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There's An App For That
"Shit, Eric," Trent says, "ain't no time to be fiddling with your phone."
"Yeah, well," I say. "America. What a fucking country. Come look at this." I tap the screen. "The cops are responding to a domestic violence call half a mile down Pine. Who the hell beats their wife at three-fucking-thirty in the morning on a Tuesday?"
Roger rolls his eyes and mimes a limp wrist at me, exaggerating his New England accent. "It's 2018, dah-ling. You cahn't be prej-u-diced like that. Maybe he's beating his hus-band."
Trent scowls. "Just as fucking late for us. Focus, assholes. I wanna go home."
"Calm your tits," I say, and tap on the icon to expand the report. It loads audio and I listen for a second or two. "Nah, she's a she. Or a trap."
Roger snorts and returns to his work. "Seriously, you're snooping in on 911 calls?"
"In real time," I say with a hand flourish.
"Miracle of the modern Internet."
"Miracle of the modern world, fam. The app's called Vigilante. They posted some manifesto a year or two back about how—" I hit the About tab— "quote, 'complete law enforcement transparency can reduce bias and injustice', un-quote. And now here we are, assholes like us listening in as some bitch bawls about her bae."
"Fuckin' Eric the poet over there," Trent growls.
Roger ignores him too. "Still, you have to figure Black Lives Matter was all over that, or some such thing. I can't imagine they'd be around if they hadn't gotten some good press."
"Some accountability BS," I say. "All the suburban housewives flipped their shit when they tried to shut it down. Wanted to know the cops were responding quickly to their neighborhoods. And I read some article about home buyers checking out the call history near places they wanted to buy."
Trent finally gives in and joins the conversation. "Wait, Vigilante? Ain't that the one some of the skinheads were usin' to check for black crime and go beat the shit out of 'em before the cops arrived?"
"Oh, come now, there's a few bad apples in every barrel," Roger says. "I think we can all agree that the benefits of this application outweigh such abuses."
The app chirps. A dot appears just a few pixels from our map position.
"Speak of the devil," I say, picking my sack back up. "Guys, we're done here."
"Fuck," Trent says, sweeping the jewelry box into his bag. "Fuckin' figures."
I hold the phone up to my ear for a few moments. "Northern neighbor seeing strange lights here after her dog started barking. Good thing we parked on the south side. We'll have six minutes of driving before the cops are on the scene."
"What if they reassign the cops listening to Queen Bitch?" Roger says, disconnecting a laptop from its peripherals.
"Good point. We should drive east out of here, then pull over about two miles out and kill the lights till we're sure we've got a clean shot to the interstate."
Trent chuckles as we leave. "Miracle of the modern fucking world."
"Yeah, well," I say. "America. What a fucking country. Come look at this." I tap the screen. "The cops are responding to a domestic violence call half a mile down Pine. Who the hell beats their wife at three-fucking-thirty in the morning on a Tuesday?"
Roger rolls his eyes and mimes a limp wrist at me, exaggerating his New England accent. "It's 2018, dah-ling. You cahn't be prej-u-diced like that. Maybe he's beating his hus-band."
Trent scowls. "Just as fucking late for us. Focus, assholes. I wanna go home."
"Calm your tits," I say, and tap on the icon to expand the report. It loads audio and I listen for a second or two. "Nah, she's a she. Or a trap."
Roger snorts and returns to his work. "Seriously, you're snooping in on 911 calls?"
"In real time," I say with a hand flourish.
"Miracle of the modern Internet."
"Miracle of the modern world, fam. The app's called Vigilante. They posted some manifesto a year or two back about how—" I hit the About tab— "quote, 'complete law enforcement transparency can reduce bias and injustice', un-quote. And now here we are, assholes like us listening in as some bitch bawls about her bae."
"Fuckin' Eric the poet over there," Trent growls.
Roger ignores him too. "Still, you have to figure Black Lives Matter was all over that, or some such thing. I can't imagine they'd be around if they hadn't gotten some good press."
"Some accountability BS," I say. "All the suburban housewives flipped their shit when they tried to shut it down. Wanted to know the cops were responding quickly to their neighborhoods. And I read some article about home buyers checking out the call history near places they wanted to buy."
