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Police Shut Down a 3k-Person Game of Hide-and-Seek at IKEA
- LandR 7y ago> “People are stopping everyone who ‘looks like they are here for a game of hide and seek,’” What? How does one look like they are there for a game of hide and seek v a regular shopper?
- krustyburger 7y agoRegular shoppers don’t usually crouch behind things.
- jplayer01 7y agoHow am I supposed to know if furniture is good if I can't test its viability in games of hide and seek?
- penagwin 7y agoI have to agree, if I can't test the product why would I even go to IKEA? I'd rather purchase online. At least online I can find reviews for it's hide and seek performance! What's next? They start banning us for testing out the furnitures viability for The Floor is Lava? /s
- einpoklum 7y agoScottish police says: Tell it tae th' baillie! (= Tell it to the judge)
- jrockway 7y agoMy takeaway from all of this is that if you have kids that are going to play hide-and-seek, you probably want something more durable than IKEA furniture. I think IKEA realizes this as well.
- jplayer01 7y agoIt's 2019. Adults can play hide and seek too, you know.
- laumars 7y agoThen how am I supposed to know if those things will fit my things inside them? It would be like buying a mattress without lying on it first.
- paggle 7y agoIt takes me so much effort to get to my IKEA I would be so totally enraged if I was stopped as a “suspected hide and seeker” and denied entry. I cannot imagine.
- chrisco255 7y agoMaybe they're wearing Swedish furniture camouflage? If they come in with a costume that looks like a Billy book shelf. That's a dead giveaway.
- gumby 7y agoWouldn't that make them invisible to the police?
- theandrewbailey 7y agoUntil there's robot furniture that moves on its own, no. I bet someone somewhere is working on it, though.
- clairity 7y agoyup, they’re working on it: https://ikea.today/rognan-robotic-furniture-for-small-space-living/ https://ikea.today/rognan-robotic-furniture-for-small-space-... which is not surprising considering how successful the tradfri line of (affordable) smart home products has been (i’m a fan).
- urbanjunkie 7y agoI take it you've not been to an Ikea? Follow this simple rule: - Looking happy? Here for hide and seek. - Looking miserable? Here for being dragged around Ikea looking at furniture.
- isostatic 7y agoIf the police stop them, they've clearly failed at the "hide" part of the game
- gwbas1c 7y agoI suspect that "stopping" just means a short, and polite, conversation near the entrance.
- Rapzid 7y agoThe hiding and the seeking is probably a good indicator.
- omarhaneef 7y agoHeadline two days later: "It was actually a 3001 person game of hide and seek! They found Janet in the Sektion."
- donatj 7y agoI feel like they would have been better off officially sanctioning the event and making a big PR stunt out of it.
- mongol 7y agoI don't think Ikea needs that kind of PR.
- Scoundreller 7y agoProbably cheaper than TV/mail advertising per-customer-acquisition or per-additional-dollar-o-profit.
- cloakandswagger 7y agoUntil someone injures themselves climbing up a storage rack, or someone hides in a refrigerator and suffocates. The liability is massive.
- raverbashing 7y agoRefrigerators are safer now
- Scoundreller 7y agoHow?
- scarejunba 7y agoThe ones that fall on people have been outcompeted by friendlier ones after the prey learned. Just evolution as usual.
- raverbashing 7y agoThey have a limit on how much force it takes to open them from the inside Older refrigerators (50's/60's) had a locking handle
- time0ut 7y agoIkea is the perfect place to play hide and seek. The stores are deliberately designed to be labyrinthine after all.
- lonelappde 7y agoThe stores have a single (long, windy) path illuminated with arrows, plus pockets for each product area
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoIt's nice to know that Glasgow has eliminated crime to the point that this was the most useful thing the police could possibly be doing.
- trhway 7y agoit is "broken windows" policy in action - you don't stop hide and seek in IKEA today, you end up with people shooting up heroin and engaging in various adult activities there tomorrow. Anyway, how do you efficiently stop a good game? You spoil it (cue Dr.Evil laugh). In this case use NN to analyze video feeds to identify a hiding person and deploy a Roomba (i feel like our civilization is on the precipice of the epoch where "deploy a Roomba" will be the answer to almost any situation) to the vicinity of the hiding person where the Roomba will loudly announce presence of the hiding person.
