Saturday, March 13, 2021

The Internet Was A Mistake

In the never ending war against dumbass ideas, I was looking for MSDS information on oven cleaner because some yahoo in a grammarily-challenged corner of social media was recommending using it instead of pepper spray for self defense.

Don't. It's a dumb idea for several reasons.

People generally want to use sprays when deadly force is not obviously warranted, or in attempt to avert the necessity of using deadly force. Deadly force is defined as force that is likely to cause death or serious bodily injury, and serious bodily injury is defined as "bodily injury which involves substantial risk of death, protracted and obvious disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of a bodily member or organ or mental faculty". 

Blinding someone with oven cleaner definitely counts for that latter bit.

Folks, it's hard to explain to a jury why you felt it was cool to blind someone by turning their eyeballs to soap (that's what you get when you mix lye and lipids) but you didn't think they presented enough danger to shoot. People have a very visceral reaction to blinding; the laws of war will let you shoot people, stab them, and blow them up in horrible ways, but blinding weapons are right out

So when my search took me by Quora and I saw the "Related Questions" that people had asked, well, that was about enough internet for one day.


People are messed up, y'all. The internet was a mistake.

.