Death of Hitchbot. Do Americans just suck ass?

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/hitch...

I was going to post this in Everything Else, but part of me really wants to ask the question. Do Americans have an empathy deficit that allows for crap like this to happen? Is this attitude reflected in the way we treat other people and animals or is this just an unfortunate one off?

Philly fans... they hate Santa Claus and robots.

Yeah.. I was going to post that.. no way was that bot making it out of Philly alive.

It only takes one or two sh*theads to break this. Most teenagers in America have cars, and teenagers are almost incapable of not being sh*theads. Considering the Northeast is home to roughly 55 million people the chance of two teenaged sh*theads with a car coming across the thing approach 100%.

In other words it's not that Americans suck ass more than anyone else, but there are more cars and more people so the ass-suckers really get around.

I did have a sardonic chuckle when I saw it all went bad in Philly. Unfortunate as they can be for the rest of the population stereotypes don't form themselves.

imbiginjapan wrote:

It only takes one or two sh*theads to break this. Most teenagers in America have cars, and teenagers are almost incapable of not being sh*theads. Considering the Northeast is home to roughly 55 million people the chance of two teenaged sh*theads with a car coming across the thing approach 100%.

If only it was just the teenagers that acted like that...

Do fewer teenagers drive in Canada? That is where Hitchbot is from.

imbiginjapan wrote:

It only takes one or two sh*theads to break this. Most teenagers in America have cars, and teenagers are almost incapable of not being sh*theads. Considering the Northeast is home to roughly 55 million people the chance of two teenaged sh*theads with a car coming across the thing approach 100%.

In other words it's not that Americans suck ass more than anyone else, but there are more cars and more people so the ass-suckers really get around.

I did have a sardonic chuckle when I saw it all went bad in Philly. Unfortunate as they can be for the rest of the population stereotypes don't form themselves.

I think this is the main point. Not only is the US a big place, but it has over 330 million people in it. That's a lot higher chance of running into an idiot in a high traffic highly populated area.

I bet it would not make it through any other country over 100 million in population except maybe Japan.

Americans don't suck ass just because the robot got waylaid in Philly. Philly sucks ass. America is a melting pot, and that particular fondue includes a lot of ass suckers.

The only thing this story needs to make it quintessentially American is body cam video of Hitchbot "resisting".

Of course he's wearing an Eagles jersey.

and he wasn't even a driver.

Is that outside Paddy's Pub?

Actually I believe the Hitchbot started in Mass, so it didn't get very far.

And yeah, Philly is a festering pool of assholes. But the same could be said of a lot of Northeastern cities.

And this is from someone who prefers to live in the Northeast.

Stele wrote:

Of course he's wearing an Eagles jersey.

Randall Cunnigham's jersey, to be precise.

Eagles fans, what can you say.

Rat Boy wrote:
Stele wrote:

Of course he's wearing an Eagles jersey.

Randall Cunnigham's jersey, to be precise.

lol. My Eagles fan friend said "the picture wasn't very clear. could be a disgruntled Tom Brady fan."

We are talking about the people who thrown snowballs at santa. Just saying.

onewild wrote:

We are talking about the people who thrown snowballs at santa. Just saying.

Hold on though, cause lets be real here.
f*ck SANTA

boogle wrote:
onewild wrote:

We are talking about the people who thrown snowballs at santa. Just saying.

Hold on though, cause lets be real here.
f*ck SANTA

Not on weeknights, boogle.

SallyNasty wrote:

Is that outside Paddy's Pub?

Omnibot and Ronny the robot are in grave danger.

So a counter-question would be, which other countries would Hitchbot have made it across without being destroyed? My theory is that the reason he survived cross-country trips in Canada and Germany because those countries have some of the most polite and law abiding citizens on the planet. There are plenty of countries that I visited as part of Uncle Sam's Adventure Club where Hitchbot would have been disassembled within minutes. And yes I'm including the UK. Most Brits I met were awesome but I saw my share of chavs who would have acted just like these Philly morons.

PS - I'm extremely sad that this happened in America. But I see it more as a reflection of our frat boy subculture than a reflection of most Americans or American society in general.

#NotAllAmericans

I don't know. I think it is pretty much consistent with an American "culture" that confuses narcissism for individuality. We are a culture that prides itself on its capacity for ignorance, arrogance, consumption, and disregard for consequences. So, at least to me, the fact that an American vandalized something that relied on public trust and participation is not just believable, but entirely predictable. The very concept of maliciously polluting (e.g.: rolling coal) as a gratuitous demonstration of expressive spite is, if not uniquely, certainly largely American. Open carry, as corrosive as it is to civil discourse, is seen as an American right. The waving of a flag of insurrection and terrorism is seen as "Southern heritage". This isn't just the coarsening of America, it is something far more sinister. It is almost a purposeful erosion of the currency of civil society.

Seth wrote:

#NotAllAmericans

#RobotLivesMatter

I dunno...several cities have out killed Philly at sporting events in the last few years..Eagles fans are looking fairly tame by comparison.

Yeah much as I love jumping on the seppo-bashing bandwagon, you get drunk violent entitled dicks like this absolutely everywhere. Hell I've lived in places where that wouldn't have been a bot he was stomping on, it'd have been a homeless beggar.

This is a crime right? Vandalism and/or public mischief? Perhaps theft if any parts were taken?

Of course as we edge closer to having to accept sentience existing in robots it could become a very very different sort of crime in the near future (although hitchbot wasn't that sort of bot anyway).

I thought hitchBOT (which sounds like a mechanized atheist) was adorable, but I also think this piece is amazing:

If our guileless, simpleton neighbors to the north wish to draw faces on their buckets and treat them like friends, the sparse population density of their pine-fresh taiga wilderness makes this a sad but understandable choice, but the United States is not a receptacle for twee Canadian garbage. It is a grownup land where the humans know each other and do not ameliorate the loneliness of car trips by picking up roadside litter and befriending it.

HitchBOT Was A Literal Pile Of Trash And Got What It Deserved

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

I thought hitchBOT (which sounds like a mechanized atheist) was adorable, but I also think this piece is amazing:

If our guileless, simpleton neighbors to the north wish to draw faces on their buckets and treat them like friends, the sparse population density of their pine-fresh taiga wilderness makes this a sad but understandable choice, but the United States is not a receptacle for twee Canadian garbage. It is a grownup land where the humans know each other and do not ameliorate the loneliness of car trips by picking up roadside litter and befriending it.

HitchBOT Was A Literal Pile Of Trash And Got What It Deserved

I agree on both points.

Maq wrote:

Yeah much as I love jumping on the seppo-bashing bandwagon, you get drunk violent entitled dicks like this absolutely everywhere. Hell I've lived in places where that wouldn't have been a bot he was stomping on, it'd have been a homeless beggar.

I think this is probably the truth of it. It was at least partially the luck of the draw. But it's still pretty funny that America was the country that destroyed it first and so quickly.