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Woman Killed In Wii-Related Competition
snuffin writes to tell us that a local radio competition to "hold your wee for a Wii" has ended with a Sacramento woman dead from water poisoning. From the article: "An Associated Press interview with another contestant, named James Ybarra, claimed that contestants were initially given eight ounce bottles of water to drink every fifteen minutes, with larger bottles being used once contestants began to drop out. According to Ybarra, 'They told us if you don't feel like you can do this, don't put your health at risk.' He described the victim as 'a nice lady' and that 'she was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for her kids.'"
They should've have the contestants hold their breath so it would be obvious when they turned blue that something was wrong. I don't think that would change the outcome of the contest.
Hilariously tragic?
You'll have to forgive him, our parent seems to be a member of the dreaded word police. His post is brought to you by the same group of assholes that thinks "if you change the name of the condition you change the condition."
We're not handicapped, we're hand-i-capable!
Either way a mother is dead over a plastic gadget and a stupid radio contest.
See George Carlin for more occurrences of this phenomenon.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
You're an asshole and should die
Please, you can still find Wii's. The lady sounds like she did it because, surprise surpise, it was free! Everyone likes to win stuff. There would have been a similar result if they offered an xbox 360 or anything else. Further more, Nintendo doesn't have anything to gain by making the Wii scarce. This isn't Debeers and Nintendo doesn't get any more money per unit because people are having a hard time finding it. The truth is that the Wii has been more successful than Nintendo imagined. If you cater to the lowest common denominator you're only going to lower the standard. I'm not talking about the down trodden, I'm talking about behavior. If you treat people like idiots then they will be idiots. It's silly to expect businesses to look for such far reaching effects. It costs too much. Besides do you think Nintendo should have had a think tank saying "ok, what if the Wii is widely succesfull and then its hard to get that a radio station has a competition to give one away. Then, what if that competition is to drink water without urninating. Imagine, what if one person drinks so much water that they actually overdose and die of the stuff. I don't think we should release the Wii because that risk is way too high!"
Mod me up, mod me down, do your worst you modding clown.
Drinking too much water is a non obvious danger. But the radio station is the one who should perform the due dilligance.
And this may be the currently accepted social expectation. That doesn't make it RIGHT, just the law, as it sits today. Why should the radio station be performing due dilligence?
Just because we happen to know that water can be dangerous doesn't mean other people do. And certainly expecting a mother of 3 doing a 'contest' that sounds like something fun and silly to expect any danger from the contest is unreasonable.
And I argue that expecting a radio station to know that doing a "Wee for Wii" contest (that sounds fun and silly) could result in a death is equally unreasonable.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that generally people, rightly or wrongly, trust people in charge. Think of the Milgram Experiment as an extreme example. Even though the objectives of the experiment are different, it shows the same underlying principle: people generally listen to people they think are athority figures. And in this case, the contest holders are the athority figures.
A tendency which is an unintended consequence to public education. I argue that public education indoctrinates this tendency in people. I see much more skepticism amongs home-schooled children.
Beyond the lawsuit, I would not be shocked to see criminal charges against the people who ran the contest. Their actions directly led to the death of another person.
Just because somebody died doesn't mean a crime was committed! If that were the case, doctors would go to jail anytime they tried their best, and honest accidents would never happen.
I really feel for the 3 kids in this family. But I don't believe in a society and culture that expects my ass to be wiped from birth to death. My life is my own, thank you!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
"Person does something, dies." darwinaward!!!
Slashdotters are fucking assholes.
(Slashtotter points out that other Slashdotters are fucking assholes, get's modded Troll)
Property is theft.
Water never hurt anyone before they started putting flouride in it! This is just more proof that the Communists are still alive and well and are still plotting our destruction! We must protect our purity of essence!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?