- quickthrower2 7y agoIKEA - the gateway drug?
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoHow is a 3000-person game of hide-and-seek supposed to work? Hide-and-seek typically involves knowing who you're looking for, or at least knowing that anyone in a given area is in on the game.
- turc1656 7y agoI was wondering the exact same thing. Who hides and who seeks? I'm guessing that it's more like people go in small groups and do it within their own group but just with the size of the Ikea store being the fun factor. Or maybe they team up against another group of equal size to see which group can find each other faster?
- jimijazz 7y agoOr maybe they wear some sort of tags in their clothing to identify them as hiders.
- sarah180 7y agoI would probably organize it like a big game of infection tag. You start with one or a few people who are tagged, but each person who's found becomes tagged as well, and becomes a searcher. When you find somebody, you scan a QR code on their phone (or on a race bib that everybody pins to their clothes). A trivial database on your phone tells you who was found last, how many are left, etc.
- magashna 7y agoThis makes me curious how the upcoming raid on Area 51 will go.
- LandR 7y agoIs this an actual thing? I thought it was a joke, is it meant to be a joke but some people are going to turn up having it taken it seriously? Not an American, but I feel that could go badly.
- Tade0 7y agoI guess part of the appeal is that nobody knows how many, if at all, people will show up.
- stronglikedan 7y agoAnother part of the appeal is that nobody may ever know how many people, if any, actually showed up.
- ptero 7y agoAnd of those that did show up, how many were people :)
- michaelmior 7y agoI think whether or not it was started as a joke is somewhat irrelevant now that over 4K people have signed up. It seems likely that at least of few those people will actually try to show up. https://www.facebook.com/events/area-51-groom-lake/raid-area-51/390597074903624/ https://www.facebook.com/events/area-51-groom-lake/raid-area...
- xtagon 7y agoActually, over 2 million people signed up. The original page was taken down.
- logfromblammo 7y agoA 3000-person game of Hide-and-Seek in an IKEA is what happens when private businesses start to take over free culture, public places, and public events. In the past, villages would play village football (or "mob football", or "Ba") against each other. The England-Scotland border was actually defined in part by the winner of an annual Ba game between Coldstream and Wark. The "Baa Green" south of the river went to the winner. Since Coldstream grew larger, it's pretty much permanently Scottish now. But then the government banned the playing of football on the highways, and towns couldn't play against each other as easily any more. Spoilsports. Every once in a while, The People of Eris get together and say, "We're going to do something silly and fun and surreal and wondrous and magical and thrilling!" And then The People of Greyface get together and say, "Stop that at once. Someone is going to get hurt, or laugh at the government, or something else equally awful. And that would be catastrophically disastrous. So, no fun for you. Off with you, now." It's an eternal struggle.
- kwhitefoot 7y agoThe Ba in Kirkwall is held every year still. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkwall_Ba_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkwall_Ba_game
- newsreview1 7y agoWe used to do this on dates at the Denver, CO IKEA. No one ever even knew what we were doing.
- newsreview1 7y agoHeadline continues......turns out, they were all just people lost because of the horribly-placed yellow arrows misdirecting them through the store.
- skizm 7y agoThe game continues, but the Police are now the seekers and stakes are raise: if you're found, you go to jail.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- thatguyguys 7y agoParent guys. Mod parent to top-domain-level. I'd be suprised if parent doesn't directly resolve to news.ycombinator.com , in is all refreshments. I love you dog. Can't believe people are so slow to pick up that Reddit is the only place on the internet by now. A good example: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/d072nh/people_of_reddit_who_work_in_a_casino_whats_some/?sort=new&limit=500 https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/d072nh/people_of... pr0ncurred, concurred, love you dog. Reddit is the whole internet. Wonder how long it takes for everyone else to catch up on it. I'd stuck your truck. <3
- JJMcJ 7y agoSeems like a good reason to go to Target instead.
