July 29, 2004

• I'm looking forward to the vid of them getting their asses roundly kicked by someone who doesn't like having their expensive phone smashed by a couple of prodigious assholes.
• i have a sympathetic ear for a lot of civil disobediance, but this is just wrong. i wouldn't have a problem if these guys walked around in those suits having loud conversations with each other from across the street (makes the point that private/public conversations can be obnoxious but nobody gets hurt), but the videos show them violating people and it makes me kind of sick. nobody deserves to be accosted like that, and certainly not for so slight an offense as talking on the street.
• Little snots.
• I'm about 90% certain this is fake. I seem to remember seeing this site before and it hasn't been updated since June 27, 2002 acording to the server, so regardless they aren't active any more (or at least aren't posting new clips).
• I'd support that site fully and buy all their gear if they went after people who careen through traffic recklessly while dialing/talking on the phone. That's just a notch below DWI.
• A few weeks ago I had my car window smashed and my cell phone stolen out of the car. I don't really see the difference between what happened to my car and what happened to these people, except that my insurance paid for the damage while these folks are out of luck. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you get to smash it (or else I have a lot of aggression to take out on those escalator standers).
• I would take off after one of them, and beat the shit out of him. THAT IS NOT COOL. I mean, hello? cell phones aren't exactly cheap, plus, just the fact that they're like invading people's space and stuff. O no baby, I will take off after one of them and he'll be real sorry that he ever touched me. They'll name it "the grab that went terribly wrong"...
• f@ck this stupid anti-cellphone shit. I talk on my phone all the time while driving and I am perfectly safe. It's idiotic when people say we need a specific law about it. There is already a law called "reckless driving" where a cop can stop you cany time he thinks you are being unsafe. Cops have more then enough power to stop us any time they damn well please. Do we need a specific law against changing the radio stations? talking to passengers? etc etc things I'm sure cause far far far more accidents. I have never seen any hard stats on how many accidents cell phones cause, if any. Just a lot of distortions, like an accident being "cell phone related" - which probably means there was a phone in the car when a guy was going 100mph drunk the wrong way on the freeway. Yes people on phones can be annoying in some situations- it's called RUDENESS- Dont blame the technology. People need to ask themselves why they let this make them so angry, then either move to Amish country or seek professional help.
• Previously posted in this thread here.
• Yes, it sucks so much that people talk when they're out in public. Of course, it's probably fake, anyway. They are British. Is there some kind of British irony thing we're not picking up on?
• also I didnt watch it, but I saw the note it is quicktime. I am not a very tough person but I bet I can kick the crap out of anyone who goes around encoding movies in quicktime.
• def. another thing, is that most of the cell phone related accidents have very little to do with the dexterity required to multitask (talk and drive and the same time) but more with the attention that's being paid to the road.
• Some jamming device that prevents phone usage around it, as a 'silence bubble' against rude people shouting without respect to others. That would be cool. But vandalism is just stupid.
• I suppose I'm making myself a tomato-magnet by saying this, but this site is an old favorite of mine, I love it, I think what they do is hilarious, and though, minor personal property is destroyed in the process, and yes this is a crime, these guys do it and document it in a way that creates a commentary on our culture and its move toward zero-privacy and the ubiquitous ability to be elsewhere wherever you go, via the cell phone. Not every aspect of the integration of cell phones into our culture is positive. But look, here we are, having a conversation about it, thanks to a couple of weird guys who undertook this subversive activism, aka "vandalism." If they get arrested, I won't protest. I hope they'd just serve their sentence and be done with it. Meanwhile, have a sense of humor, folks. 5 people getting their cell phones busted in a prank is a waste of righteous indignation.
• "Hey, scarabic! I set your car on fire as an act of subversive activism! That'll show those wicked oil companies!" No. Vandalism is not a valid form of protest. Vandalism is theft. Let them beg or buy the phone, then immolate it on webcam. That way they aren't injuring anybody.
• I'm with Scarabic. "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." -Mel Brooks This, my friends, is comedy gold. As activism, it's weak, undoubtedly. As hooliganism, it's hilarious. (And after watching 'AbFab', I was beginning to think the British had no concept of humor...)
• Knobheads. Do you know one thing that annoys me more than people talking loudly on mobile phones? People who have a problem with people talking on mobile phones. Twunts, the lot of them. How the fact that you can't see the other person in the conversation somehow renders the conversation an obnoxious imposition on all around escapes me, I must say. minor personal property Huh? Or, an expensive and vitally important piece of personal property that's both an aid to greater socialbility and essential to so many businesses (and may well often contain the only record you have of important contact details)? I haven't used a personal landline in several years. My mobile's the only way lots of people can contact me. What's wrong with that?
