I made the bad choice to trust my high school girlfriend. I sure don't blame myself for trusting someone I had known for over a year and had been friends with for the entirety of that time, who had never done me wrong. That didn't stop her from drugging me and taking advantage, though.
I do, however, recognize, that, had I gotten my own drink (it was freakin' kool-aid) and kept it in hand and in view, she could not have done what she did. I didn't cause it, but I sure could have prevented it.
I walk away from my drinks all the time, actually. If my wife wanted to drug me, she has much better ways to do so, and if my friends want to do it, they'll find a way. I'm not a part of the club scene, so I don't have to worry about it happening there; when I was, my mother was the bartender, so I may have picked up a few pointers from her, as well. And you're clearly not a psychiatrist (and certainly not mine), so let's not go giving medical advice, okay?
No downsides? Has it become normally socially acceptable for a male to wear nail polish now? No? There's a downside, then. Get your own drinks, keep them in hand and in sight, and live your life.
As for the efficacy of the nail polish, how long do you think it will take for someone to come up with another drug that it doesn't detect? Here's a hint: they already exist. Only, now, women using this product are going to be more easily fooled into thinking they're safe.
No, having learned from my experience, I employ other mitigation tactics. Those tactics (get your own drinks - even if someone else is buying, be present at the bar, watch the bartender make the drink, and take the drink directly from the bartender - for starters, then, keep the drink in hand and in view; really simple shit) are also available to women and I strongly encourage their use.
Sample size of one, I know, but I've been raped by someone I knew and trusted, never been raped by a stranger. I'm also a male who's been drugged and raped by a female, but that's probably also a statistical anomaly, right?
Let me preface my response with the following: I'm speaking as a victim, here. A victim who learned a valuable lesson about personaly responsibility.
No, he wants to live in a world where people take responsibility for their own safety. Knowing that rapists are out there, and knowing that keeping your drink in hand at and in view at all times is a simple and effective preventative measure, it is irresponsible not to take that simple measure.
Hell, a girl I was dating brought me a drugged drink when I was 17; it wasn't even alcohol and we weren't even at a club, it was kool-aid and we were at someone's house, babysitting their 3 kids. I learned, then, that you get your own drinks and keep them in hand and in view at all times, even around people you trust. It's not your fault if you get raped if you don't do that (of course, the rapist made the decision to rape) but it is your fault you didn't at least take steps to prevent it (you made the decision not to).
I don't blame myself for the girl's actions; after all, I didn't drug my own drink, she did. And I didn't rape myself after I passed out, she did. I don't even blame myself for trusting her; I had known her for over a year at that point and she had always been good to me. Hell, she wouldn't even have had to rape me, I was willing, so the thought never even crossed my mind. I let my guard down, and I do blame myself for that; but, at the same time, life isn't worth living if you don't let people in at some point. So, instead of becoming a woman-hating shut-in, I considered what I could have done differently to prevent it from happening, and I learned from it. In case you haven't absorbed the information by now, that is to get my own drinks and keep them in hand and in view; that allows you to still trust people, until they give you a reason not to, while allowing you to quickly and easily see that you have reason not to trust that particular person *before* something bad happens.
It's not perfect, bad shit can and will still happen, but by taking mitigating steps, at least you've prevented one form of bad shit. Really, the same reason you lock your doors, despite the fact that a criminal can just break a window.
Right, and roofies don't work on men, either, which is why I didn't bother reporting when it happened to me. Stop being fucking sexist, rape goes both ways.
To be fair, the FBI's statistics only include what actually gets reported; if all rapes were reported, we may well see that men rape women no more often than women rape men. And yes, women do rape men. Mine went unreported, officially, but I do talk about it when the subject comes up.
Yes, they exist, they get used, I've seen it, too; in fact, I've been a victim. Doesn't change the fact that most club rapists simply buy a girl drinks until she can't walk straight anymore, though. Cheaper and you aren't carrying something that will land you in prison just for possession. Think about it.
