Boston "Attacked" by Men from the Moon

Yesterday afternoon, right about lunch time, a worker on the T noticed a small box with electronic diodes in the shape of a rectangular figure giving the finger. The device was hanging from an overpass near Sullivan Square Station in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston. The worker called 911 and reported the device. Soon thereafter, at about 1 PM, other calls were made to 911 reporting the existence of similar devices in places such as the Boston University Bridge and the New England Medical Center.

The city responded accordingly whenever strange electronic devices are found, by sending out the bomb squad. As more and more of these boxes were found across the city, more police were notified and the city was put on alert. The Coast Guard even shut down a large part of the Charles River basin.

As the devices were disassembled, dismantled, and some even destroyed, it became clear that the characters on the boxes were Mooninites from Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

On blogs across the country, people began to realize that this was part of an advertising campaign. The boxes had been in these locations for three weeks now, lighting up at night in public places to promote the show and cause a buzz about it. This type of advertising is known as both guerrilla advertising, and viral advertising. Guerrilla advertising is essentially doing something that flies under the radar of traditional advertising (i.e. commercials, billboards) but still manages to get a good deal of attention. Viral advertising is an attempt to spread good word of mouth about a product or event.

At about 5 PM, Time Warner, which owns Cartoon Network, announced that the devices belonged to them. They informed law enforcement officials in Boston, as well as in 9 other major cities, of the locations of these devices. They then issued an apology and tried to explain the purpose behind the devices.

I didn't know about any of this until about 4 PM, when Cav called me to tell me to watch what was going on. I turned between CNN and FoxNews, and when I saw the picture of the Mooninite Ignignokt flipping off passersby on a little electronic device, I assumed it was some sort of prank done by MIT kids or something. The high tech nature of the devices, and their strategic placement throughout the city was indicative of a well though out plan done by intelligent people. MIT is known both for its pranks, and intelligent people.

During a commercial on CNN, I flipped to FoxNews. Shepherd Smith was talking over a live feed from WFXT Fox 25 in Boston. When pictures of the Mooninite devices were shown, host Shep Smith (who has the best news voice in the world if you ask me) tried describing the cartoon show to his viewers.

"It's a stoner show"

I almost fell down laughing. See, Aqua Teen is a very bizarre show. It stars a milk shake, a box of french fries, and a meatball. It often features it's characters dying in an episode, has no continuity, and when things are dropped on the ground, they inexplicably explode. It's not a typical cartoon. But this is the appeal of the show. I've been watching Aqua Teen for about 4 years, and I'd hardly call myself a stoner. Although, I do know people who watch and smoke pot. Then again, some people probably smoke pot and then watch Shep Smith on FNC.

Anyway, Smith went on to point out that Boston is home to over 250,000 college students. He theorized that some "stoner college kids" did this as a prank, trying to hoax a terror attack.

First of all, this was just bad journalism. You shouldn't be hypothesizing about a news story as it develops. You can be more subtle about it and maybe say "police suspect this is a hoax perpetrated by college students" by to come up with a theoretical explanation for a story based on nothing but an exceedingly limited knowledge of a television show, and the abundance of college kids in Boston is just crappy journalism.

Second of all, it wasn't stoner college kids, it was a massively large global multimedia corporation that wound up doing this. Ironically, "stoner college kids" on their blogs knew this was an advertising campaign hours before the bumbling behemoths of traditional media like CNN or FoxNews could figure it out. Ironically, CNN is owned by the company that did this, but still didn't know it! This just shows the overwhelming size of a media company like Time Warner, where apparently the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

So once it was apparent that this was a multi-city guerrilla ad campaign, I thought the issue would die. But in Boston, there has to be a scapegoat. There just has to be. This is the city in which The Scarlet Leeter is set, and where Puritans reigned for nearly a century. This is a city known for blaming the Curse of the Bambino for its teams problems, and not a lack of pitching. The City of Boston has a nasty habit of selecting one person to blame or worship for good things and bad, respectively.

The scapegoat is Time Warner.

Last night, two of the artists who helped put up the devices were arrested for charges such as
"placing hoax devices." This is a felonious charge with a prison sentence of 20 years PER DEVICE. There were over 10 devices found.

But here's the thing, these are not hoax devices. These were never meant to look like bombs, they were simply mistaken for bombs. Now, I can understand if you're walking down the street and you see a little black box nestled under a bridge, and you call 911. Then I can understand if you're the BPD, you get a 911 call about a suspicious device, and you mobilize everyone and tirelessly seek and dismantle these devices. And I can understand being a pissed off citizen because the bridges between Boston and Cambridge were closed, and I-93 was shut down.

But I don't see much of a crime being perpetrated here. Could you imagine such an uproar from Menino and Deval Patrick over something like graffiti? If these advertisements were placed illegally, without a permit or permission, then the people responsible should pay a fine as if they had illegally put up a small billboard, or placed stickers on public property. Hell, I see this shit all the time in Boston AND Ithaca. You see these little stickers advertising something on a light-post or something.

I don't see how you can call these things "hoax devices" but every politician moaning about it in Boston, and every editorialist in the Boston papers is calling these things precisely that. If this is the case, it's a pretty shitty hoax. Nobody called 911 about it for over 2 weeks, and in the 9 other cities, nobody called 911, period. Then a few hours into the situation, Time Warner told the police exactly where to find the other devices.

I'm not going to say that the BPD overreacted. On the contrary, I think their reaction was perfect to what was an unknown situation. It is very easy, in retrospect, to laugh about the idea of cops in full bomb squad gear dismantling advertisements, but hindsight is always 20/20.

I do, however, think that the responses by Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick are a bit harsh. I think they don't understand what the problem was, and are simply attacking it. The general claim is that the advertisements should have shown more "sensitivity" to this post 9/11 world. however, people in New York (you know, where 9/11 was most damaging) didn't seem to be very bothered by these advertisements. Nor did folks in Seattle, Austin, Philly, Portland, etc. I think Boston needs to analyze itself and try to figure out why it reacted so strongly to this. I also think the other cities need to ask themselves why they didn't react so strongly.

Now, it was a very expensive day. Some estimates say that the incident cost law enforcement agencies a combined $500,000. This is a believable sum, and it's pretty large. But I don't think Time Warner should be held responsible for this money, at least not all of it. Because, in the end, they didn't CAUSE this panic. Even though the simple-minded pundits of the Globe and WCVB are simplifying things this way, the situation is much more complex. You had a new form of advertising that sparked one panic, which inevitably sparked another. People didn't know what it was, so they dealt with it as if it was the worst thing it could be: a bomb.

In the end, the City of Boston is going to have to take this $500,000 hit, and try to learn from the experience. The good news is that first responders did a very good job of responding first.