Goood Morning SuperForest!
Just now, I did something pretty silly. You see, I was in the kitchen and happened to notice a large pile of sparklers laying on the counter next to a roll of adhesive bandage, AND a lighter. I mean they were just sitting right next to each other…
30 seconds later I was out on the porch with my improvised SuperSparkler (trademark pending), which was the whole lot wrapped together with one sparkler sticking out to act as a fuse.
Luckily, I filmed it:
As you can see the SuperSparkler gets really hot really fast, prompting me to drop the fiery swine with the quickness.
Why did I do this? Thinking about it, I find that there are two main reasons: 1. It was awesome. 2. I was planning on sharing the results, whatever they were, with you SuperForesters at home.
Me trying something and reporting the results to you saves you from doing them without the key knowledge I have accrued, i.e. If you want to do this and DON’T want to burn your hand wear a heavy (FIREPROOF) glove, and have someplace safe to drop SuperSparkler when it ‘splodes, like a nice gravel driveway. Now you know. Now we both know. Double win!
And everyone who sees this video will know exactly what happens if you wrap 50 sparklers together and light them. This could potentially save a few folks from getting needlessly burned.
All this exploding and filming it made me think of the nature of catastrophe blogs like failblog, where endless videos of human calamity and suffering have been cataloged. I’ll admit that I have wandered there from time to time to get my fix of misery. And I felt both guilty and conflicted about it. After all what is positive about watching a bunch of videos of people hurting themselves?…
What I realized is that for every video of a human hurting themselves that gets put online, a far greater number will be dissuaded from performing a similar act and thus be kept out of harms way.
I would never, ever take a fragile, hollow object, fill it with flammable liquid, set it on fire, and then hit it with a stick or golf club. And that is because I have seen exactly what happens when that act is performed. (To save you from trying it I will happily share with you that the object explodes, showering the person swinging the club with hot, burning liquid.)
Here, watch: (Warning: blue language, hilarity)
The kid lived. He burned his foot, yes. Small price to pay for the millions (potentially) of kids who will see the video and NOT repeat that action. Why would you? Now you know what happens.
Nor will I ever again jump off of a tall structure into water. I have seen too many videos of people getting hurt doing that to ever risk it without serious forethought. I could list a hundred things that I will never, ever do, because I’ve seen what happens when other people do them and things go wrong.
This made me think: Every time a “failure” is captured on video and shared with the world, it becomes a win for everyone who sees it, and thus a retro-active win for all persons involved in the original video. Including fire melon kid! :)
Using simple reduction, we arrive at:
Failure + Internets = WIN!
So is there really such a thing as failure? Only if nobody is able to learn from it and thus are doomed to repeating the same mistakes ad nauseum. If the event is captured and shared and saves even a single person from repeating it and hurting themselves, then it is laughable to call the event a failure.
Every one video of a kid hitting himself in the treasures with a skateboard easily saved a hundred from repeating the mistake.
It seems that our species exposure to the internet and its information sharing tendencies is actually making us smarter, savvier, and dare I say it? Wiser?
Teh int3rnet5 iz making me smart3r!? Izzit tru3?
Can it be, SuperForest? Can it be?
Love to all,
Jackson
P.S. April, should we add “Put a video of yourself doing something stupid, (that no one has ever done before!)” on 100 Ways?
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