Trent finally gives in and joins the conversation. "Wait, Vigilante? Ain't that the one some of the skinheads were usin' to check for black crime and go beat the shit out of 'em before the cops arrived?"
"Oh, come now, there's a few bad apples in every barrel," Roger says. "I think we can all agree that the benefits of this application outweigh such abuses."
The app chirps. A dot appears just a few pixels from our map position.
"Speak of the devil," I say, picking my sack back up. "Guys, we're done here."
"Fuck," Trent says, sweeping the jewelry box into his bag. "Fuckin' figures."
I hold the phone up to my ear for a few moments. "Northern neighbor seeing strange lights here after her dog started barking. Good thing we parked on the south side. We'll have six minutes of driving before the cops are on the scene."
"What if they reassign the cops listening to Queen Bitch?" Roger says, disconnecting a laptop from its peripherals.
"Good point. We should drive east out of here, then pull over about two miles out and kill the lights till we're sure we've got a clean shot to the interstate."
Trent chuckles as we leave. "Miracle of the modern fucking world."
I mean, police scanners have been a thing for how long? :/ I'd be shocked if there weren't apps for them already.
Well, despite a touch of annoyance at the underlying concept (I can't think of a benefit from monitoring that you wouldn't also get by just, you know, not hanging around... and/or telling your compatriots how you're operating before you start things) this was moderately entertaining. The reveal worked fairly well, and the characters were entertaining.
I'm not sure how many characters you had, but if you had more than two, you had too many. Really, you've got two pieces; the one who's being a smart-aleck and the one who's getting schooled. It's fine that they're cardboard-cutouts here, I think, but because of that, you don't actually need to have any more than you absolutely need since you're not actually doing anything much with them character wise.
For a one-idea piece, this works alright.
Well, despite a touch of annoyance at the underlying concept (I can't think of a benefit from monitoring that you wouldn't also get by just, you know, not hanging around... and/or telling your compatriots how you're operating before you start things) this was moderately entertaining. The reveal worked fairly well, and the characters were entertaining.
I'm not sure how many characters you had, but if you had more than two, you had too many. Really, you've got two pieces; the one who's being a smart-aleck and the one who's getting schooled. It's fine that they're cardboard-cutouts here, I think, but because of that, you don't actually need to have any more than you absolutely need since you're not actually doing anything much with them character wise.
For a one-idea piece, this works alright.
Jumping off-slate to review the two stories that still only have one review. (We're only 30 hours in! That's one nice thing about smaller rounds — everyone gets more feedback!)
It took me a while to parse this, because grammatically the "they" refers back to Black Lives Matter rather than the (implied) app developers. The transition here to discussing why the app is still around is also awkward. You probably need another paragraph before that one to clarify that they've shifted to talking about why it hadn't gotten shut down.
… okay, I probably should have seen that twist coming. Points for that. But I do have a complaint: that makes your opening line nonsensical —
Given your setup, shouldn't Eric fiddling with his phone be the whole point? Since he's apparently the lookout for the theft.
I disagree with Hat, I think, about the character limit — there's pretty clear positioning in the early going to have Trent be the hard-ass and Roger and Eric be bantering and goofing off. But he's right in that the voices don't feel quite distinct enough, which I think is mostly a consequence of Eric's voice wandering so much. He goes from swearing to something resembling formal English to modern meme and slang-spewing in his few lines. Giving him a more distinct voice, and solidifying the other two's voices, would help this a lot — you don't have a lot of room for characterization in your 517 words [1] and so distinguishing them by voicing is probably all you're really going to be able to do unless you expand this.
I do like that this seems to be touching on some deeper questions about unexpected effects of technology. That conversation in the center would be great if expanded out into a fuller debate (and I wish you'd used more of your remaining space to do that). But I think your heart is in the right place here; it just needs more discipline with the premise of the robbery and the transition to the discussion of the app's consequences.
Tier: Needs Work
[1] And checking this in the gallery just made me realize that at 517 words this is the round's shortest story. How did we get away without any in the 400-500 range? O.O
Roger ignores him too. "Still, you have to figure Black Lives Matter was all over that, or some such thing. I can't imagine they'd be around if they hadn't gotten some good press."
