Crappy parking app design fiction

The Village presents a video design fiction (?) for "Parking Douche," an app that lets you photograph the number plates of crappily parked cars in your neighborhood (in Russia) and submit them to a database. The app then buys hyper-geo-targeted ads that block the text on the websites being read by people in the same neighbourhood as the badly parked cars. The ads can't be dismissed until you share them on social media. Basically: if you park like a dick, then everyone who lives or works nearby will not be able to read the Web until they've seen and shared a picture of your dickishness.

Parking Douche (via Kottke)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: automotive • Funny • mobile • russia • urban theory • video

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morcheeba

As much as I detest bad parkers, I would refuse to visit any website that requires me to post information from their advertisers on my facebook feed.
Jake0748

LOLWHUT?? I don’t even… wtf? What’s the point? Sounds too complicated (and, rather dickish in itself).
- s2redux
  
  Just for scale, here’s an example of poor parking treated with uncomplicated dickish-ness (or awesomeness; take your pick).
voiceinthedistance

Fighting douchebaggery with more douchebaggery is sure to start another arms race. Please . . . NO.
http://grumer.org/ Avram Grumer

I missed a step. How do they get the banners to block websites? Can they do that reliably with ad buys? Are ad-driven sites that eager to drive their customers away that they’ll render their content unreadable for advertisers? Is this something I miss out on by using an ad blocker?
- http://twitter.com/ethanwc ethanwc
  
  I think this is all concept, zero execution.
  - http://www.facebook.com/kevin.m.79 Kevin M
    
    And the answer is yes, an incredibly large number of sites are perfectly fine with that. Almost every newspaper site, for example, allows adds to cover the material until you do something (though usually its just closing the ad)
John Maple

Russians are some of the naughtiest people. I salute them.
flickerKuu

I hear a brick through the window is easier and more effective.
someguyyouvenevermet

Hard to understand how someone can possibly think it’s a good idea to force people to share something on Facebook.
corydodt

Even if any of this was possible or a good idea, I hate knowing that half the “crappy parking jobs” out there are actually a side effect of an original crappy parking job. In other words: if you park next to a dick, you end up parked like a dick. Everyone after you follows suit. I just shrug most of the time when I see crappy parking these days.
http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

I encourage all commentators above to invest in the ‘Demolish Serious Culture’ t-shirt advertised on the right hand side of the page. It may help you all feel more comfortable about treating jokes as jokes.

</Serious>

*Puts on T-Shirt*
- CH
  
  I’m more into funny jokes.
http://profile.yahoo.com/3BCX6FVYWHPKDQJTWXKTKWEZXA sean

similar story I shot yesterday….. you park stupid….. http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/nj-man-posts-pictures-of-illegally-parked-cars
Yaniv Steiner

annoy users when surfing to stop annoying people parking in annoying places… Recursion is a wonderful (yet annoying) thing.
http://newnumber6.livejournal.com Peter

I know this seems like more dickishness, but there’s a solution.

See, people who put ads up that block what we’re trying to look at until we share something on Facebook?

Why, we find them, abduct them, attach electrodes to their genitals and give them a 10 second jolt for each person who saw the ads.

We still haven’t figured out what we do with the dickish people who’ll abduct people and subject them to torture for flimsy reasons. Probably put them in charge of countries.
http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers

“Design fiction” seems to be the new “curated” and “artisanal”.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Sandy-Ogilvy/1565315733 Sandy Ogilvy

I just love that the word douche is now just a run of the mill insult. Its really a disgusting sophomoric thing to call someone. You know like “Hey, your a plastic bottle filled with vinegar and water that a woman sticks up her hoo ha.” I think when I first started hearing it I was in Jr. High and it came from some of the biggest douches on record. Their excuse was that they were all of fourteen.
- http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers
  
  Considering that a douche is an unnecessary and harmful thing, it’s apt for use as an insult.
http://benjscott.com thunderhammer

Used to be you just slapped one of these stickers on their car:
http://www.threadless.com/product/187/I_Park_Like_an_Idiot

BTW, the original version of that sticker said “asshole” instead of “idiot”
- anticonnor
  
  I prefer to use some of the more insane bumper stickers from this site… and they’re free! http://www.christianbumpersticker.org/