Perhaps you people need to get out and take a look around. That’s right. Get off your lazy butt, get out the door, and have a look around.

What I see is *not* good reasoning, but emotional hyperbol, based on half-truths gleaned from an entertainment-oriented show. It is clear that these are not real concerns for the people you mention, but your reaction to hide your own insecurities. Because YOU don’t have the guts to get out and have some clean fun, you seem to think that it’s your place to stop everyone else.

I can’t comment on the case about Ted specifically, but I have read virtually all the mission reports. Did you bother to look at GoPs reaction and comments? I doubt it. You know why I doubt it? Because they POSTED POSITIVE COMMENTS!! THEY ENJOYED IT!

DAMN!

People aren’t ALL as fragile as you. Are you familiar with the way your immune system works? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It’s true. Every time you recover from an illness, your immune system becomes stronger. You keep telling people to stop doing things because of "what ifs" and society becomes weaker, as people become less able to handle the unusual in the environment around them. Eventually you’ll have to ban all human interaction, in case you inadvertedly pass on a bacteria they may not be immune to, or offend them unknowingly and cause long-term damage. In the end, you get a society not unlike in the movie "Equilibrium" – entirely sterile.

What fun.

So, I’m sorry, but "I’d be offended, so you shouldn’t be allowed to do that" just doesn’t work. You don’t like what’s going on around you? Do what a NORMAL person does. What? Oh yes, you aren’t familiar with that, are you? They walk away. Easily solved.

Grow up, and find a cause that NEEDS your support. Don’t waste your time here by complaining. Constructive criticism is fine, but your time is better spent flaming PETA for "denying animals the right to die to become food if they wish" than flaming people here.

No, I’m not a part of this group. Not being able to be in this group is probably the only reason I would ever wish that I lived in the USA…

IE: Rock on! If I get any new ideas, I shall send them your way!

Of course the highest aim would be to do pranks that have purely wondrous and brilliant positive effects on the lives of everyone involved, while still being absolutely humorous, and I think that’s where yr headed.
Keep on!

One point though, IE actually HAS done a mission where the singled out someone recently– see last summer’s beautiful Romantic Comedy Cab. That one turned out really well, and the guy hasn’t discovered it was a prank yet, as far as I can tell. That was the point with Ted and GOP as well. In fact, Ted didn’t discover it was a prank until TAL called him. He had never been to this site! GOP found the site very quickly, but you can read in the mission report that they were figuring it would take months for GOP to find it… just so happens that the mission was very popular and forwarded around the internet very quickly.

I’m not trying to justify anyone’s past actions. I’m trying to say that I understand that IE’s intentions were never to hurt or bully anyone, as people seem to think. When I brought up the time that has passed since these two missions, I wasn’t trying to say “he should be over it by now,” I’m saying that in the past year and a half, IE has not done any missions like this.

What really bothers me about all this is the underlying implication that no one should do anything unexpected or out of the ordinary in public because SOMEONE might get offended or upset.

People who only know about IE through TAL have the impression that GoP was a victim because Ira Glass introduces the mission by saying it went “terribly, terribly wrong.” But the interviews that follow that don’t support that judgement. The band members say things like “We got Punk’d” and “It was really odd” and “we answered it back with something real and at that point everybody in the room was on the same page.” The person who was the most upset by it was Chris, the guitarist, and even he later says that it was A GIFT that helped him get over his childhood insecurities. That sounds like a good step for someone who aspires to be a rockstar.

Does Ira Glass admit that it didn’t go terribly, terribly wrong afterall? No, he goes on to introduce the Ted’s Birthday mission by saying “But not everybody’s ready to make themselves at home in Charlie’s world. Some people prefer their life just the way it is.” This makes it sound a lot more sinister than it was ever meant to be. Later, after interviewing Charlie and Christopher (aka “Ted”), Ira Glass makes the claim that Christopher only pretended to enjoy the experience (if that’s true, why didn’t Chris say it himself?) and then he goes on to say that IE is DANGEROUS because it want’s people to leave their reality and join Charlie’s. That conclusion is completely absurd.

Please keep in mind: TAL is entertainment, too. Listen critically. Don’t believe everything that radio hosts say. Some of the “facts” have been manipulated to give the story greater impact.