• this reminds me of the stupid pricks who video tape themselves date raping a woman and then post the video to the web to celebrate their conquest. nice of them to provide information to guarantee their conviction. As a protest, this is asinine. Destroying public property is a crime. It's not a joke. Create a solution; destroying phones will do nothing to advance any cause. Your right to protest ends where my personal space/property begins. And, btw, yes, I do think cellphones are becoming way too ubiquitous, but passing off a criminal act as humor is a shitty cop-out.
• It's a complete scam...WHOIS record shows the phonebusters site owned by Virgin (for 5 years). So we get tricked into adding to the buzz for "Virgin Records, the record label behind Solid Gold Chart Busters" ....This is what the net has become... it's very exsistance polluted by marketing people trying to vacuum money out of our pockets. No better then 35 year old men pretending to be someone else, so they can meet 15 year old girls. Hey, Big Business, if you got something you think I want, then come out in the open like a (hu)man and sell it to me straight. If I don't like it, make a better one, don't lie and cheat instead. /tired of the flotsam and jetsam of the web...
• God, do all of you take yourselves so fucking seriously? I mean, I guess it comes with the territory for people who use words like "twunts" and confuse public property (parks, subways) with private property (cell phones, etc.), but c'mon. It's a naff goof. Relax, unclench those sphincters, and admit to seeing a little humor in fucking with someone else for no good reason. (And the fact that it's fake should send all of you self-righteous pontificators back to muttering about the evils of Eminem or some other such whipping horse for the humorless).
• Virgin Records, the record label behind Solid Gold Chart Busters, have launched a site. [...] DAMN IT... I've been slimed. Somewhere, the ghost of Buddy Lee is laughing at me.
• I've never heard the term "naff goof," but I like it. Also, seeing someone fucking with someone else for no good reason has always made me uncomfortable. I much prefer seeing people fucked with for being assholes.
• Eh. It's always preferable to see people get their comeupance, but it's also good to see complacency challenged. And that often means fucking with them for no good reason. While this rides the line, the amount of hand-wringing is just masturbatory.
• Well, as long as your fuckers don't mind getting fucked right back, no problem. Please let me know if they're prefer abrasions or contusions.
• Goetter, are you attempting snark? You know, a sense of humor is required for properly realized snark. Perhaps you should stick to spite.
• I don't need a fucking sense of humor, you oily archer-than-thou parasite. I am literal beyond your wildest, hottest fantasies. I am also cranky as hell right now, and so really not fit company for man or monkey. As is no doubt obvious....
• And now a flame attempt? Oh, Goiter, how ever will I recover from your burning passion? If you're cranky, and can't seem to find humor in either the FPP or in your own attempts at snark, maybe you should just lie down for a while and avoid the big bad internet.
• The only snarking taking place here is from you, scribbler-boy. Keep it up. I'm sure that you're setting some sort of local record. I'll keep looking for my missing sense of humor. A nap wouldn't help in this case, but a run might.
• y'all can just stop it any minute now.
• What the hell's wrong with the word "twunt"? Would have made any difference if I'd used the word "fuckwit"? As it happens, my comments are directed not just at these supposed protestors (not surprised to find out it's was a sham, btw), but at the lazy, complacent, self-righteous humour of people who bitch about mobile phones. It's become such a dull, uninventive way of supposedly setting yourself apart from all this nasty modern, mainstream, consumer-culture stuff you're not supposed to like. Do you know what I think when I hear some loud, obnoxious tosser braying into his mobile? I thank the sweet, sweet Lord that the loud, obnoxious friend he's talking to isn't there as well. The mobile phone is an absolutely fucking genius device for halving the number of loud, obnoxious shits it's my misfortune to hear bleating about their mortgage or their genitals every day. And guess what? With the advance of text messaging, I don't even have to hear their appalling air-raid-siren voices, and I can instead imagine that they're writing delicate and emotive haiku to a Belgian conceptual artist, as opposed to telling Kevin how big that girls breasts were last night, which is what they're inevitably doing. And all those people who hiss and tut and roll their eyes and make stabbing motions with pens when somebody has the fucking audacity to talk to somebody who isn't right next to them, you know what? They're exactly the same pricks who whine about how nobody ever really talks any more and how email has killed the art of conversation. This is the art of conversation, you fucking morons! Turns out you don't actually like the art of conversation either, do you? In fact, what you actually hate is people, you just haven't got the guts to come out and admit it or to put a figure on it like "I hate 99.32% of the world's population". I hate 99.32% of the world's population, but despite myself I must admit I'm rather fond of the rest. And there, I find, the mobile phone is a wonderful way of enabling spontaneous acts of friendship. No longer do we have to limit ourselves to dull, rigid imitations of fondness as we trudge through horrendous evenings that seemed like such a good idea when we wrote them in our diaries two weeks ago when our mood was slightly less black and choleric than it is tonight. Now we can be free, we can act on the spur of the moment, we can drink ourselves into blessed peaceful oblivion with whoever we want, wherever we want, whenever we want. Also, when we overhear some utter cock on his mobile phone planning an evening of vomiting and fights, we can pay close attention to the suggested venue and then avoid it like anthrax. Bonus! So to all those people who think that slagging off mobile phones marks them out as anything other than a brain-dead zombie creature, wheeling out on a strict rota these petty satires on the world they help prop up; and to all those who believe that lumpen idiocy is the only form of comedy; to all those twunts who don't like the word "twunt", I say this - if you think the pathetic, unimaginative, soulless fucknuts who dream up these kind of stunts can teach me anything about bleak, angry, misanthropic humour, then I WILL HUNT DOWN YOUR FAMILIES and make them fall in love with me. Then you'll be fucking sorry. Beyond that, I have nothing further to say, other than to express my desire that everybody involved in the creation and maintainence of this website die within the next few years of hair cancer. That is all.
