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Disney Bans Selfie Sticks
New submitter albimaturityr writes with a story from the Orlando Sentinel that Disney is banning selfie sticks from its parks, starting with Disney World (as of Tuesday) but continuing with its other parks in California, Paris, and Hong Kong. Says the report: The issue has been building at Disney. Previously, the sticks were prohibited from its rides, and "no selfie-sticks" signs were at select rides, such as Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Magic Kingdom. Cast members have given verbal warnings to rule breakers.
Several incidents preceded the change, but officials have been discussing the rules for some time, Disney said. This week at Disney California Adventure park, a roller coaster was halted after a passenger pulled out a selfie-stick. The ride was closed for an hour.
You're in a world where everyone is constantly being told to do whatever the fuck they want, and everyone else is told to deal with it. People smoke while leaning on no-smoking signs, people drive through streets clearly labeled as private streets, people scream in libraries, yap on their phones in theaters, and take flash pictures in zoos scaring the animals away and there is fuck all reasonable people can do about it.
So now you have a rule in an amusement park that some idiots don't think apply to them (as usual), and its actually really important. You think they'll get it, after being able to ignore every other fucking rule they were ever subject to?
No, they won't. They'll treat the "No selfie stick sign" the same way they will every other damn sign they ignored.
Selfie sticks are, at best, narcissistic nonsense, but the person who whipped one out on a rollercoaster was risking injury to himself and his fellow riders. How much of a grip can you have on a stick with a weight on the end while hurtling through twists and turns? And if you lose your grip, the best case scenario is that your phone falls and shatters below. Worst case scenario is it hits into someone and injures them. All because he "needed" to get a photo of himself.
Great work on Disney's part shuttig down the ride until that selfie stick was confiscated.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The kind of shallow, vain, social media obsessed person who carries around a damned selfie stick in the first place?
This isn't people thinking "gee, this could be stupid and dangerous", it's people thinking "I'm so putting this on Instagram".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There's good reason to be skeptical of rules. Too often, rules are not honest. The usual tactic is to not give any explanation. When that won't fly, safety is the #1 excuse for a rule. But so often, it turns out that someone profits from a rule, and that is the real reason for it. Even when there are genuine safety concerns, there is often also a profit motive. That seems highly likely with this particular Disney rule. Why couldn't people use electronic devices or carry nail clippers on planes? Why did so many cities try red light cameras? Why can't people bring their own food and drink to the movie theaters? Why can't we play movies on our computers' DVD drives?
Yeah. Don't blindly trust The Rules.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Of course. But instead we're in a world of "blindly distrust the rules". And that is just as stupid. (also, in a lot of the cases you mentioned, its a private entity dictating what to do on their own property, which they're fully allowed to)
... but what kind of idiot waves a pole around when moving at nontrivial speed near walls,...
There are many, many people ion this planet who are so self-absorbed, so oblivious to the world around them, that they regularly put others at risk.
.
At least those who walk into streetlight poles while texting hurt only themselves.
That is a problem. With so many unjustified rules around, they become background noise. Then a rule that has a very good justification gets ignored.