- skizm 7y agoNa, Target doesn't have nearly as many hiding spots.
- mattigames 7y agoNah, in target you are an easy... target! (yada yada yada, bring the downvotes you very serious people)
- jtms 7y agoNo jokes allowed here! Only very serious business!
- ineedasername 7y agoThat sounds awesome, but how does a 3k game of hide & seek actually work? I mean, by home rules growing up, one person was "it" and had to find everyone. That would suck. One person would have to find 2999 others, and most of them would just be stuck stuck under an Espevar, waiting. This is an important problem to solve. I call on the engineers of this site to find a solution to the hide & seek scaling problem. Let's get to work!
- coding123 7y agoMaybe 2999 people had to find the one?
- hobofan 7y agoI think that would usually be called a reverse-hide & seek.
- mcdoh 7y agoI think we used to call it Pink Panther.
- tomtomtom777 7y agoThis would work much better and is actually a great variant I play with my family (although 3k is still a bit crowded). One hides, everyone seeks, if you find, you join hiding. This has some neat extra elements, such as tactics ("I think I found them but I first need to misdirect and lose these guys"), gymnastics ("Found, so how am I going to fit my big ass into this tiny, already overcrowded spot"), and most importantly shared shadenfreude ("How are we supposed to hold our laughs if the last seeker just strolls by with all of us packed here?"). Highly recommended
- smokey_the_bear 7y agoThis game was called "sardines" in my childhood neighborhood.
- 7y ago
- coding123 7y agoAnd.... now it's going world wide.
- modernerd 7y ago“People are stopping everyone who ‘looks like they are here for a game of hide and seek.” Deep down, everyone who walks into the great snaking corridors of IKEA is playing a game of hide and seek. But what does a person who goes there to play the game on purpose look like? What are the tells? Are they wearing IKEA bedlinen? I love the idea of a stop and search on that scale and basis. “Hide and seek, officer? I just came to buy a Prickig and a couple of Pysslingars.”
- empath75 7y agohttp://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3008 http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3008
- coryfklein 7y agoThat SCP was both completely unexpected and completely appropriate. Also a very interesting mix of creepy and hilarious. I nearly lost it at the description of the humanoids SCP-3008-2. Edit: Working my way through the journal entry - my goodness this stuff is straight-up made for its own movie or Netflix series!
- tomatotomato37 7y agoCheck out the containment series on youtube; the latest episode is based off that SCP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM6GkERwEM0&list=PLEXIiC3q94eO992TlwBD98Zast0gret1r https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM6GkERwEM0&list=PLEXIiC3q94...
- lachlan-sneff 7y agoLove this series! Hope the next one is on the way!
- roryokane 7y agoLink to the specific video based on SCP-3008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcq1lLCgk7E&list=PLEXIiC3q94eO992TlwBD98Zast0gret1r&index=9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcq1lLCgk7E&list=PLEXIiC3q94...
- fyfy18 7y agoWhat exactly were the police planning to do if they found someone playing hide and seek? At most it seems like they could ask people to leave the store, and if they refuse charge them with trespassing - but those are civil matters.
- gpm 7y agoI mean, it's a different legal system than I'm used to, but around here trespassing is criminal.
- gmiller123456 7y agoGenerally you're not trespassing in a store until they ask you to leave, or you've been informed not to engage in certain activity.
- swsieber 7y agoIf I were Ikea I'd try turning into a paid event. Collect the money ahead of time ($5 per person?) and you're golden.
- gremlinsinc 7y agothis! and they could limit # of participants so it doesn't get out of hand.
- Retric 7y agoMight be worth it outside of normal store hours, but 15k is not going to be enough to basically shut the place down for an a few hours. Worse their liability would likely be a significant issue.
- onemoresoop 7y agoYes, but that makes Ikea assume some responsibility. At the end of the day Ikea sells furniture, people playing a massive hide and seek game are not there to buy furniture.
- swsieber 7y agoThey could use waiver forms, like any other place hosting moderately "dangerous" things (like trampolines, etc.). That said, you could still allow people who came to actually buy furniture. Though, I think it would require more preparation than just winging it.
