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Serious DumbFucks Are Not Qualified to Use Smartphones

Asterix

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
How stupid and smartphones go together in Hong Kong

Much as I hate to admit it, having never jumped on the bandwagon to admire all things South Korean, from assembly-line pop music and soppy soap operas to clone plastic surgery, cities like Seoul can still teach Hong Kong a thing or two.

This week, the South Korean capital launched a safety campaign for mobile phone zombies – those selfish, civically challenged individuals who shuffle around with their noses buried in the personal pacifiers that were once useful for making and taking calls.

Enough of Hong Kong’s mobile phone zombie menaces to society

Every pocket of civilisation on this planet has its share of this socially stunted species who create a public nuisance by impeding the flow of humanity. They’re a danger to themselves – which is fine by me, knock yourself out – but also to others as they cross streets, step on and off escalators, and board and alight from trains and buses with their faces glued to glowing touch screens.

South Korea is doing something about the fact that collisions between zombies and vehicles in the country have more than doubled in five years to around 1,000 reported cases in 2014.

Seoul, one of the world’s most wired cities and the capital of a country with a smartphone penetration rate of around 80 per cent of the population, has started putting up hundreds of warning signs. City officials are targeting black spots with the highest number of young pedestrians, having identified smartphone users in their teens to their 30s as the problem demographic.

Warning signs will not only be displayed on traffic light poles but also plastered on actual pavements because smartphone and stupid usually go together and the zombies couldn’t even be bothered to look up from their texting/tweeting/gaming/posting/surfing.

Seoul is hogging all the limelight at the moment, but what many have forgotten is that the southwestern Chinese metropolis of Chongqing ( 重慶 ) was the first to do something like this. It tried out a 50-metre stretch of pavement divided, tongue in cheek, into two lanes – one prohibiting mobile phone zombies and the other letting them be jerks at their own risk.

I’ve written about this problem in Hong Kong before, as have many others, but I see no effort to seek a solution. Unlike in Seoul, Hong Kong authorities keep no statistics of accidents caused by zombies and they’re way too passive and bureaucratic to try anything creative to tackle the issue.

In any case, I don’t think warning signs will work in Hong Kong. Our zombies are beyond redemption. They don’t need a gentle reminder; they need Ash Williams, the one-armed chainsaw-wielding protagonist of the Evil Dead franchise teaching them the lesson of their lives.

[video=youtube;yooamJf-T_8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yooamJf-T_8[/video]

But seriously, let me break it down for you: if you absolutely must use your smartphone to “share” every mundane moment in your life on Facebook/Instagram, or watch the latest Korean drama dubbed in Chinese, or play Candy Crush, all in the middle of a moving crowd in this stressed-out city of ours, just pull over to the side and do it. It’s that simple.

If you feel it’s your divine right under the Basic Law to not have to give a damn, then consider yourself lucky that we have the rule of law here and you’re safe from the beat down you so richly deserve.

I have an idle fantasy about Hong Kong’s mobile phone zombies: they’re all lined up, thousands of them, and plunging off the top of Lion Rock one after another like so many lemmings; I’m helping them on the way down with my steel-toed work boots.

Who knows, dreams can come true. Until then, I’ll be a responsible citizen with my own smartphone and practise safe text.

http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight...-stupid-and-smartphones-go-together-hong-kong
 
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Asterix

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Warning: stupidity virus coming to Hong Kong with Pokemon Go

You must have heard of the “stupidity virus”.

Media reports a couple of years ago claimed that American scientists had discovered a pernicious, submicroscopic agent known to attack human DNA and impair intelligence and memory.

Turns out a bunch of dumb journalists – or jaded hacks refusing to let the facts get in the way of a good hook – had got it wrong. What scientists actually found was a minor correlation between a throat virus infecting a small sample base of people and their performance in a couple of cognitive tests.

But that was then. These days you don’t have to be brighter than a 10-watt bulb to figure out that the virus not only exists, it latches on to social and political events to spread a rolling pandemic that has reduced entire national populations to masses of sheeple.

The world has watched them plunging off the clueless cliff like so many lemmings during the UK’s Brexit vote, and there’s more headshaking in disbelief to come as they get ready to elect Donald Trump as the next US president.

And now they’re all playing Pokemon Go, the latest gaming iteration of Nintendo’s suddenly rejuvenated “pocket monster” cartoon characters. Its clever use of augmented reality on a smartphone platform appears to have tapped into the “social” centre of the human brain, making people go ape for the app.

In a nutshell, the game encourages you to wander around the real world looking for cute little monsters which can be spotted and captured using your phone’s GPS and camera functions. It’s essentially a virtual treasure hunt.

Pokemon Go has only been out for a few days in select countries, and they’re already reporting all kinds of silly accidents and even opportunistic crimes.

In the US, test ground zero for puerile pastimes, it’s not only a matter of pedestrians wandering into lamp poles and oncoming traffic but also drivers playing the game behind the wheel, which takes the danger factor to a whole new level of idiocy.

Several teenagers have been arrested for using the game to lure victims into secluded areas and rob them at gunpoint. Some are calling it the world’s most dangerous game and have suggested that unsuspecting children might find paedophiles instead of Pokemon waiting for them at the end of their treasure hunt. Just imagine that.

There are no limits to Pokemon-related ridiculousness, as one Australian expatriate working in Singapore demonstrated by posting a foul-mouthed tirade against the city state online because he was so irate at the game being released only in the United States, Australia and New Zealand for now. A public backlash prompted his company to sack him.

Which brings me to the main point: releasing this game in Hong Kong is a bad, bad idea. Seriously.

We already have a severe problem with smartphone zombies in this crowded, fast-moving, stressed-out city. They’re everywhere, those incorrigible anti-socials with their faces buried in their electronic pacifiers, getting in everyone’s way.

I have often entertained dark thoughts when finding my way blocked by smartphone zombies while navigating busy streets, getting on and off escalators, and boarding and alighting from trains.

Now that they’re going to be playing Pokemon to boot, I can’t help thinking back to that seminal golfing scene in the 1993 film Falling Down.

Michael Douglas, as the protagonist having the ultimate bad day, stands over an elderly golfer dying of a heart attack after their confrontation and says: “And you’re gonna die, wearing that stupid hat. How does it feel?”

http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight...g-stupidity-virus-coming-hong-kong-pokemon-go

[video=youtube;x1-axqBZdNk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1-axqBZdNk[/video]
 
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