Google Street View and offensive gestures

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I have been looking at a well-known gallery of Google Street View pictures, and my attention has been caught particularly by the pics that show people giving offensive gestures to the camera.

There is a gallery of such pictures on the site, and I notice the way one country seems to have a lot of pictures of people giving offensive gestures. I'm not going to name that country. But the country has now gone way down in my estimation. If I'm to be honest, I have been consumed by an irrational hatred for the country. Irrational, because of course the country can't be generalised based on a few Street View pics. And irrational simply because it has severely affected me, and breached and transcended my rational mind, and breached and transcended the sense of fairness and equality I strive to maintain.

What's more, pics for the country have only been up a mere two weeks. But, I mean, the amount of offensive gesture pics that have been reported already... how many more pictures showing offensive gestures are there from that country, there must be a whole raft of others.

Point is, what I've seen has greatly affected me, and obviously doesn't give the best social impression of the country which is now somewhere I probably want to steer clear of. But I'm having to keep as open a mind as possible, and be as philosophical as possible about this. For example, because photography in public places and privacy are sensitive issues, especially no doubt in the country in question. It's a certain type of person who's likely to give this sort of abuse. And after all, out of a gallery of 38 offensive gesture pics, there are two from Edinburgh alone!! ! I feel hugely let down by that. If I didn't live there, if I was abroad, I'd probably be feeling a disgust towards Edinburgh as a result. My impression of Edinburgh would have plummetted. I probably would have steered clear of Edinburgh as a travel destination, or as a place to live, and that would have been a great shame.

Could you provide a link to this gallery? Because I'm completely lost (and could use a map...a google map *ba-dum tish*).

Excuse my ignorance, but how would these people know that Google is taking their picture??

Here ya go.

http://www.streetviewfun.com

There is a list of tags on the right: click 'fu' for the offensive gesture pics.

In fact I may as well give away which country I'm referring to and will give you another link too: Click. This has more offensive gesture pics from that country.

Google takes pics using a car with cameras on the top and a Google logo on the side, that's how they know.

there's another, ground-based bunch that drives around with cameras all over the car, and some people don't seem to like having themselves plastered all over the web.

Strange to think that New Jersey's only been up a coupla weeks...; )j/k..

One morning as we were leaving the house, there was a car turning in our cul de sac that had the Google logo on its doors. It had a 360 degree camera mounted on a pole on the roof. My kids noticed and said something along the lines of, "Oh look, it's the Google street view people."
Later when looking at the street view of our address, I saw a picture of my car as as we were leaving the house. I thought it was amusing.

_________________
Never assume you know what I'm thinking, just ask for clarification.
"Not everything that steps out of line, and thus 'abnormal', must necessarily be 'inferior'. " -- Hans Asperger (1938)

The Google Street View car did in fact drive past me once. However as the road had already been photographed and was already on the site, I'm not pictured. Presumably the car was photographing areas outside the city which weren't already on the site.

I have discovered pictures in which people are mooning the camera. That's something I totally expected people to be doing. I am, however, so sickened by this that I have decided I'm going to fire off e-mails to the police in Stockholm, Rotterdam and Calgary, where these pictures can be found, because I would like these people to be brought to book due to public indecency, demonstrable on Street View.

It strikes me how the offensive gestures and mooning appear to be more likely to take place in nations that are more LIBERAL, and more likely in nations with a good record for HEALTH.

To the people in question in Stockholm, Rotterdam and Calgary - Children could be coming across these pics! In the case of Stockholm and Calgary, the mooners are presumably pictured at their home addresses, so they should be able to be easily tracked I'd hope. I probably can't hope for too much proactiveness from the police, who knows, but I hope that if these cities have any decency, or any respect for their reputation, they'd be proactive.

My uncle is on Street view raking leaves.

wow man, why do you care? of all the things in the world to worry about.

this has nothing to do with anything. and the police are going to think you're a nut if you call them over this.

-Luke

I find those funny. I would drop moon to the google car.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kswJuKfYtI[/youtube]

I did hint I wasn't expecting anything out of the contacts with the police. It was worth a try. Why do I care? Well because I was personally perturbed and maybe because not everyone finds the same things funny.

I guess we probably are more proper here than in Europe and more uptight about exposure. I've never thought about whether we're more proper and uptight than elsewhere, but I guess indecent exposure would not go down very well at all here.

Of course people might look on the exposure in a different light if it was done by, say, a group of guys out boozing - that might be considered a mitigating circumstance due to being in a group herd - than a guy on his own (which the people on Streetview were).

I'd hate to get caught on Google Street View whether I'm doing an offensive gesture or now; I don't want all that attention!