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Did you get the idea for the name of the product from The Wire?
by douglasisshiny 13y ago
Did you get the idea for the name of the product from The Wire?
- rdegges 13y agoHah, no. Myself and my partner both work in the telephony industry, and are familiar with the name 'burner phone' (sounds kind of cool, usually refers to those spy phones that get thrown away in movies).
- arkades 13y agoThe wire didn't coin the term. Burners have been burners for... well, I've been familiar with it since the 80s, so at least 3 decades now.
- lostlogin 13y agoWhat a great show. And interestingly, despite being fictional, the point where the dealers failed was the collection of the phones - just the issue discussed above. I recall that phones were supposed to be bought from stores all over the place, but a lazy gang member kept getting all of them from one source.
- douglasisshiny 13y agoThat was the case, but it got worse. Lester and McNulty set him up with a great deal on the phones.
- douglasisshiny 13y agoWhile I haven't heard the term burner phone outside of The Wire, I assumed it had been a real term since the writers were so close to these subjects. What I meant (more precisely) was that, from my perspective, The Wire popularized the term for a broader, non-burner purchasing audience.