Master Shake is a terrorist... what what?

[Sinue_v2]

Apperantly there was a large terrorist scare in Boston yesterday which caused the ports, highways, and many establishments to be closed. What caused it? Viral marketing... Turner Broadcasting, in an attempt to advertise Aqua Teen Hunger Force had a group of employees place small lighted outlines of characters from their show (Moonanite flipping you off) around various areas of the city.

What's the rational way to handle the situation? Of course, lets call the goddamned bombsquad, raise the terror alert level, and put the city on lockdown. Great... that's not an over-reaction at all. And then.. once the truth comes out and the "authorities" are embarassed - what do they do? They want to sue Turner Broadcasting for "wasting" the police & fire department's time, not to mention for the panic that "they" caused. Granted, they should have gotten a permit to put up these devices... but the permit costs more than the fine. So what's wrong with fining them as usual? It's not like these guys erected a faux atomic device, or were shipping packages of white powder. Because the government over-reacted and wasted their own resources - now Turner may have to pay well above and beyond what anyone else who doesn't bother with getting a permit.

Have we Americans really become such pussies since 9/11?

Wait... don't answer that.

[geewj]

Maybe I should start making calls to the police every time I see a blinking light in a car. Car bombs are more realistic than... blocky flip-off glow in the dark poster bombs are.

Suing Turner is ridiculous. I heard they are trying to see who else they can hold accountable to sue. A fine I guess for putting them up without a permit, but the city needs to bone up and take responsibility for overreacting. Ain't it nice to see that their first impulse is to try to bleed the fiasco out of the company? Hevean forbid they take any sort of monitary responsiblity for the situation unless they have to.

And the whole citizen who cried bomb thing is getting old. But this is the governments doing, and they can pay the price and take the heat themselves. Happy hunting!

[VulpesMundi]

I agree that the US has become a laughing stock since 9/11. All this excessive faux-security seems too much. Next thing you know they're going to track down and imprison every tom, dick, and harry who played a videogame that involved any gunplay, demolitions work, or killing of any sort as a precaution (and I bet you anything it HAS been suggested... many times).

On 2007-02-01 01:26, geewj wrote:
But this is the governments doing, and they can pay the price and take the heat themselves. Happy hunting!

One problem. Who pays the government the money they use? The public through taxes. We're screwed either way, it seems.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: VulpesMundi on 2007-02-01 01:40 ]</font>

[geewj]

On 2007-02-01 01:38, VulpesMundi wrote:

On 2007-02-01 01:26, geewj wrote:
But this is the governments doing, and they can pay the price and take the heat themselves. Happy hunting!

One problem. Who pays the government the money they use? The public through taxes. We're screwed either way, it seems.

Then throw another 'Damn this government sucks' tick on the charts. Eventually all these little ticks are going to topple it, and we'll see it's more trouble than it's worth. If we don't get ourselves nuked before then that is.

[Uncle_bob]

Oh man, it's fucking great. On CNN they just showed some bomb squad guy removing one of the "big bad bombs". That wasn't that funny in itself, but what was funny is that they censored the entire "bomb".

So far they've arrested two men on felony charges. Their lives and careers are essentially ruined because idiots in charge goofed up and are too stubborn to admit it. Go to hell, Boston.

Edit: We live in constant fear of anything now; it's really fucking sad.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Uncle_bob on 2007-02-01 02:07 ]</font>

[ABDUR101]

I always thought the 'terror levels' were funny. "It's a yellow day, it's the anniversary of Bin Laden's wife's brother in laws son to his first wife."

I wonder, do people HONESTLY even care about the terror alert levels? Are there people honestly wigging out and getting paranoid because some idiot in government decides to set the 'terror level of the day' higher because of second and third and fourth hand suspicious hear-say?

I hadn't heard about this in Boston, so thats honestly just absurdly funny..to the point that I'm not fond of attributing myself as a citizen. These people are leading the herd? The Censor-Police?

