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."

Comments

I always thought Spencer Tracey said that:

[Thud457]

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
-- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.

High school bluetoothing

[Nevtje(hr]

i remember when i was in high school, i would occasionally scan a room for other bluetooth receivers which had their port open, then create a contact whose name was what i wanted the message to be, ie "Boyaa Wazzap" or something. then i would send the contact, via bluetooth, to the detected phone. free, short-range SMS kinda :)

i know, not setting up sexual encounters... but still a fun use for bluetooth

Re:High school bluetoothing

[UWC]

I find it interesting how much regulation of wireless communications in schools has changed since I was in high school (1996-2000), when pagers and cell phones were officially considered "drug paraphernalia" and thus subject to confiscation if discovered (no active searches were performed, but there were morons who didn't turn theirs off during the day). Obviously most teachers enforcing it didn't actually assume that they were drug paraphernalia, but I witnessed several confiscations, mostly pagers at that point. Most teachers, I think, returned them at the end of the day.

I recall my family having a cell phone sometime in that period that was gigantic by today's standards, analog-only, and the display was a row of 7-segment characters and maybe 3 more LEDs to indicate service, roaming, etc.

Your point about Bluetooth's continued rarity in the US is valid and, to me, disappointing. It allows the service providers to be the ultimate arbiters of how data is transmitted to and from the phones. I'm one of few people I know that have Bluetooth (or even Infrared) enabled phone. Everyone else is apparently fine paying the disproportionately large transmission fees for picture and text messages. Just yesterday I purchased a USB Bluetooth dongle for my computer (Belkin 10-meter one on sale this week at CompUSA for $10 after some mail-in, $30 before that). What I've tried with it so far is much, much easier than the shaky and slow IR that I'd been using (infrequently because of the inconvenience) previously.

Re:a/s/l

[cooter1pt2]

Isn't that what you do in a club or bar? Or even, to a lesser extent, a house party? I doubt toothers would just accept blindly anyone who replied (say, if upon seeing them, they were a hideous, snaggle-toother beast). So in a way, yes, I can say I have engaged in that kind of risky behavior (avec condom). Wouldn't do it again, tho.

Happy Slapping

[PerlDudeXL]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hap py+slap

this is much worse. It never happend to me (I live on the continent) and I hope that it will never ever become popular here, but you can never trust those bored and ringtone-buying half-grownups.

Re:Here's what happened

[Cheirdal]

You obviously haven't been to the UK. I would say per capita London has more hotties than any U.S. city. On top of that the population over there is a lot more lean than us fat asses in the U.S. What really happened was that the news made the story up or greatly exagerrated the extent of "toothing" as they tend to do with tech stories.

Re:a/s/l

[happyemoticon]

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've not done this myself, and /. is not the best place for an honest discussion of sexuality by damn sight.

First: There is one criterion for hooking up: looks. Man, woman or otherwise, you know whether you'd screw person x within a half second of meeting them. Chatrooms are a waste of time. thefacebook.com and okcupid.com are a bit better because of the addition of pictures, but those can be faked or obfuscated and the whole process isn't immediate enough, which is key if you're looking to do impulsive.

Second: There is a reason this happened in England. Mainstream American women have tons of hangups about sex that British women simply do not.

Seriously, no matter how horny you are, you wouldn't simply jump on bed with anybody, would you?

This is an excellent example of my last point. Some people, especially women, only acknowledge three roles for women: the virgin, the mother and the slut. That's pretty sad. It's not about doing anybody, it's about finding someone mildly attractive who wants the same thing as you do, and it's more conveniant if you're a commuter than going to a bar.

Bluetooth Protocol

[__aaijsn7246]

Here's a little article from @Stake about Bluetooth, as well as some other insecurities.

I believe that even if the phone is in 'hidden' mode, on some models, one can still find a user's address by testing out every address. Redfang does that. This is brute force however and quite slow. In fact it could take up to a few years, as it takes about 20 seconds per address.

One thing I noticed while living in an apartment and playing with Bluetooth.. it is possible to tell when other people are in their homes or not. I was tempted to make a little app and compile statistics as to when/where people came and left, but then I remembered I wasn't the US federal government ;)

There are a bunch of other programs available to the Googler.

Shameless Self-Promotion

[DumbSwede]

I wrote a story in 1991 entitled "Mixed Signals" (about 40 pages) a cautionary near-future tail about people using PDA like devices to hook up in social settings. Although in my story the craze took off.

Should anyone care to read this (possibly amateurish) story, please leave a comment on the comment page (currently empty) if you give it a try.

There are adult themes in this story, so I don't know whether to state that as a disclaimer or inducement (probably both).

What about podjacking?

[Rimbo]

Another "craze" I read an article about in some magazine that hasn't happened to me, despite having an iPod for well over a year, wearing it visibly with a nearby university full of other ipod-wearing people, and having fine hygiene and none-too-shabby appearance. I haven't seen anyone else doing it, either, at the bus stop, on the train, on planes or anywhere.

Supposedly, a good-looking chick will go up to you, pull out her white headphone miniplug, and look at you expectantly. You're then supposed to remove your white headphone plug, put it into her ipod, while she does the same to yours, and you each enjoy the other's music for a time.

I was skeptical of the craze when I read about it over a year ago. The "craze" has been mentioned in other magazine articles. But I'm beginning to feel it was manufactured by magazine article writers who were desperate for something to write about.

Re:What happened?

[pclminion]

A couple of years ago, I ran into a couple of Brits in a backwoods cabin (the kind of place you snowshoe into with a fifth of good whiskey and an itching to have a good time). After we'd all had a bit too much to drink, I asked one of the Brits "So, what's the deal with all the joking about British oral hygiene?"

He looked at me a bit funny, as if he didn't know what I meant, and then said "What's with you Americans being so obsessed with how straight and white your teeth are?"

It suddenly dawned on me that perhaps it is WE (Americans) who are oddballs when it comes to our teeth. Most other people on the planet are happy just for the fact that they haven't fallen out yet. Here, people spend thousands of dollars on tooth-whitening regimens. People in other nations laugh at our stupidity.

Re:a/s/l

[ShieldW0lf]

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'.

I take it from your post that no one has ever done this to you? Hell, that's happened to me at the supermarket.

Although, truth be told, I brushed her off, so I suppose that makes me supporting evidence :P

Re:a/s/l ::: you have NO life

[ShieldW0lf]

seriously. If somebody unplugs the cable, youre dead.

What a pitty.

Whatever you say. Did you read my post? I don't do ALL my socializing on the internet. I don't say "hmm... it's friday night and the little one is at her moms... ah hell fuck the bar I'm just going to hang in a chat room". I just picked up a new phone number and a date for next week with a cute little redhead while returning movies to the video store an hour ago. If you're painting a picture in your head of some pasty-faced introverted hermit, you're way the fuck off base.

For a lot of people, particularly single parents like myself, there are a lot more hours in the week that they spend sitting at home choosing between tv, book and computer for how to spend the later part of their evening than there are hours spent hanging out in stereotypical social settings.

And the boundary between the two doesn't really exist. It's a fiction. Chat with someone in a local chat room and meet them for coffee half an hour later. Pick up a girl on the bus, find out she's engaged, chat with her when you're sick of working, meet someone else through her, take them out on Friday. Its a way of expanding your social envrionment, not a replacement.

Sounds to me like you're the one that needs to get a life instead of passing judgements on other peoples.