02.15.07
Overreactions and Tactical Charlie Foxtrot
While my friend Joral over at Wandering In Life beats me to the witty punch with his post “A Sign of the Times“, I decide to tackle the Boston Mooninite Scare from a different angle: a tactical one.
This is gonna be a short one, folks. Couple reasons for that:
- I’m having a hard time going for the full transparency while keeping it topical. School is pain right now.
- I want to make sure I get this post up before I start mucking about with my theme; I can spend days in code and don’t want to forget this post.
In other words, I hope you can see this, because I’m doing it as hard as I can.
So, with that said, let’s see what we have. We have some shoddy LED boards with our good friend Ignignokt flipping us the bird, presumably as hard as he can (since we can see it). We have Interference telling their hired hands to clam up, and calling Turner rather than trying to clear the air with authorities. We have a police reaction, we have a mayor calling the action unconscionable, and we have a veritable media circus, three rings, dancing elephants, the whole kit’n'kaboodle. We have a $2M payment from Turner, a public apology, and the resignation of Jim Samples.
Note what we don’t have here. We don’t have a clear explanation for why Interference decided that crudely-built electronic devices stuck in random public locations was a great idea for an ad campaign. We don’t have a clear explanation for why Interference decided to let the situation escalate before breaking the story themselves. And we don’t have a statement from Interference that even indicates that they did not intend the media furor. All of this leads me to one conclusion, thinking tactically, logically, and viscerally:
Boston’s reaction was an intended side-effect. I won’t deny that Boston (that being the city officials) overreacted, nor am I claiming that Boston was specifically targeted to be the “freakout city”, but there’s a sneaking suspicion that Interference knew that at least one of their target cities would spaz. And when they spazzed, the incident would be all over every bit of media - newspapers, radio, TV, even the blogosphere has gone nuts. Fake pipe bombs and shaky timelines aside, I feel that this was a calculated and anticipated risk on the part of Interference. They wanted someone to flip out, so they made no effort to coordinate with authorities, to secure permission for their locations, or to instruct the people placing the devices not to use locations that might be considered “prime terror targets”. This is speculation on my part, yes, but it’s not entirely unfounded. I’ll say it again: Boston’s reaction was an intended side-effect of the ATHF ad campaign.
FULL DISCLOSURE: Rick Wilcox is, in fact, an ATHF fan. Rick Wilcox is the Moon Master. No, you cannot use his pool.