I know a guy, a former friend (basically because he does this kind of shit) that will meet a girl at a bar or club, take her to a table that has no visibility of the bar, and buy himself a beer and her a drink. Innocent enough, just buying a girl a drink, right? Well, his game, and the reason why the table must not be able to see the bar, is that he keeps buying her drinks, bringing his beer with him on every trip to the bar (he never lets the waitress bring drinks), but, instead of getting himself another beer, he gets a glass of water and refills his empty beer bottle before returning to the table. She thinks he's drinking as much as him, making him less of a threat.
Scum. Absolute scum. After I learned what he was doing (he was proud of it when he told me) I did tell a few bartenders at places he was known to frequent but they didn't seem to care, which, I suppose, makes them scum, as well.
Hell, I wrote a short story, impromptu, not even part of an assignment, about a kid who was bullied and just plain didn't fit in, who ended up bringing a gun to school, threatening his classmates, then shooting himself. All of my teachers loved it, except for one who thought it was a red flag; she took it to the principal, who also loved it. He congratulated me for having written something so thought provoking and compelling, told me he wished more of his students wrote the way I did, and that was the end of it. Shit's gotten too out of hand today.
I dunno, I robbed a bank once by walking in, unarmed, writing "gun" on a piece of paper, and then shooting everyone in the place with it. Once I'd shot all of them, there was nobody to trigger the alarm or stop me from walking out with all the money.
Letting people write the word "gun" on a piece of paper is very dangerous.
And yes, for those who can't detect satire, this really did happen. We should ban pens and paper so it doesn't happen again.
Right, so I'm going to continue paying $10/yr for a domain and some additional amount for disk space and bandwidth, over an issue with an $8/yr service that turned out to be resultant of a bug in their system which they committed to fixing, in fact did fix, and which I was able to confirm had been fixed? Had they *only* fixed it for my specific instance, I likely would have kept the site up, but they fixed the underlying cause of the issue (for everyone), so I didn't feel it necessary to continue spending my own money on it.
If you use GoDaddy's domain privacy service with the spam filtering option enabled and decide to cancel the service, you're welcome, by the way.
Because they fixed my specific issue and committed to fixing the bug in their system which cause my issue in the first place, which I was able to confirm they had done.
Right before I said I took the site down, in the very same sentence, I also stated:
I got a call from their VP of corporate development, or some such, who was able to immediately resolve my issue and light a fire under the dev team's ass to fix the issue permanently
and I explained, in my first paragraph, the following:
they didn't like the subject matter (a complaint regarding how they handle user-initiated termination of their domain privacy services)
Since the purpose of the site was to bring the issue to light and get it resolved, and the issue was both brought to light and resolved, I saw no reason to continue paying for the domain and wasting disk space and bandwidth to achieve and end I had already achieved.
Because it wasn't worth my time to pursue it. I wanted my specific issue fixed; in the end, they fixed it. It took much less time and cost them much more money (in the form of lost future income) for me to just cease doing business with them, and I didn't have to miss a day of work to meet with an attorney, and another day to go to court.
If I were Google, fielding a million of these per day, it might be worth my time, though.
Or, they throw up a red flag that the system is being abused, giving our elected representatives cause to take away this special gift that has been given to the copyright lobby.
That's unfair to someone filing a legitimate request. Instead, charge a larger sum, on the order of $5 per request, plus $1 per notice (to encourage notices to be batched into single requests and reduce your payment processing costs), with a limit of, say, 100 notices per request, and hold that amount in escrow. Once the window for dispute closes, refund the collected per-notice fee for each request not successfully disputed; if no notices are successfully disputed, also refund the request fee (minus your payment processing costs).
You'll almost immediately see companies start sending notices in batches of 100 (at a potential cost of $105) to reduce the cost of valid notices to just the cost of processing a $105 payment, something on the order of $3, versus the cost of processing 100 $6 payments, which is on the order of $25. You'll also see a sharp decrease in false notices, since one false notice in a batch would cost $6, with each additional false notice in that batch costing $1. I'm sure there would still be enough of them to pay for staff to process all of the incoming requests, though, which would be a win for everyone; the companies having to process the requests wouldn't be out the cost of doing so, and the requests themselves would pay for enough staff to process them in a timely manner, which should make the people filing them quite happy.
