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This is the first I'd heard of it, being an American (if that's an OK excuse.) It is sad, and also would have seemed relatively harmless beforehand to me. To
by scintill76 12y ago
This is the first I'd heard of it, being an American (if that's an OK excuse.) It is sad, and also would have seemed relatively harmless beforehand to me.
To change from my original tone a bit, perhaps it is best to generalize the idea, that having fun at a stranger's confusion, behind the anonymity of a phone, is just too cruel and dangerous. You can't know what's going on in the lives of the people you call, and the consequences move out of your control when you hang up.
- vacri 12y agoIt was big in the media in Aus and the UK, but no real reason for it to be in the US. Radio prank calls are always painfully unfunny and usually humiliating. In this case the humiliation hit a person who was mentally ill and stressed. The fallout here in Australia was utterly predictable; contrite and teary disc jockeys, people baying for their blood, current affairs shows doing segments left, right, and center. Equally predictably, the hospital was trying to shift responsibility for improperly managing patient privacy. The annoying thing is that it took someone's death to show just how humiliating and terrifying being on the receiving end of these things is.