Slashdot Mirror
What Ever Happened to 'Toothing'?
Jim Hanas excertps from his very funny article on the quiet disappearance of last-year's promised digital bacchanal. "Remember 'toothing'? It was a craze that was sweeping England last year as bored commuters arranged sexual encounters using Bluetooth-enabled cellphones. You probably read about it over at Wired or Reuters or the BBC. There's a decent chance you even blogged about it. Well. What happened?" Update: 04/05 00:10 GMT by T : Hanas writes with a followup: "The original source on the whole toothing thing has just admitted it was a hoax -- in response to my email and your picking up of my post."
Those who read about it, never blogged about it.
Those who blogged about it, never read about it.
Those who remember it, were too busy to either read about it or blog about it.
Being a geek, I'm kind of amazed I even wasted the time to read about it.
it probably never happened in the first place. methinks it goes something like this- joe reporter has a deadline to make, and nothing to write about. needs something sensational, turns to his fantasies, and voila! toothing!
so deep don't even bother looking for it...if you're worthy it'll find you :D
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
(and i even go to a Catholic College)
Well, duh. Give girls a lifetime of sexual repression and two beers and the rest takes care of itself. I find that the less repressed they are, the better they control their urges.
bance.net
I mean really it almost sounds like a Penthouse letter. It just might be that it was all made up. Of course that is impossible. I mean the press checks their facts right?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I think I am just getting to the age where I understand what "generation gap" means. I know what bluetooth (my Palm has it), and I get the principle behind what you were doing. And I even once went to high school. But if I got a message that said "Boyaa Wazzap", I would have have no idea what to make of it.
What happened is that somebody came up with a clever marketing ploy to push their bluetooth enabled technology. Like many "fads" reported in the media, they are fabricated via croney deals to serve marketing purposes and have nothing to do with real news or trends.
Posting at blogs site to arrange sexual encounters. Yeah, that sounds like a winner. That's what pretty women do, scour the internet in their basements looking for their next romantic fling instead just going to a club. No, we've been avoiding it but we have hit gym, attend dance classes, and (gasp!!!) initiate a conversation with a strange girl.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
is fags, because it's 2 horny blokes. 99.9999% of women just won't go for this.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
And finding partners for sex using bluetooth mobile is as productive as asking a/s/l on IRC channels, or Mrs Gump's box of chocolate.
I met my ex wife of 5 years asking ASL in an IRC chat. She is also the mother of my child.
I also meet most of my dates and yes sexual partners in chat rooms. Not because I don't go out, I do, but there are more nights at home than nights at the bar, and chatting and flirting are more fun and more social than watching television.
No matter how horny you are, you wouldn't just jump into bed with anybody, would you?
Which would you prefer, to jump into bed with a hunk you met at the bar and had some chemistry with, only to find out later that he's a selfish, obsessive, jealous boar who doesn't like to go down, or to jump into bed with someone who is compatible with you in their values and interests and quirks, who shares your likes and dislikes where sex and relationships are concerned, but is on the attractive side of plain. Because when people meet through chatting, when they actually meet face to face they can see pretty quickly if the person is a no-go in the physical department and call it off at the eleventh hour, while the bar-goer generally probably won't find out until it's too late.
Looking back, I had more fun with the plain jane lookalikes who caught my attention because they were my kind of lighthearted kinky in the bedroom that with the look-at-me gorgeous women I've brought home from the bar only to find out that they were plain boring in bed.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Is it possible -- not a fact, necessarily, but possible -- that people who use their phones to successfully hook up in this fashion are doing so as one of many how-do-I-meet-strangers-for-a-shag tools in their arsenal...and that, like many other tools used as conversation starters in bars and whatnot, people successfully using it have no time nor need to spend time talking about it online?
Or, in other words, just because it doesn't exist online doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Or more to the point, they're probably someone who feels reasonably confident that, if they want to get laid, they can do in the short to medium term. If someone is a lot less sure when (or if) they'll get another off, I think they're a helluva lot less likely to be in any way picky.
/. users get.
Losing track of my point here. Mostly, I think people who do have something resembling a regular/normal sex life might not realise just how desperate a small but vocal minority of
I'm giving up now, taking the karma bonus off, and hoping this isn't too much babblage.
I don't think that particular bit of stupidity is what the rest of the world is thinking of when they laugh at us. ;)
I think you yankee types are have fallen for the British sense of humour. Toothing was a wind up from the beginning. If you think about it toothing pretty much amounts to going up to a stranger and saying 'wanna fuck'.
This does not work too well in email, why would it work better over bluetooth? Plus you have the problem that if this is going to work for the heterosexual crowd you need to attract opposite sexes for it to work.
Think for a moment how many phones would have to be bluetooth enabled for this to work, plus think of the number of folk who would be receiving (and complaining about) the solicitations.
That said, the UK is way less uptight than the US. Prostition is effectively legal and there is a public sex scene known as dogging.
The kernel of truth in this hoax is that bluetooth does provide an additional medium to chat someone up that you might not otherwise talk to. I doubt that sending a message 'U wanna fuck me?' would be optimally effective as a conversation starter but you could easily imagine starting off with chat and ending up with a quickie.
Of course none of this would work in the US because trains are not exactly a common mode of transportation.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Do you consider that relationship to have been a permanent one that failed early, or a transitory one that lasted longer than normal?
Very interesting question!