Of course, the law would have to allow for this, which I don't think it does at this point. Sadly.
GoDaddy filed a DMCA request against one of my sites a few years back. The site was comprised of entirely original, all-text content (e.g. no images they could claim ownership of, and text entirely from my own fingers), but they didn't like the subject matter (a complaint regarding how they handle user-initiated termination of their domain privacy services), so, rather than contact me to resolve the issue (I had been unable to contact anyone on their end who could do anything for me) they fired off a DMCA takedown request to my VPS provider.
My VPS provider, being a reasonable company, saw that I was hosting several sites and, rather than take down the instance, forwarded the request to me. I contacted them to inform them that I intended to dispute the request and that no content would be removed as a result, they write back indicating that they figured that's what I would do and fully understood as they agreed the request was bogus. I CC'd GoDaddy's support team on that email, as well.
GoDaddy's next move was to file a WHOIS data inaccuracy complaint with ICANN. My next move was to CC their support team on my response to that.
In the end, I got a call from their VP of corporate development, or some such, who was able to immediately resolve my issue and light a fire under the dev team's ass to fix the issue permanently, and I took the site down. Had they worked with me from the start, the site never would have existed in the first place, but that's apparently not how GoDaddy (and, as is clear if you follow the news, other large corporations) wants to run things; they'd rather throw money out the window playing games and bullying people, instead of working with them to solve actual problems people have with their services.
In the end, the 20+ domains I had registered through them ended up on a different registrar and they got some bad PR and a perpetual negative review from me when people ask me (and they often do) who they should register their domains through or host their website with.
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I made the bad choice to trust my high school girlfriend. I sure don't blame myself for trusting someone I had known for over a year and had been friends with for the entirety of that time, who had never done me wrong. That didn't stop her from drugging me and taking advantage, though.
I do, however, recognize, that, had I gotten my own drink (it was freakin' kool-aid) and kept it in hand and in view, she could not have done what she did. I didn't cause it, but I sure could have prevented it.
One who is aware of this could check up to 10 drinks for their friends.
Or crush up a roofie, pack the powdered pill under her fingernail, and drug the first drink she "tested". And everyone would think they were safe.
Why limit it to women? Men get drugged, too.
I walk away from my drinks all the time, actually. If my wife wanted to drug me, she has much better ways to do so, and if my friends want to do it, they'll find a way. I'm not a part of the club scene, so I don't have to worry about it happening there; when I was, my mother was the bartender, so I may have picked up a few pointers from her, as well. And you're clearly not a psychiatrist (and certainly not mine), so let's not go giving medical advice, okay?
Wait, was that 2 downsides?
No downsides? Has it become normally socially acceptable for a male to wear nail polish now? No? There's a downside, then. Get your own drinks, keep them in hand and in sight, and live your life.
As for the efficacy of the nail polish, how long do you think it will take for someone to come up with another drug that it doesn't detect? Here's a hint: they already exist. Only, now, women using this product are going to be more easily fooled into thinking they're safe.
No, having learned from my experience, I employ other mitigation tactics. Those tactics (get your own drinks - even if someone else is buying, be present at the bar, watch the bartender make the drink, and take the drink directly from the bartender - for starters, then, keep the drink in hand and in view; really simple shit) are also available to women and I strongly encourage their use.
Sample size of one, I know, but I've been raped by someone I knew and trusted, never been raped by a stranger. I'm also a male who's been drugged and raped by a female, but that's probably also a statistical anomaly, right?
Then what was your point? Were you just playing the role of the contrarian?
Let me preface my response with the following: I'm speaking as a victim, here. A victim who learned a valuable lesson about personaly responsibility.
No, he wants to live in a world where people take responsibility for their own safety. Knowing that rapists are out there, and knowing that keeping your drink in hand at and in view at all times is a simple and effective preventative measure, it is irresponsible not to take that simple measure.
