Looking for the perfect gift for that enviro-weenie in your life? Everybody knows one - not necessarily an environmental activist, maybe just someone with no life who enjoys ratting out their fellow man at every opportunity. Well, look no further - the eco-snoop is here: a phone app that enables you to post photos of environmental transgressions directly to a website (frequented by other losers with no lives) where you can all obsess about the evil cleaning lady leaving the lights on in the closet in some office building.
If you type in eco-snoop on YouTube, you'll get to watch an enlightening video featuring some smarmy skank with a bad makeup job telling you how to bust eco-crime in your community. Lovely. What kind of a lame-brained waste of skin would spend their time patrolling their neighborhood on a Friday night, looking for dripping taps and redundant porch lights? Hmm, I'm guessing someone with the self-esteem of a cabbage and no date.
How insane is this? How did we as a society get so pathetic that the only way some people have left to feel valid is by trying to give themselves some sort of perceived authority as enviro-enforcers? I can only imagine the interesting scenarios that would ensue if people were to actually follow the advice given on the video. Just take the photo into the offending business, Miss Skankleton suggests, they are probably not even aware of the problem and will be only too happy to fix it. Yes, I'm sure the manager would be just thrilled to be interrupted at work by some smelly permanently-unemployed self-righteous planet-saver explaining to him how he could run his business more efficiently. In fact, he would probably be so grateful for the input that he'd open a free can of whup-ass and provide a handy styrofoam container to take their teeth home in. Good God - the unmitigated GALL of it!
I shouldn't be surprised - this trend has been gaining popularity, especially with the younger set. Kids have been getting indoctrinated right and left (mostly left) to nag, whine, pester and rat on behalf of the eco-freaks. Anthony Watts, on his most excellent website wattsupwiththat.com, has an article (2008/07/27) about Climate Cops - a club for kids who have had the misfortune of being born (or exposed) to misguided environmental nitwits. He shows excerpts from an ad in a British newspaper which exhorts children to not only investigate their own families for "climate crimes", writing reports and keeping files on "cases", but also to spy on the homes of relatives and school friends. They are instructed to check back on cases periodically to make sure no one slips back into their wasteful ways. The very idea of some snot-nosed brat from down the street telling me to stop idling my car would be laughable if it weren't for the chilling similarity to the campaign mounted by a certain deranged little fellow with a funny moustache in order to transfer children's allegiance from their parents to the state.
I wish they'd leave the kids alone, a five-year-old should not have to worry about his carbon footprint or that Santa may not get to his house because humans are causing global warming and melting the North Pole. This was the theme of a kid's Christmas video propaganda series on the popular Build-A-Bear website, until backlash from outraged parents forced them to remove the video and issue an apology. Kids today are constantly bombarded with lies about dying animals and our imminent destruction in the fiery CO2-induced hell caused by their parent's addiction to nasty things like driving them to soccer practice. Talk about growing up with a guilt trip, as if kids don't despise us enough when they become teenagers - why give them any reason to start sooner? This undermining of parental authority is one of the most disturbing aspects of the green movement, along with the promotion of products like the rat-a-phone which encourages people to go around tattling on their neighbors and local businesses.
I guess there's a whole crew of modern-day Barney Fifes out there now, with their imaginary badges and no bullets, keeping an electronic eye on the rest of us and feeling like heros. Adolf would be proud.
