I'm kind of hesitant to say this but I think somebody has to: there has to be an ethical dimension to this discussion. I understand Timmy is very much in favor of doing 15 hours a day of unpaid stenography on behalf of a for-profit business. (Which, if it were paid, would get smacked down before you could say Child Labor.)
Timmy is "dedicated" to his blogging because Timmy is not neurotypical. It is a symptom of his neurological disorder, and destructive of his ability to do things that "normal" people take for granted. Positive feedback for the behavior feeds it. It makes him feel like for his thing he is the master of his domain, that he is special, and that causes him to withdraw from the more difficult, more scary, more real parts of life further into the police scanner.
Because he is both underage and affected by autism, we have a special obligation to look out for his interests. I know, I know, he says he wants to do this. People with mental issues will say all sorts of really interesting things -- for every Timmy there is someone who believes that they bring order to the universe by sweeping the same floor, over and over and over. If Walmart gave that guy an unpaid job, but generously donated him busfare so that he could continue sweeping the floors for them, every one of you would go freaking ballistic. And you'd be right to do it, because it is exploitative.
That the educational establishment is in favor of anything that keeps him out from underfoot is disgusting to me, but not surprising. I say that as someone with experience on both sides of the desk in special ed.
I hate to say it, but if Timmy's happy with this, who are we to try and force him to live a more normal life? Normal lives are for normal people. Would it really be better for him, and for society, if we dragged him away from his police scanner and Wordpress dashboard to try and teach him how to live like a normal person?
I think that the problem comes when he withdraws too far into his own little 'wordpress+police scanner' world. Much in the same way that people with heavy addictions (even WoW addictions) can withdraw from everything else. There is a line, don't pretend that there isn't one. It's just not at either extreme of the spectrum.
Depending on the severity of the autism symptoms, he could try to get a more normal life. And no, I don't agree with the term normal since what is normal these days? Shooting people during a drive-by? Eating hamburgers all day? Using drugs and do everything possible to sustain that way of life? No. To me, that is not normal, but it is average in our society. He's not average, but he's using his capability to feed his interests. So let him.
1. I have a responsibility to all my readers, users, writers, to take care of them and look after them. Because of Timmy's age, there's an extra layer there.
2. I'm not qualified to judge whether I should or shouldn't believe Timmy when he says he enjoys what he's doing and how he's spending his time based on his situation. If his mom thought he should shut down the blog, it would happen in a heartbeat and we'd all be ok with that. He's a kid.
3. Autism or no autism, when I was a teenager, I would have killed to be "exploited" by older people who truly appreciated and enjoyed my work and wanted to help get it in front of more people.
This is a very important topic. Thanks for bringing it up.
That is a very responsible take on the situation. With regards to #2, I would encourage you to read the 5:17 PM entry here and reflect carefully on it. If you feel unqualified to judge its import, hum a few bars to one of the mental health professionals in your Rolodex.
Very aware of those bits. They're not so uncommon. Frankly, it's one of the reasons why people respond to him I think. He's putting his thoughts out there pretty publicly.
Whether or not his mother is reading as closely, I can't say for certain, but it is something his readers and fellow bloggers keep track of.
It sounds broken from an regular perspective, because regular people either don't get involved in thinking very hard about crime and probabilities, or if they do, they get a gun or some other form of protection to put themselves more at ease. Thinking about crime happning right at this moment, in your very own neighbourhood all day, but feeling like you're an ineffectual shut-in nerd who wouldn't even be able to use a gun if his caring mother would let him have one, would drive anyone to paranoia, I think—myself included.
I was kind of hoping I could hand the blog over to someone else, who could release their indentity and really not worry about it. Plus, it would get some pressure off of me.
...want to place bets about the source of that pressure and what it consists of?
> If you feel unqualified to judge its import, hum a few bars to one of the mental health professionals in your Rolodex.
I'll bite - what happened when you took that to the MHPs in your rolodex? Better yet, you reported it to Child Protective Services in Chicago. You did, right?
I think the type of person who knows enough to buy a police scanner also knows enough to start their own blog somewhere. Perhaps they started it at WindyCitizen in a rational decision to maximise their audience / build community.
He's 16, for Christ's sake. In days gone by he'd be married with children by now. And yet people internalise these "underage" rules and insist on treating people like toddlers until their 18th birthday. It's completely arbitrary, and ridiculous. Let him do as he pleases.
>In the summer, when school’s out, he does this for 15 hours a day, signing on at 9am with his trademark Ed McMahon–esque “Here’s crime for today” and stopping at midnight so he can sleep. Rarely do five minutes go by without a new post. The only thing that breaks Timmy away from the buzz and chatter of the police scanner is his mom’s call of “Dinner’s ready!” “My mom doesn’t let us eat in the rooms here, so I have to eat in the kitchen,” he says.
Timmy's dedication extends beyond the content of his blog, too. When I invited him to come blog on the WC, I had no idea I was essentially recruiting a brutal tester/debugger to the team. About twice a week, he sends me long missives on things that "get on his nerves" about the site. While this was frustrating at first, his near-constant UI and user experience feedback has been invaluable.
Application idea: given that voice recognition systems are not up to the task of parsing a police scanner's output, dice that police radio feed's audio into a single chunk per "transmission" and add that audio to a mechanical turk work queue. The work task is simply to enter into a form: is this a crime? yes/no. location: street, street. text details: (free text).
This would be cool but I think it would be hard for the average Mechanical Turker to get it right. They'd have to learn all the numeric codes police use for everything, for one thing. Also the dispatcher and cops know the local geography very well and use a lot of shorthand. Here's the live police scanner feed for Seattle (mostly silent right now since it's 1am):
Having said that, I don't think you need to hire mechanical turkers - you could make a nice app for the community of people who are really into listening to this stuff, and they'd do the work for you - Timmy is not alone. Make a community site around that does a nice job aggregating the feeds, and that rewards accurately reporting them and adds maps, trends, etc. Not sure there's a business there - you might be able to get some grant money to get it off the ground though.
I was thinking something similar. You could have police scanners placed around different cities to get everything. I didn't know whether voice recognition could parse the output though, it's not really my field.
Timmy is "dedicated" to his blogging because Timmy is not neurotypical. It is a symptom of his neurological disorder, and destructive of his ability to do things that "normal" people take for granted. Positive feedback for the behavior feeds it. It makes him feel like for his thing he is the master of his domain, that he is special, and that causes him to withdraw from the more difficult, more scary, more real parts of life further into the police scanner.
Because he is both underage and affected by autism, we have a special obligation to look out for his interests. I know, I know, he says he wants to do this. People with mental issues will say all sorts of really interesting things -- for every Timmy there is someone who believes that they bring order to the universe by sweeping the same floor, over and over and over. If Walmart gave that guy an unpaid job, but generously donated him busfare so that he could continue sweeping the floors for them, every one of you would go freaking ballistic. And you'd be right to do it, because it is exploitative.
That the educational establishment is in favor of anything that keeps him out from underfoot is disgusting to me, but not surprising. I say that as someone with experience on both sides of the desk in special ed.