It took me a while to parse this, because grammatically the "they" refers back to Black Lives Matter rather than the (implied) app developers. The transition here to discussing why the app is still around is also awkward. You probably need another paragraph before that one to clarify that they've shifted to talking about why it hadn't gotten shut down.
… okay, I probably should have seen that twist coming. Points for that. But I do have a complaint: that makes your opening line nonsensical —
"Shit, Eric," Trent says, "ain't no time to be fiddling with your phone."
Given your setup, shouldn't Eric fiddling with his phone be the whole point? Since he's apparently the lookout for the theft.
I disagree with Hat, I think, about the character limit — there's pretty clear positioning in the early going to have Trent be the hard-ass and Roger and Eric be bantering and goofing off. But he's right in that the voices don't feel quite distinct enough, which I think is mostly a consequence of Eric's voice wandering so much. He goes from swearing to something resembling formal English to modern meme and slang-spewing in his few lines. Giving him a more distinct voice, and solidifying the other two's voices, would help this a lot — you don't have a lot of room for characterization in your 517 words [1] and so distinguishing them by voicing is probably all you're really going to be able to do unless you expand this.
I do like that this seems to be touching on some deeper questions about unexpected effects of technology. That conversation in the center would be great if expanded out into a fuller debate (and I wish you'd used more of your remaining space to do that). But I think your heart is in the right place here; it just needs more discipline with the premise of the robbery and the transition to the discussion of the app's consequences.
Tier: Needs Work
[1] And checking this in the gallery just made me realize that at 517 words this is the round's shortest story. How did we get away without any in the 400-500 range? O.O
I mentally renamed each of these characters Talking Head 1, 2 and 3. That's really all they are.
Police scanners have existed for decades. Apps that stream them from the internet have existed for at least a few years. (I'm not holding this against the story, just pointing it out).
This story mostly consists of exposition-by-dialogue. Aside from that, nothing happens, except some rumination about the impact of technology, which I think a few other stories this round managed to do while including actual events.
On the other hand, I like the kernel of the idea here -- universal access to 911 calls permitting vigilante violence. I can see the potential there, but only as the background for an actual story. Right now this is basically a long form version of the prompt "In the future, 911 calls will be streamed on the internet for anyone to listen to."
Police scanners have existed for decades. Apps that stream them from the internet have existed for at least a few years. (I'm not holding this against the story, just pointing it out).
This story mostly consists of exposition-by-dialogue. Aside from that, nothing happens, except some rumination about the impact of technology, which I think a few other stories this round managed to do while including actual events.
On the other hand, I like the kernel of the idea here -- universal access to 911 calls permitting vigilante violence. I can see the potential there, but only as the background for an actual story. Right now this is basically a long form version of the prompt "In the future, 911 calls will be streamed on the internet for anyone to listen to."
I can't believe American police still use analog radio transmissions every decent ham radio operator can spoof on. I did that when I was young, even listening to the first generation mobile phones that were operating in the 400 MHz band.
Until one day I stumbled upon such a squalid conversation I decided to give up.
But anyway.
This is not a real story. Nothing really happens to the guys. No arc. It feels the whole point of the text is simply to show us what such an app could do/not-do or induce/not-induce. The guy simply describes what the app does.
In short, it feels contrived.
However, I do agree that a discussion of the underlying concept would be undoubtedly fascinating.
Until one day I stumbled upon such a squalid conversation I decided to give up.
But anyway.
This is not a real story. Nothing really happens to the guys. No arc. It feels the whole point of the text is simply to show us what such an app could do/not-do or induce/not-induce. The guy simply describes what the app does.
In short, it feels contrived.
However, I do agree that a discussion of the underlying concept would be undoubtedly fascinating.
There’s An App For That — C+ — Interesting premise that all police communications are tappable in the future. Horribly wrong, though, because the criminals are themselves *carrying phones* which are getting GPS signals, and therefore the police don’t even have to chase them. All they need is to ‘ask’ the phone company which phones were in the house at the time of the 911 call. Then again, even smart criminals are dumb. Still, it makes a good strawman to set up, although contrived and more than a bit artificial. +1 for the idea, -1 for the implementation.
