The devices weren't in very suspicious locations. Suspicious locations would be ones where they're hidden. These are advertisements; they're placed in conspicuous locations. That's why there have been photos on Flickr for weeks of these things in several cities.
Building a case around the electronics would have been worse; you can hide explosives in a case. These were clearly just LEDs, wires, and batteries. (And if you can start a fire on a highway overpass with a few C batteries, it's because that's what you were trying for.) Calling it a "strange, functional circuit board" is misuse of "strange." Are glowsticks "strange"?
Turner sent a fax to Boston City Hall the same afternoon that the story broke. Given the size of Turner, and the fact that Turner had hired a third-party marketing firm which in turn contracted to the artists in ten different cities, I'm amazed that Turner figured out that they were involved as fast as they did.
I'm not clear how you're concluding that your second question is the "actually relevant" one. Considering people's actual reactions means asking what people might think is going on. People could think (a) bombs, (b) hoaxes, or (c) pictures. You seem to be saying that the responsible thing to do is to worry about whether people will think (b) over (c). I think responsibility is in not causing people to think (a), because (a) is what makes people panic and shut down roads and detonate things. Thinking there are hoaxes does not make people do those things. The important distinction is between harmful and harmless. That's determined by the extent to which your things look like bombs, not how much they look like hoaxes
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I agree with AlgobakedweaselsFebruary 2 2007, 16:48:54 UTC
Ill-advised stunt with probably some small illegalities and bad judgment involved, overblown by media so turns out to be tremendous success for marketing company, embarrassed cops see A) how easy it would be for terrorists to do bad things and B) want to get these stupid "performance artists" out of their embarrassment. They DO need to pin these guys to the wall just b/c of the media circus to prevent copycats, even though the best thing for all involved would be a little fine and moving on.
I started out with tons of sympathy for the guerilla marketers and the thought that the "inciting panic" part was more the fault of the press/police than the innocent marketers. And then I saw the YouTube of their press conference afterwards, which bordered on the deranged. If you had a bad idea for a marketing stunt and put a ton of people out, the least you can do is apologize for it rather than playing the fool, valuing your pathetic sense of humor above the emotions of hundreds or thousands of fellow citizens.
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Building a case around the electronics would have been worse; you can hide explosives in a case. These were clearly just LEDs, wires, and batteries. (And if you can start a fire on a highway overpass with a few C batteries, it's because that's what you were trying for.) Calling it a "strange, functional circuit board" is misuse of "strange." Are glowsticks "strange"?
Turner sent a fax to Boston City Hall the same afternoon that the story broke. Given the size of Turner, and the fact that Turner had hired a third-party marketing firm which in turn contracted to the artists in ten different cities, I'm amazed that Turner figured out that they were involved as fast as they did.
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I started out with tons of sympathy for the guerilla marketers and the thought that the "inciting panic" part was more the fault of the press/police than the innocent marketers. And then I saw the YouTube of their press conference afterwards, which bordered on the deranged. If you had a bad idea for a marketing stunt and put a ton of people out, the least you can do is apologize for it rather than playing the fool, valuing your pathetic sense of humor above the emotions of hundreds or thousands of fellow citizens.
I guess I must be getting
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