- aeorgnoieang 7y agoWaivers aren't – just like anything else – perfect protection against (legal) liability. In the U.S. at least, everything can be litigated and even just defending one's self can be expensive.
- astura 7y agoThey'd probably need special insurance for this - doubt their day-to-day policy would cover something like this.
- gremlinsinc 7y agoIkea should stop 'banning' them and embracing these. They should build a ticket platform so you can only get into the game w/a ticket. You'd put an armband on signifying you're a 'player'. That way they could maybe limit it to a smaller number per game.. 3000 seems like a lot. Maybe 500 or less. How many of these people would shop while there are go to the cafeteria?
- tpmx 7y agoPerhaps you could try imagining that they want to stick at what they have been doing for doing for past 76 years: Selling furniture.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoWe were at Ikea today and I thought - they should have a "lazer" game where you try to get as many tags as possible. Players would be required to walk, you could only tag someone once and they could have tags on furniture [or only on furniture] that encouraged kids to "catch them all" ensuring the parents visited a particular room or item that Ikea wanted to sell. Maybe ... MVP would be just have some of the barcodes with a different colour background and give people barcode readers "capture 30 tags and get an icecream"; improves engagement, keeps kids interested in the "hunt"??
- bluntfang 7y agoare we just posting corporate guerrilla marketing now?
- grawprog 7y agoI'm just kind of shocked they could fit 3000 people inside an IKEA and still be able to play hide and seek. I know they're big, but damn that's impressive.
- mellosouls 7y agoThis sounds funny but would quickly get tiresome and intimidating for staff; glad they shut it down - really selfish of the event organisers and participants.
- droithomme 7y agoNext thing you know the police will be arresting people running lemonade stands!
- dakics 7y agoWorth remembering "IKEA Heights", a soap opera filmed covertly inside the IKEA store in Burbank, California 10 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/user/IKEAHeights/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/IKEAHeights/videos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_Heights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_Heights
- djsumdog 7y agoThis. Is. Hilarious. I've never heard of this before.
- gitgud 7y agoWhoa that's hilarious, it's got [1] Randall Park in it before he was famous! Do you know some other series from that era? I recently discovered "GoodNeighborStuff" which has the same quality sketch comedy feel to it. [1] https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1320827/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1320827/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/user/GoodNeighborStuff https://www.youtube.com/user/GoodNeighborStuff
- spookyuser 7y agoTake a look at Channel101.com, it seems like this show originally was screened there. The idea is people submit 5 minute tv pilots and only continue making them if the live channel101 audience votes to renew them for another episode. Almost everything on channel101, even now, still feels like quality sketch comedy. Some of the best stuff though is Dan Harmon's original shows - though there are almost too many to watch http://www.channel101.com/talent/108 http://www.channel101.com/talent/108
- mdrzn 7y agoI almost forgot about it! Great throwback, this "show" was hilarious.
- spike021 7y agoLast time I wandered into an IKEA I wished there was a real escape rope item, like from the Pokemon games, to escape quickly.
- cwkoss 7y agoSo they got the police to play as well? /s
- baxtr 7y agoFive police officers were called to the Braehead branch and remained at the store until the evening. Ok... the title sounds way more alarming
- ZainRiz 7y agoFive police officers stopped 3000 hide-and-seekers In a previous life they used to be Spartans
- equalunique 7y agoTowards the end of middle school, about one mile away, was a brand-new, two-story Barnes and Nobles. My friends and I - most of whom were waiting to be picked up in a couple hours by our still-working parents - would often go there to engage in relatively "large scale" hide-and-seek. It was a lot of fun. As it turned out, our future high school was even closer to the place. Shennanigans in the store became a daily thing, and we became the bane of that place's existience. The whole outside seating area became a camp site of sorts for teens waiting to go home. Police began to frequent the area, often nabbing underage cigarette smokers. For about one week, they had some kind of annoying sonic deterrent device installed that would only be audible to young people - complaints forced them to remove it. Years later and the plaza has full-time rent-a-cops to keep the droves of teens in check.
