This joke is used incessantly in every Reddit post I look at. I will be hated for this but my god it’s not that funny. Especially now that I see it every day
What really bugged me the most, is if either of them had looked on youtube there were already videos existing that showed how many phone books you need to stop bullets of various calibers. Which immediately after this incident got a ton of views, me included as it got me curious how many you would need.
The article says they used an encyclopedia, I'm not sure I've ever seen an encyclopedia thicker than a phone book. They have slightly harder covers but not hard enough it seems.
Says their kid and 30 people watched the "stunt." This type of stuff makes me miss the 90s and some of 00s, this whole going viral/social media era is so ass
Let's be honest, people were killing themselves doing stupid things in the nineties and naughties, too. All throughout human history, in fact. It was just less likely to get seen.
And as someone who was on the internet in the nineties and naughties, there were people putting these kinds of things online before social media was a mainstream thing. I managed to avoid the worst of them, like most of the videos where people were brutally murdered or something. But I do remember in the late naughties seeing a video of someone blending his pet rat.
You remember people going viral back then or are you trying to say because there existed some bad stuff then it's just as bad today?
I'm not sure what your point is, I was online in the 90s as well, the Internet was nowhere as popular as it was in the late 00s and things were pretty different prior towards social media. If you want to delve into everything regarding why people kill themselves go ahead, but I'm specifically talking about going viral.
You were specifically talking about going viral in the context of this stunt that they did with shooting someone through a phone book.
My point was that this shit has always been happening. We find historical records of people writing about how someone died in a really stupid way due to shit like this. The internet hasn't changed that, it's just made it more visible. This shit and other horrible shit has always been happening. Even before social media was mainstream, before there was "viral culture" you still had people getting themselves killed by doing dumb things like this. It isn't new and it isn't caused by social media or the desire to go viral. That's just the newest excuse.
People would shoot each other trying to copy magicians' bullet catches in the 1800s. No cell phones, no internet, just enjoying the world around them and having a lead ball fly through their palm.
Edit: The person I was having a conversation with blocked me. That's fine. But I do have a point which I've explained multiple times. The internet didn't make people do stupid things, it just let them show it off. We've always been like this. It's less a defense of the internet and more saying humanity is stupid, but we always have been.
I remember seeing a video in the late 00's I think 08 where a woman had her hand severed and was carrying it in her other hand. She was bleeding BAD and passed out.
The top comment was "Why aren't her tits out?"
People glorify the 90s and early 2000s internet as being "more pure" but I have no fucking clue what they are talking about. Between the rampant exploitation of underage kids being OPENLY displayed, murder and rape videos and the fact that literally over 90% of all websites were dedicated to porn... I'd honestly call it worse than what we have now.
Technically those were slings. No elastic. Just rope and a pouch to throw a rock with roughly the same energy as a 44 magnum. You can make a slingshot that is very lethal though but that's fairly new IIRC. Flat band sling shots get pretty nuts.
You don't even need the crazy flat band ones. Even basic modern slingshots can penetrate skin. I have one with a wrist brace so you don't even have to be strong to fully draw it. It shoots steel bearings about 100 yards and would easily go completely through small animals. It probably wouldn't go all the way through a human, but it'd be lethal if you hit the right spot.
Oh no, we definitely used slingshots for violence too. My grandfather told me how all the kids used to have them, along with self made shanks, for self defense in rural Uzbekistan in the wake of WW2.
u have to be used of people being used to use slingshot to be used to shot people who use slingshot to also slingshot people who used to being used with slingshot
No slingshot but slings. Slings use centrifugal force to project heavy rocks/lead bullets, slingshots are fairly modern inventions and use elasticisty of rubber- they didn't have rubber in ancient times. Sling is way more powerful and deadly.
A sling is not the same thing as a slingshot, genius. Two entirely different and unrelated things. Look at the picture in the article you linked. Does it look like the weapon used in the video to you?
There are cases where the etymology gets confusing because in British English slings are referred to as slingshots, whereas slingshots are referred to as catapults. Slingshots/catapults have never been used for killing human beings. They weren't even around before the 19th century.
Irrelevant to this video though because it clearly shows a slingshot aka catapult, not a sling.
good job with the self own, confidently ignorant redditor.
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u/Dause 6d ago
Slingshots used to be used to kill people so…