Today in people who can fuck right off in the direction of hell and hopefully choke on a party-sized bag of dicks on their way if good fortune is smiling on the rest of us: Everyone complaining about getting Amber Alerts on their phones yesterday.
The Ontario Provincial Police had issued the alert for a missing eight-year-old boy in the Thunder Bay region. (The boy has since been found safe.)
But gripes about the system soon began to pour in. Kingston police said they received “several complaints” regarding the Amber Alert notice. On social media, people startled by the alerts complained about the number of alerts they received and that they had received separate alerts in English and French.
That's enough. Four Alert Ready alarms ( 2 ea. Eng. & Fr) for an issue hundreds of miles away. Are alerts for Kathmandu next? I want out. I'll take my chances when there is an emergency that is geographically relevant. #alertready
— ⚛ Rob 🌻 Mellow ☢ (@RobMellow1) May 14, 2018
“Sooo, is that emergency alert going to happen at like 4 a.m. with sleep mode enabled? Just asking for my heart health,” tweeted James G.
Meanwhile, others who were located far from the incident felt that receiving the alert was pointless.
“I’ve received two Amber Alerts today for Thunder Bay, which is 15 hours away from Toronto by car,” tweeted Molly Sauter. “Congrats, you have trained me to ignore Emergency Alerts.”
Is the system perfect? No. I didn’t need three notifications not including the he’s been found message yesterday when the kid went missing. Clearly, between that and all of the test failures, there are some bugs to work out.
Is the sound frightening? Sure is. Scared the hell out of me, it did. But that’s kind of the point.
Is Thunder Bay anywhere near me? No. But because I understand how an airplane works and also that people are capable of moving in both directions and might somehow meet in the middle, I don’t care. Like I said the last time we talked about this, if that was your kid, you’d want that alert going out far and wide. Don’t even try telling me any different, because you’re lying.
Nobody wants to be woken from a much needed sleep or to jump so hard that they spill their damn Starbucks on themselves. I get it. But one thing about this life is that it’s not all about you all of the time. You being inconvenienced for a few seconds doesn’t even register on the importance scale compared to getting the word out to as many people as possible when lives could literally be on the line. We’re humans, and as such, we’re always going to bitch about stupid crap. Sometimes it’s fun and even therapeutic. But seriously, we all need to resolve to stop whining about the loud somebody can’t find their kid noise. The world could do with a few less assholes.
For a second I thought that maybe us getting an Amber alert about Thunder Bay was a bug, but then I thought about it and realized that getting an Amber alert about Thunder Bay was perfectly reasonable…it would only be a bug if we got weather alerts for Thunder Bay. I did think it was weird that when my phone was muted, the alert didn’t even show up. The only reason I knew there was another alert was I heard someone else’s phone furiously neenooing nearby.
Oh yeah. If people want to complain about weather warnings for places they’re not in, I’ll listen to that. But I’ll also make some time for the case that you might be there soon or that people from elsewhere need those alerts in case they have family there that they need to check on. It’s not a strong case and I doubt I’d die on that hill, but someone could try.
And it’s super strange that your phone didn’t vibrate or anything when it was on mute. They say the noise doesn’t go off, but you should still be getting the information, I’d hope.
Yeah that’s what I was hoping for. I mean, you still know your phone is ringing while the phone is on mute.