- mitchdoogle 7y agoThis reminds me of the time my high school wrestling team had practice over winter break and we played hide and seek one day instead of practicing. There were about 30 of us (including coaches) and we had the whole school to ourselves. That was the best game of hide and seek.
- hgoel 7y agoReminds me of the "Infinite IKEA" SCP entry.
- zw123456 7y agoIt seems like an interesting business opportunity to open a Hide and Seek venue, maybe in conjunction with a theme park or something of that nature. If it is that popular. Shrug.
- cellular 7y agoHow would this work? I could just hide in plain sight: act like I'm shopping. Do you have to seek only people that look like they are hiding?
- sverige 7y agoI wonder if this was organized by an underground boxing club.
- ender89 7y agoJoke's on them, it was 4,000.
- NicoN00b 7y ago"The trend began in Belgium in 2014 and quickly gained popularity throughout the continent"... People have been do this in Ikea for much longer than that, I love it when "journalists" make up facts based on conveniently available evidence. In two months the New York Times will cite Belgium as the beginning of ever playing hide and seek in public.
- ratel 7y agoIt seems someone figured out how to play hide-and-seek with thousands of people. Just let Ikea know you are coming and they will provide the seeker. The last one thrown out by security or the police before closing is the winner. Bragging rights go to the person who is found the next morning by staff sleeping in one of the beds.
- malicioususer11 7y agothis story is dumb...
- gabrielblack 7y agoClassic DOS attack by morons. You have that public place, business, physical service you want to block, so you send a massive number of morons (easily available on Facebook) to do dumb stuff in that site. Bang! Mission accomplished. For maximum damage a "Press reflection" variant exists: with the help of the press you make this kind of attack trendy so more morons can be focused on the target. Booom ! Nuclear blast!
- semanticist 7y agoThis is the same Ikea that has a "Jesus in the woodgrain" on a toilet door. (If you Google it you'll see stories popping up every couple of years as someone "discovers" it again.)
- winrid 7y ago"The police are stopping everyone who 'looks like they are here for a game of hide and seek.'" Amazing.
- anonytrary 7y agoHide-and-seek was always my favorite game to play with friends. Nothing can really beat the basal gratification and excitement in simulating a predator-prey situation. It is kind of neat that humans, after conquering hunting and being hunted, simulate this activity for risk-free thrill.
- dgzl 7y agoWhen I was in high school, I would play a game called "fugitive"[0] with 100+ people from nearby schools. Essentially, it's a game of chase through a few miles of town. Everyone starts at the same line but runners get a head start. Runners who are tagged become chasers who carpool with drivers. Runners use any means necessary to get away, including hiding and deceiving, trespassing across properties, jumping fences and scaling houses.... It was a frenzy and madness and probably didn't last an hour overall. Athletes win the race and everyone else has a brilliant hilarious experience. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_(game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_(game)
- roryokane 7y agoThat sounds fun; I wished I could have played that. For people who want to experience some of the same thrill, try watching FailRace’s “Survive the Hunt” series on YouTube, in which he plays Grand Theft Auto V in a lobby with his fans. He is given a head-start to drive away from the group in his car, then he has to switch to a random vehicle and pretend to be one of the many AI cars. After a few minutes a swarm of 15 or so hunters comb the city looking for anyone out of place. The videos get more exciting when they see FailRace and he has to lose them, despite all of the hunters being in voice contact. It’s not the ideal version of this kind of game, because FailRace only goes on foot when he has no other option, but it is still fun to watch. The playlist is https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHw7hcztgbtslirPWPBL4G_8r4XPlp_vr https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHw7hcztgbtslirPWPBL4.... That playlist isn’t complete for some reason; search FailRace’s other videos for “Survive the Hunt” to find the rest.
- dlwiest 7y agoThe first (public) web app was a tool for managing large games of Assassin, which we used for about a week and a half to run a class-wide game until someone complained to his parents and the school shut us down. We probably could have finished it out, but once people get scared and start dropping out of an in-progress game, it's hard to keep going.