[Scejntjynahl]

"But this is the governments doing, and they can pay the price and take the heat themselves"

Elected by the people. Sustained by the people. So who really is at fault?

Here is the only problem with all of this that I see. Sure that was a prank. Sure it was funny and what not. Yes the authorities overeacted and now we can say how stupid they are.

But. If it wasnt a joke. If it was a threat and the authorities did nothing? Then it would be a whole different kind of rant altogether.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Seriously if that network would have notified its intentions, paid whatever fee is needed, would any of this had happened? I doubt it. Most networks like most companies that I have seen, love to cut corners. And as such mishaps occur. All in the name of fun no?

Offtopic: Same as that radio station holding that contest for the Wii system where contestants had to drink large amounts of water. Harmless fun to most. Yet they were warned, notified that there was possible danger. Did they stop? No. Why not? Because what harm can it do? -_- Well one person dead harm. Sure it wasn't their "intention" for that to happen, but it was their lack of common sense that did it. And now they are all up and arms trying to defend themselves. Yeah Im sure if no one had perished from it none of this would be discussed and most likely they would keep holding similar contests. It is the what "ifs" that include others that should be considered thouroughly the most. Its one thing to do stupid things that affect you only, and its another to do things that implicate others.

$0.02

[Sinue_v2]

But. If it wasnt a joke. If it was a threat and the authorities did nothing? Then it would be a whole different kind of rant altogether.

From me? No.. it wouldn't have. I may have even marveled at the terrorists over their ingenious. It would be on par with spraying athrax or other biological agents on the side of a train disquised as grafitti. I, unlike apperantly some, realise that we are in a war with these radicals - and there will be casualties. Perhaps total strangers, or perhaps my own family and friends. However I cannot live in fear of loss or death. That is the entire point of me making this thread. How have we become so paralized by the fear of terror, when the likelyhood of even dying in a terrorist attack is astronimical. Every day you go to work and start up your car you have a exponentially higher chance of comming home in a coroner's bag. You have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning... twice. We don't raise the alert level durring a traffic jam... and we don't cower in fear of the lightning. (despite the weather alerts which almost noone pays serious attention to unless at risk of a tornado or hurricane)

In any case - the really funny thing is that these Turner employees accomplished their job, far beyond anyone's expectations. The amount of viral advertising unleased over this fiasco in enourmous and has reached not just to a few major city - but all across the nation. If on the chance that Turner intended this outcome all along - then they are goddamned marketing geniuses.

[HUnewearl_Meira]

My thought on this is that it doesn't go back to a police officer encountering one of these things; it goes back to idiot seeing somebody plant a device in plain sight and get into a van or whatever. That idiot freaked out, called 911, convinced that he'd just seen a bomb being planted. I sincerely hope he feels terribly stupid now. That's the person that needs to be getting sued for wasting public resources; not the business that didn't, in fact, do anything really out of place.

This happened because one, or maybe as many as a handful of paranoid idiots couldn't tell the difference between an unusual but harmless ad campaign, and a bomb. Excellent. The irony is that they actually added lights to the streets, in theory, making them safer (albeit, meaninglessly) in the dark.

Seems like a whole bunch of stupid, to me. Some idiot overreacts over the advertising for a piss-poor TV show, causing the police to jump ahead of themselves and overspend on a false alarm.

[Blitzkommando]

The delicious irony of it all is that Boston was one of 10 cities for the campaign. Granted it could've happened in any of them, but it didn't. Not only that, but the ads were in place for a couple of weeks before this started. I think someone was getting too many fumes from the Big Dig and decided to be Mr. Hero and panic the authorities. Watch out for those tossed out Lite-Brites! They're really bombs in disguise! Both sides are in the wrong, but when the ball went back into Boston's court they decided to attempt to save face by blowing it so out of proportion that it garnered world-wide attention. In the end Warner got better advertising out of it than they could have ever hoped for and Boston became the butt of the jokes for the next couple weeks.