"... or worse: someone else."
This is such an insulting suffix -- and it's so right on the money.
Everyone remembers those drunk driving PSAs: "you could fatally injure yourself. Or worse: someone else." The implication is that you pathetic slobs who drink and drive would rightly prefer to die a wretched death than live with the guilt of having killed some random stranger that didn't know enough to get out from in front of a wildly swerving vehicle.
This is stupid logic, and in this country it fits.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to murder anyone (or manslaughter them for that matter), and I'm not sucking down šljiva looking to drive into a family of eight tonight either. I don't want to be guilty of something like that and I do hate guilt.
Know what I hate worse? Being dead.
Apparently we're not all wired this way. Thanks to this nation's founding bouillabaisse of bizarro religions that were too weird to be allowed to stay wherever they were imported from, we're a self-flagellating guilt-addicted people that are reflexively servile as a result.
To show how appropriate this idiotic line of thinking is, I offer the following. As a person that, among other things, expresses risk and details threats for a living, I've been working the stupid phrase "or worse: someone else" into casual business chat for almost a decade. Cuz it's funny. Hell, some of you have seen and heard me do this. Somewhere along the road I started to notice commonalities in the reactions of those that I hit with it. Below are a summary of contexts and reactions that you might find interesting (general impressions mostly, only the HR response was word for word).
Context
Reaction
"So yeah, you don't want to make sudden movements around a cop like that, cuz the skittish fuck could up and shoot you. Or worse: someone else."
Slightly heavier breathing "Oh my God I never thought of it that way. That would be horrible. Oh God."
"Skinny Puppy concerts smell like a pile of dogshit, but you don't want to complain about it too loudly around the larger punk rockers, they could take a swing at you. Or worse: someone else."
Looks around wildly "Woa! That would suck. I'd hate to be the person that caused that."
"So in the future you should be aware that Corporate IT Security and Human Resources regularly review web surfing logs, and when you Google for "big boobs" we do see that and we will pay you a visit. Any offense after your first warning could cause HR to let you go. Or worse: someone else."
Wide eyes, confused look "Oh crap, I mean. How? Why would they think -- Shit dude I am SO VERY SORRY. Nobody else is getting written up for what I did are they? Oh shit."
"So this is really important that you understand this clearly: strict compliance with the aforementioned standards will not only reduce your regulatory risk, but also remove some of the low-hanging fruit for which computer hackers routinely search. Failure to do so can result in regulatory bodies fining you and hackers finding you. Or worse: someone else."
VERY confused looks -- all eyes shift toward Senior Legal Counsel "How does this affect our liability? Would we be bound to disclose the breach of data from someone else's systems?" Eyes back to me "How would someone else's risk show up as our own audit finding?"
Now before you think I'm an evil bastard with no regard for my job or others' feelings: stupid behavior results in risk to others on a regular basis. The first two insinuations actually happen a lot. The last is a common problem with IT shops that don't implement egress filtering as a defensive layer. These aren't far fetched scenarios that I, in my reckless youth, felt compelled to suggest. But the value in their responses is in that, to the last soul, their first reaction was to clamor for a way to avoid the guilt of posing risk to unnamed others.
An optimist might see this as a kind of altruism, and optimists have every right to be as wrong as the next guy. In a world where the government and the media hose us down with their prescriptions for our own self-image, we can't afford to not point at guilt-fueled stupidity and call it what it is.
Everyone remembers those drunk driving PSAs: "you could fatally injure yourself. Or worse: someone else." The implication is that you pathetic slobs who drink and drive would rightly prefer to die a wretched death than live with the guilt of having killed some random stranger that didn't know enough to get out from in front of a wildly swerving vehicle.
This is stupid logic, and in this country it fits.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to murder anyone (or manslaughter them for that matter), and I'm not sucking down šljiva looking to drive into a family of eight tonight either. I don't want to be guilty of something like that and I do hate guilt.
Know what I hate worse? Being dead.
Apparently we're not all wired this way. Thanks to this nation's founding bouillabaisse of bizarro religions that were too weird to be allowed to stay wherever they were imported from, we're a self-flagellating guilt-addicted people that are reflexively servile as a result.
To show how appropriate this idiotic line of thinking is, I offer the following. As a person that, among other things, expresses risk and details threats for a living, I've been working the stupid phrase "or worse: someone else" into casual business chat for almost a decade. Cuz it's funny. Hell, some of you have seen and heard me do this. Somewhere along the road I started to notice commonalities in the reactions of those that I hit with it. Below are a summary of contexts and reactions that you might find interesting (general impressions mostly, only the HR response was word for word).
Context
Reaction
"So yeah, you don't want to make sudden movements around a cop like that, cuz the skittish fuck could up and shoot you. Or worse: someone else."
Slightly heavier breathing "Oh my God I never thought of it that way. That would be horrible. Oh God."
"Skinny Puppy concerts smell like a pile of dogshit, but you don't want to complain about it too loudly around the larger punk rockers, they could take a swing at you. Or worse: someone else."
Looks around wildly "Woa! That would suck. I'd hate to be the person that caused that."
"So in the future you should be aware that Corporate IT Security and Human Resources regularly review web surfing logs, and when you Google for "big boobs" we do see that and we will pay you a visit. Any offense after your first warning could cause HR to let you go. Or worse: someone else."
Wide eyes, confused look "Oh crap, I mean. How? Why would they think -- Shit dude I am SO VERY SORRY. Nobody else is getting written up for what I did are they? Oh shit."
"So this is really important that you understand this clearly: strict compliance with the aforementioned standards will not only reduce your regulatory risk, but also remove some of the low-hanging fruit for which computer hackers routinely search. Failure to do so can result in regulatory bodies fining you and hackers finding you. Or worse: someone else."
VERY confused looks -- all eyes shift toward Senior Legal Counsel "How does this affect our liability? Would we be bound to disclose the breach of data from someone else's systems?" Eyes back to me "How would someone else's risk show up as our own audit finding?"
Now before you think I'm an evil bastard with no regard for my job or others' feelings: stupid behavior results in risk to others on a regular basis. The first two insinuations actually happen a lot. The last is a common problem with IT shops that don't implement egress filtering as a defensive layer. These aren't far fetched scenarios that I, in my reckless youth, felt compelled to suggest. But the value in their responses is in that, to the last soul, their first reaction was to clamor for a way to avoid the guilt of posing risk to unnamed others.
An optimist might see this as a kind of altruism, and optimists have every right to be as wrong as the next guy. In a world where the government and the media hose us down with their prescriptions for our own self-image, we can't afford to not point at guilt-fueled stupidity and call it what it is.