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Comment by magashna | Hacker News Reader

It's the equivalent of local news on the spot interviews. They always look for the dopiest idiots because it makes for great TV. For some reason online they've gone the other way and try and use them as a legitimate source. The habit of using @fuckstick as a source needs to die off.

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I showed up at the scene of a (small) plane crash yesterday hoping to go for a hike. Wasn't sure what the fuss was about, so pulled my phone out to check local news. Within seconds, a reporter for a local news channel was tapping on my window. I rolled it down, he told me there was a plane crash, and asked if I'd like to share my thoughts on camera.

Um, no? How could I _possibly_ have anything intelligent to say about this?

And then it hit me... this is why local news is so crazy. Because the people who end up interviewed on TV are the types of people who _don't_ realize they have nothing intelligent to say, or who are self-absorbed enough to want to get on TV however they can.

Needless to say, I didn't do the interview.

I'm always astonished (slow learner or beginner's mind, you decide) at the Q&A Amazon section Amazon offers for its products when I see how many "I don't know" answers there are. Someone posts a question, "Does it list an artificial sweetener as one of its ingredients?", and several people will always answer, "I'm sorry, I don't know," "I have no idea, I don't own this product" etc. What?! Do all of these people somehow imagine that every posted request for info is being personally directed at them? Are these the people I'm standing in line with at the DMV? Do they all think I'm the crazy one? (Am I?)

Juxtapose this with the local news interviews and it all makes a strange sort of sense....

Yes, because Amazon emails those questions to you directly if you've bought the product before. Sometimes the questions are very specific, thus "I don't know"

To be fair the crazy Amazon responses are at least partially due to Amazon[1] but I do think it's still kind of nuts to respond. I always picture my Grandma as the person answering because she seems to think every email has been sent with as much thought and care as a hand written letter.

Interesting r/mildlyinfuriating thread[2] about it.

[1] https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/66739/amazon-que...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/4200oz/w...

Or people who want their 15 minutes.

"They climbin' in yo windows" "Whistle tips go woo woo" "Ain't nobody got time for that" "they had us the first half, I'm not gonna lie" Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker etc

Are you sure all those people wanted their 15 minutes? I think at least some of them were genuinely responding to reporters, and it was society that turned their behaviors into phenomena.

Maybe, I"m just trying to come up with some read that's more charitable than "they're all too stupid to know they don't have anything intelligent to say"...which is basically what OP was saying.

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