• I've said it before I really do like it when flashboy gets angry
• Also, the word twunt is a fucking abomination.
• I bet Banksy doesn't like mobile phones either :-)
• I expect he's spray painted a devastating, if rather empty and meaningless, diatribe against them on a bridge in shoreditch somewhere.
• flashboy: Do you know one thing that annoys me more than people talking loudly on mobile phones? People who have a problem with people talking on mobile phones. This is a(nother) comment that makes me think - I really can't wait to meet this excellent flashboy individual at our London MoFi meetup!
• Yeah - when is that happening? I'm still convinced the intriguingly anonymous mr. quidnunc's going to turn out to be my flatmate, or my mother, or something. Oh, and I'm really boring when I don't have time to draft and redraft what I'm saying... :-)
• The quidnunc kid is actually Jesus
• Dude, I'm sooooo way bigger than that. *pulls out guitar, plays "Love Me Do"*
• You're Robbie Williams?
• You do realise you're overrated, don't you?
• WHOIS record shows the phonebusters site owned by Virgin I wonderif Virgin Mobile know anything about this... (probably completely unrelated companies by now)
• I'm just saying ... London meet up, perfect chance to form that boy band we been talkin 'bout ...
• Can I be Jason Orange?
• Gonna fingerbang-bang you into my life! dng you like to fingerbang an' that's alright! /southpark
• Can I be Agent Orange?
• dng = jason orange flash = agent orange quid = duck a l'orange OK - we need two more citruses ...
• Quidnunc is not the only Fruit.
• Musically I'm a lemon.
• One of y'all should be D.J. Orange Krush.
• flashboy, that was utterly brilliant. Both in substance and in tone, it is a joy to behold. Thank you.
• Flashboy. I'm gonna print that and put it on a frame over my cubicle. Nice manifesto.
• I had a dream last night that my friend was married to Robbie Williams (and I don't even know what the guy looks like or who he is really, I've just heard him mentioned here or there on Mil's site or when watching Johnny English.. ANYWAY) and it was surreal because we got into an argument about how *Madonna* was actually married to him and my friend was actually stalking him. It was so weird. Also, Thank. You. Flashboy. You can come make my family fall in love with you any time. And while you're at it, maybe you could get them to stop calling so much.
• Flashboy- Really? This link was worth all that bile? Fuck that. I'm glad that you have something to get your panties in a twist about, so you won't have to do it manually, but Jesus. It was a vaguely amusing naff goof from a couple years ago. Just as tiresome as people railing against mobiles are people who try to make their misanthropic rage into a rallying cry.
• flashboy a misanthrope? could you have misinterpreted his comment any more?
• Coming from someone who'd called me "humourless" scant hours before I wrote that, I'm surprised you didn't notice that I was exaggerating for comic effect. Lordy. Do you really think I hate 99.32% of people? It's more like 97.6%
• Hating 99.32% of the world's population might qualify him as misanthropic, don'tchathink?
• Yes, of course js. That was clearly an accurate percentage. He actually paid an actuary to work it out for him. Well done.
• And js, I think you've been the only one acting like a cunt in this thread. Maybe you should try cutting out the condescension and sneering while your here. Its more than a little tiring.
• And furthermore js, YOU'RE OUT OF THE BOY BAND!!!
• Its more than a little tiring. What else is it, dng? I think js may have mistaken this site for that other *Filter.
• So, js, is there anything you don't find tiresome? I'll make a note.
• Don't disturb the professor [youtube] Throws #3717 on #3717