There's An App For That - Retrospective
Not at all surprised to see this wash out in preliminaries, but I was surprised at one thing: everyone assumed it was speculative fiction. This is set in the near future, so obviously there's some extrapolation going on, but it's actually social commentary on current events.
Vigilante is a real app which was unveiled last week for limited release on the East Coast before it was pulled off of the App Store by Apple. The manifesto I paraphrase was posted to Medium not long before the Writeoffs. Google the app name and you can see the news stories. During the writing period, commentary about it was flitting around my social media feeds, and it seemed to fit startlingly well with the prompt.
Here's a slightly more thorough article about the app (I got a few of the details wrong because I was working from earlier commentary that didn't explain quite how it worked). The article, too, notes the concern that criminals can use the app to track police movement, and thus target areas where police will be slower or unable to respond. The alternative is listening to police scanners, which, yes, can be done right now, but a single criminal with a single scanner out on a job doesn't have the resources to do large-scale mapping of police deployment; the app does all that work for them and gives them an at-a-glance bigger picture, complete with historical response times. (And if you've ever actually listened to a police scanner, like I did when I worked in a newsroom, it's a mess. There's fifteen channels, any or all of which can be active at once, shared with other emergency services.) Everyone unanimously criticized the story for that, which is disappointing, so I guess I didn't have the room (or time) to make that force-multiplier effect clear.
The other critical flaw here is that I started this way too close to the deadline, after a day with friends and finishing up my other submission, and had to rush through it to submit it in time. I wasn't able to develop it the way I wanted -- especially with the debate about the wider implications of the app, which I intended to be the real meat of the story but only was able to sort of hint around the edges. In hindsight this ended up not ready for prime time, but I threw it in hoping it was still worth reading. So, yeah; I stand by my self-tiering of "Needs Work" but thank you all for the commentary.
>>georg
As a sci-fi story, this would be a point I'd need to address, but that's not how policing works now. Not without warrants, anyway. Besides, a criminal could just use a stolen phone and throw it out afterward. The app's available for public download.
Not at all surprised to see this wash out in preliminaries, but I was surprised at one thing: everyone assumed it was speculative fiction. This is set in the near future, so obviously there's some extrapolation going on, but it's actually social commentary on current events.
Vigilante is a real app which was unveiled last week for limited release on the East Coast before it was pulled off of the App Store by Apple. The manifesto I paraphrase was posted to Medium not long before the Writeoffs. Google the app name and you can see the news stories. During the writing period, commentary about it was flitting around my social media feeds, and it seemed to fit startlingly well with the prompt.
Here's a slightly more thorough article about the app (I got a few of the details wrong because I was working from earlier commentary that didn't explain quite how it worked). The article, too, notes the concern that criminals can use the app to track police movement, and thus target areas where police will be slower or unable to respond. The alternative is listening to police scanners, which, yes, can be done right now, but a single criminal with a single scanner out on a job doesn't have the resources to do large-scale mapping of police deployment; the app does all that work for them and gives them an at-a-glance bigger picture, complete with historical response times. (And if you've ever actually listened to a police scanner, like I did when I worked in a newsroom, it's a mess. There's fifteen channels, any or all of which can be active at once, shared with other emergency services.) Everyone unanimously criticized the story for that, which is disappointing, so I guess I didn't have the room (or time) to make that force-multiplier effect clear.
The other critical flaw here is that I started this way too close to the deadline, after a day with friends and finishing up my other submission, and had to rush through it to submit it in time. I wasn't able to develop it the way I wanted -- especially with the debate about the wider implications of the app, which I intended to be the real meat of the story but only was able to sort of hint around the edges. In hindsight this ended up not ready for prime time, but I threw it in hoping it was still worth reading. So, yeah; I stand by my self-tiering of "Needs Work" but thank you all for the commentary.
>>georg
Horribly wrong, though, because the criminals are themselves *carrying phones* which are getting GPS signals, and therefore the police don’t even have to chase them. All they need is to ‘ask’ the phone company which phones were in the house at the time of the 911 call.
As a sci-fi story, this would be a point I'd need to address, but that's not how policing works now. Not without warrants, anyway. Besides, a criminal could just use a stolen phone and throw it out afterward. The app's available for public download.