The Amazing(ly Connected) Dave
September 24, 2012 5:27 PM   Subscribe

It has never been easier to be an amazing mind-reader. (SLYT German PSA w/subtitles... any more would be telling)
posted by oneswellfoop (29 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
I knew that.
posted by HuronBob at 5:40 PM on September 24, 2012


Excellent - a very clever and effective PSA
It's from Belgium though
posted by Flashman at 5:41 PM on September 24, 2012 [5 favorites]


great
posted by facetious at 5:45 PM on September 24, 2012


Happy to see Facebook there. If banks don't like FB, maybe it'll finally die.
posted by DU at 6:02 PM on September 24, 2012


I take it with a heavy grain of salt. Sure people can be hard core doxxed, but the heavy typing and balaclavas make it look far more stuntish. I'd like to see a news report or journal article rather than the PSA.
posted by rebent at 6:11 PM on September 24, 2012


Facebook is too big to fail.
posted by etc. at 6:11 PM on September 24, 2012


I wonder how much faster Belgians can type when they're not wearing balaclavas?
posted by gingerest at 6:11 PM on September 24, 2012 [4 favorites]


If there's one thing the general public heeds, it's journal articles without a PSA to tell them the contents.
posted by DU at 6:17 PM on September 24, 2012


This is the worst TISM video ever.
posted by maxwelton at 6:17 PM on September 24, 2012 [4 favorites]


rebent: "I take it with a heavy grain of salt. Sure people can be hard core doxxed, but the heavy typing and balaclavas make it look far more stuntish. I'd like to see a news report or journal article rather than the PSA"

I take your point, but I would ask you how many times you have pointed out security risks to your less-internet-savvy friends and relations? How many times have you warned them to backup properly? One man's sledgehammer and nut is another man's "Really? I never knew."
posted by Jakey at 6:18 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


That warning message on the screen at the end -- was it really fair to the participants to write that in English? They can't read the Youtube subtitles in person.
posted by ceribus peribus at 6:18 PM on September 24, 2012


Do I EVER make a post without one stupid error? (For the record, I read the url at the end as .de instead of .be) EURO-MODS PLEASE HOPE ME!
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:19 PM on September 24, 2012


I hated to be 'that guy' (and I also hate now to be that guy who writes things like "be 'that guy'") but dammit, Belgium gets no respect.
And I wanted to put that 'no respect' in Flemish but Google apparently doesn't translate into Flemish, which kind of proves that point.
posted by Flashman at 6:31 PM on September 24, 2012


That is not German they are speaking
posted by esc67 at 6:57 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


I'm curious exactly how much information they used to start the search? Did the person choosing people get a victim's name, or did they just work off of their face? 'Cause I didn't know facial recognition had gotten that advanced.
posted by benito.strauss at 7:13 PM on September 24, 2012


@benito.strauss, they had to sign a release before they did the "show" they thought they were doing. Their names and basic info was known to the people doing the searches.
posted by clvrmnky at 7:15 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


My main beef is, how are individuals supposed to "protect" themselves when the most damaging information is locked up by corporate interests with little or no oversight? We are living in a world were "sign up using ..." is the holy fucking grail for all the social media concerns, so you have to make your choice sometimes.

Without major changes to the law, government oversight and entrenched corp data use and retention policies, there isn't a whole lot an individual can do while still participating in this grand experiment.
posted by clvrmnky at 7:18 PM on September 24, 2012


It not just fake psychics, wait, make that "not just PSA video psychics":

Fortune Teller Used Google to Speak to the Dead

posted by sammyo at 7:28 PM on September 24, 2012


If it was Germany, it would be an ad about how much more secure StudiVZ is than Facebook, and would actually be an ad. Those Germans have some nutty ideas about Facebook, despite them slowly but surely migrating to it...
posted by Yowser at 7:33 PM on September 24, 2012


Isn't everyone wearing balaclavas right now?

Just me?


?
posted by mazola at 9:47 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


Fuck a PSA, I wanna use this trick to cold read people.
posted by cmoj at 10:02 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


That's fantastic; I'd love to know who came up with the concept... simple and perfect.

Your euromod is here, but it's a little late to fix the booboo; I'd either need to delete a bunch of comments or leave them and everyone would be confused for 20 comments until reading a "fixed that" note. Your tears will not melt my cold, cold heart, onefellswoop.
posted by taz at 10:23 PM on September 24, 2012


I'm only crying because you got my MeFiName wrong, dazz.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:59 PM on September 24, 2012 [4 favorites]


Lucky Metafilter replaces your PayPal password with asterisks to stop you posting it by mistake.

**************
posted by obiwanwasabi at 3:02 AM on September 25, 2012


Lucky Metafilter replaces your PayPal password with asterisks to stop you posting it by mistake.

I always wondered who did that. Thank you, Lucky Metafilter, you are now my favorite superhero.
posted by otherchaz at 3:11 AM on September 25, 2012


This is not a PSA. It's an ad for an Internet banking service.
posted by Michael Roberts at 4:32 AM on September 25, 2012


**************

Hey, you use hunter2hunter2 too!
posted by ersatz at 6:11 AM on September 25, 2012


I used to work for a consulting firm that had trial lawyers as clients. There was this one particular lawyer who was quite a showman. He'd go to law conferences with a couple of us researchers in tow, and give a talk about jury selection or some other job where you'd need to do research on a person. He'd have us on the stage with laptops and select two or three at random from the audience. He'd ask them to provide and spell their names, and where they were from. This wasn't weird as it was usually on the conference nametags anyway. Then he'd go on with his talk for 20 minutes.

At the end of his talk about privacy, people research, etc., he'd get some information from us about the audience members he'd picked before. We could get damn near everything: houses, cars, bankruptcies, businesses they owned, prior jobs, marriages, divorces, social security numbers, phone numbers, bank loans. Sometimes bank account numbers. Occasionally we'd get things that could be truly embarrassing (affairs, inappropriate pics); he'd never say anything publicly about those types of things, but it made the point. There's all kinds of stuff out there. Even just the stuff thats publicly available is more than most people realize.
posted by nushustu at 7:58 AM on September 25, 2012


Michael Roberts: This is not a PSA. It's an ad for an Internet banking service.
Um, it's both. It's a PSA sponsored by a banking service, which is a "good-guy" ad for their service.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:10 AM on September 25, 2012


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