Hell, a girl I was dating brought me a drugged drink when I was 17; it wasn't even alcohol and we weren't even at a club, it was kool-aid and we were at someone's house, babysitting their 3 kids. I learned, then, that you get your own drinks and keep them in hand and in view at all times, even around people you trust. It's not your fault if you get raped if you don't do that (of course, the rapist made the decision to rape) but it is your fault you didn't at least take steps to prevent it (you made the decision not to).
I don't blame myself for the girl's actions; after all, I didn't drug my own drink, she did. And I didn't rape myself after I passed out, she did. I don't even blame myself for trusting her; I had known her for over a year at that point and she had always been good to me. Hell, she wouldn't even have had to rape me, I was willing, so the thought never even crossed my mind. I let my guard down, and I do blame myself for that; but, at the same time, life isn't worth living if you don't let people in at some point. So, instead of becoming a woman-hating shut-in, I considered what I could have done differently to prevent it from happening, and I learned from it. In case you haven't absorbed the information by now, that is to get my own drinks and keep them in hand and in view; that allows you to still trust people, until they give you a reason not to, while allowing you to quickly and easily see that you have reason not to trust that particular person *before* something bad happens.
It's not perfect, bad shit can and will still happen, but by taking mitigating steps, at least you've prevented one form of bad shit. Really, the same reason you lock your doors, despite the fact that a criminal can just break a window.
Right, and roofies don't work on men, either, which is why I didn't bother reporting when it happened to me. Stop being fucking sexist, rape goes both ways.
To be fair, the FBI's statistics only include what actually gets reported; if all rapes were reported, we may well see that men rape women no more often than women rape men. And yes, women do rape men. Mine went unreported, officially, but I do talk about it when the subject comes up.
Yes, they exist, they get used, I've seen it, too; in fact, I've been a victim. Doesn't change the fact that most club rapists simply buy a girl drinks until she can't walk straight anymore, though. Cheaper and you aren't carrying something that will land you in prison just for possession. Think about it.
I know a guy, a former friend (basically because he does this kind of shit) that will meet a girl at a bar or club, take her to a table that has no visibility of the bar, and buy himself a beer and her a drink. Innocent enough, just buying a girl a drink, right? Well, his game, and the reason why the table must not be able to see the bar, is that he keeps buying her drinks, bringing his beer with him on every trip to the bar (he never lets the waitress bring drinks), but, instead of getting himself another beer, he gets a glass of water and refills his empty beer bottle before returning to the table. She thinks he's drinking as much as him, making him less of a threat.
Scum. Absolute scum. After I learned what he was doing (he was proud of it when he told me) I did tell a few bartenders at places he was known to frequent but they didn't seem to care, which, I suppose, makes them scum, as well.
But that is a societal problem.
So is the need for this product.
Perhaps I've more wit than you give me credit for?
Hell, I wrote a short story, impromptu, not even part of an assignment, about a kid who was bullied and just plain didn't fit in, who ended up bringing a gun to school, threatening his classmates, then shooting himself. All of my teachers loved it, except for one who thought it was a red flag; she took it to the principal, who also loved it. He congratulated me for having written something so thought provoking and compelling, told me he wished more of his students wrote the way I did, and that was the end of it. Shit's gotten too out of hand today.
and then shooting everyone in the place with it.
is part of the same sentence. Your whole post kind of falls apart when you realize that, doesn't it?
I dunno, I robbed a bank once by walking in, unarmed, writing "gun" on a piece of paper, and then shooting everyone in the place with it. Once I'd shot all of them, there was nobody to trigger the alarm or stop me from walking out with all the money.
Letting people write the word "gun" on a piece of paper is very dangerous.
And yes, for those who can't detect satire, this really did happen. We should ban pens and paper so it doesn't happen again.
Right, so I'm going to continue paying $10/yr for a domain and some additional amount for disk space and bandwidth, over an issue with an $8/yr service that turned out to be resultant of a bug in their system which they committed to fixing, in fact did fix, and which I was able to confirm had been fixed? Had they *only* fixed it for my specific instance, I likely would have kept the site up, but they fixed the underlying cause of the issue (for everyone), so I didn't feel it necessary to continue spending my own money on it.
