off emailed comment notifications. (Damn it, there's another one)

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