It’s satire, people – not a call for anarchy
You know that it is dangerous to broadcast exactly where you are over the World Wide Web, right? Let’s set aside the ways in which the powers that be monitor us every day. I’m talking about revealing your location to complete strangers so that they can track you, a la Cornel Wilde in “The Naked Prey.” It isn’t the best idea in the world, because at the very least, if people know where you live and that you aren’t home, they can come claim your stuff. “Please rob me” is what the Paris Hiltons and Tila Tequilas of the world are saying when they tweet exactly where they are at any given time. It’s a potential pay day for the unscrupulous savvy.
Please Rob Me? What a concept
Boy Van Amstel took those three little words to heart, placed his tongue firmly in cheek and started his mashup site entitled – wait for it – Please Rob Me. He told the BBC that “It started with me and a friend looking at our Twitter feeds and seeing more and more Foursquare posts.” For those of you who don’t know, Foursquare is an online game where participants reveal their location in the real world, which is plotted on a map. Twitter is, of course, a ubiquitous microblogging platform where many people tweet anything that crosses their minds.
Please Rob Me mixes these features with social commentary
There’s satire afoot here. Please Rob Me doesn’t encourage theft or related illegal activity. I don’t, either. But I think skewering the way people tweet is juicy.
“The Web site is not a tool for burglary,” Van Amstel told the BBC. “The point we’re getting at is that not long ago it was questionable to share your full name on the internet. We’ve gone past that point by 1,000 miles.” Van Amstel also claims that actually using information on Please Rob Me to burglar someone’s abode would be “very difficult.” No easy pay day here.
Twitter shut down the PleaseRobMe account
Yet the site rolls on. PC Magazine writes that Twitter turned out the lights due to what they considered to be “suspicious activity.” I think that Twitter doesn’t have a sense of humor.
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Not enough people will understand exactly what certain sites are about. I like the idea of PleaseRobMe. A friend of mine came home to find someone had thrown a party at his house after he told facebook he was away all weekend.