If you use GoDaddy's domain privacy service with the spam filtering option enabled and decide to cancel the service, you're welcome, by the way.
Right before I said I took the site down, in the very same sentence, I also stated:
I got a call from their VP of corporate development, or some such, who was able to immediately resolve my issue and light a fire under the dev team's ass to fix the issue permanently
and I explained, in my first paragraph, the following:
they didn't like the subject matter (a complaint regarding how they handle user-initiated termination of their domain privacy services)
Since the purpose of the site was to bring the issue to light and get it resolved, and the issue was both brought to light and resolved, I saw no reason to continue paying for the domain and wasting disk space and bandwidth to achieve and end I had already achieved.
Because it wasn't worth my time to pursue it. I wanted my specific issue fixed; in the end, they fixed it. It took much less time and cost them much more money (in the form of lost future income) for me to just cease doing business with them, and I didn't have to miss a day of work to meet with an attorney, and another day to go to court.
If I were Google, fielding a million of these per day, it might be worth my time, though.
put a punishment for flinging out fradulent DMCA takedown in the same way filing frivilous lawsuits is punished.
In other words, a slap on the wrist and a stern talking-to? Yeah, that'll work.
Or, they throw up a red flag that the system is being abused, giving our elected representatives cause to take away this special gift that has been given to the copyright lobby.
That's unfair to someone filing a legitimate request. Instead, charge a larger sum, on the order of $5 per request, plus $1 per notice (to encourage notices to be batched into single requests and reduce your payment processing costs), with a limit of, say, 100 notices per request, and hold that amount in escrow. Once the window for dispute closes, refund the collected per-notice fee for each request not successfully disputed; if no notices are successfully disputed, also refund the request fee (minus your payment processing costs).
You'll almost immediately see companies start sending notices in batches of 100 (at a potential cost of $105) to reduce the cost of valid notices to just the cost of processing a $105 payment, something on the order of $3, versus the cost of processing 100 $6 payments, which is on the order of $25. You'll also see a sharp decrease in false notices, since one false notice in a batch would cost $6, with each additional false notice in that batch costing $1. I'm sure there would still be enough of them to pay for staff to process all of the incoming requests, though, which would be a win for everyone; the companies having to process the requests wouldn't be out the cost of doing so, and the requests themselves would pay for enough staff to process them in a timely manner, which should make the people filing them quite happy.
Of course, the law would have to allow for this, which I don't think it does at this point. Sadly.
GoDaddy filed a DMCA request against one of my sites a few years back. The site was comprised of entirely original, all-text content (e.g. no images they could claim ownership of, and text entirely from my own fingers), but they didn't like the subject matter (a complaint regarding how they handle user-initiated termination of their domain privacy services), so, rather than contact me to resolve the issue (I had been unable to contact anyone on their end who could do anything for me) they fired off a DMCA takedown request to my VPS provider.
My VPS provider, being a reasonable company, saw that I was hosting several sites and, rather than take down the instance, forwarded the request to me. I contacted them to inform them that I intended to dispute the request and that no content would be removed as a result, they write back indicating that they figured that's what I would do and fully understood as they agreed the request was bogus. I CC'd GoDaddy's support team on that email, as well.
GoDaddy's next move was to file a WHOIS data inaccuracy complaint with ICANN. My next move was to CC their support team on my response to that.
In the end, I got a call from their VP of corporate development, or some such, who was able to immediately resolve my issue and light a fire under the dev team's ass to fix the issue permanently, and I took the site down. Had they worked with me from the start, the site never would have existed in the first place, but that's apparently not how GoDaddy (and, as is clear if you follow the news, other large corporations) wants to run things; they'd rather throw money out the window playing games and bullying people, instead of working with them to solve actual problems people have with their services.
In the end, the 20+ domains I had registered through them ended up on a different registrar and they got some bad PR and a perpetual negative review from me when people ask me (and they often do) who they should register their domains through or host their website with.