p3x.deMontreal shopping mall plays “Baby Shark” on repeat to prevent unhoused people from loittering
submitted 2 weeks ago by xkbx@startrek.website
montreal.ctvnews.ca/montreal-shopping-mall-play…
submitted 2 weeks ago by xkbx@startrek.website
montreal.ctvnews.ca/montreal-shopping-mall-play…
they have been doing this along market street in san francisco for years
Decades
What about the people who work there? Are they trying to make them quit then become homeless and leave the mall too?
No they are supposedly insane already.
According to the article, it plays in the emergency exit stairwells, a place that if you're using it you should be trying to leave as quickly as possible.
If I was escaping a fire, and the stairwell had baby shark playing, I'd walk back into the fire.
I really don't want to die with Baby Shark being the last song I hear
Descending the stairwell to escape a fire during the "Run Away" verse could be funny
Icecream van
This is from the city where it's illegal to be homeless. One man even collected over $100,000 in fines for being homeless.
Yeah, that'll help.
What a fucked up country.
I mean every country has it's problems but jeysus wept.
Man that sounded wild to me, so I dug around a bit and it's fucking true. Although the amount is closer to $110,000 it's still insane.
Hey, we heard you can't afford a house, so we're charging you fines in the amount of what it would have cost to buy a house.......we're so cool! We solved homelessness! Because now if you want to be homeless, it actually costs more to NOT buy a house. So you may as well just buy a house!
We did it guys! We ended the concept of homelessness! High five!
Oh how I wish I could buy a house for that kind of money. You should go look at what housing costs in Canadian cities.
The prices are ludicrous and the salaries are a lot less than our US counter part.
It's funny because during the Covid, at the start of the latest housing bubble, we saw so many people saying "it's easy, just move to a place where it's affordable just like I did". People have done that, and now even in bumfuck nowhere it's expensive and people are now complaining that their bumfuck nowhere has become too expensive for them.
Shit's fucked yo.
If you can produce $110k in fines you can probably also pull off a downpayment and at least a few years of payments. If you can’t buy a house that’s still several years of renting.
$169k https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/27687505/158-douglas-avenue-fredericton
Although the being sold "AS IS, WHERE IS" is a bit concerning. Flood risk maybe?
It's in Fredericton. It's so tiny, I don't know if I can even call that place a city.
Fairly common for older houses.
I'll be selling mine "as is where is" in a few months. Nothing wrong with it, just don't want the liability. Buyers will have an inspection and then make a decision on whether or not to buy it from that report.
Bought for $80k, put a ton of work into it, and will be selling for ~$250k, stair stepping into what we really want. (Also, USA, not Canada)
I mean why don't the homeless just buy a house? Are they stupid?
Have they tried just being rich and buying their own building to sleep in front of?
Maybe it's their broke mentality that's the issue bro stay on the grind 🔥 💯
Something something bootstraps and avocado toast?
Yeah, it was from awhile ago. I couldn't remember if it was one or two hundred thousand. I've corrected my comment to be more accurate. Here's an article on it.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-homeless-man-100k-fines-1.3473707
What happens if the man does not pay? Will they put him in jail?
Canada does not have debtor's jail. Nothing will really happen except that more fines will keep racking up. No collection agency is going to take on a homeless person's debt, so eventually those debts will just disappear, assuming he makes no effort to pay them off.
In the meantime, if he tries to escape homelessness, it's a lot harder nowadays to find an apartment with a landlord that doesn't check your credit, and 100k+ in unpaid debts looks really bad.
In the ultimate act of irony…
Maybe they’ll put him in a house.
Aaaah, I love living in a capitalist hellscape
It's not "being homeless" that is illegal, though. It's drinking in public, begging or sleeping in the metro. And it sure is tough not staying in the metro during winter. There are some organisms that can provide shelter, but not enough for everyone, and it usually cost a couple dollars, which not everyone have everyday.
And it's a real problem on both sides, as the metro was not meant to become a shelter for the homeless, and people have been complaining more and more they feel unsafe there.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." - Anatole France
Sure "being homeless" isn't the crime itself but you're being naive if you don't think the laws make homelessness illegal. What are they supposed to do? Go find a piece of land no one has claim to and freeze to death?
And what are we supposed to do? Legalize all drugs and being drunk in public just to avoid having to fine them, and install beds everywhere in the Underground City (and in this post's case, in emergency stairwells at the Complexe Desjardins) with no regard for their regular use?
Sure, let's work on proposing more accessible legal alternatives. Just take note that these laws weren't created to punish the homeless, but to have a clean and safe public space - which have been degrading for some time now.
We could just house them. That seems to work.
They would be less easy to exploit!
And to whom would we feel superior?
And what would be the punishment for not obeying our
lordsbosses?!That sound pretty much like the "If you're poor, just buy a house" people.
I think you don't know much about Montréal. There *are* solutions already in place to help homeless people who want to go out of the street, but the housing crisis is pretty new and it will take years to solve. It wasn't so bad a few years ago.
Feel free to host one of them in your home.
Which orgasms provide shelter?
Organisms, and probably that kind of beast that Luke Skywalker cuts open and uses for a sleeping bag to survive the cold.
"And I thought they smelled bad on the outside..."
The Tauntaun beast
As someone else said, there is La Maison du Père that provide (almost) free shelter.
Otherwise, there are provincial, municipal and private *orgasms* that help as they can with some services for reinsertion. Like the "L'Itinéraire" magazine.
The SPVM (police department) are also there to help during interventions with people with mental illness, in crisis, or to give references for some government's services. During great cold they are often outside to distribute goods and coffee. They don't just give fines.
La Maison du Père costs 1 dollar a night, and they'll let you in if you explain that you can't pay the $1.
Some just don't like shelters. They don't like the rules, other people, or fear getting their stuff stolen.
Here they made being homeless illegal so they can force people into shelters/mental help/rehab/etc.
Much better than letting them shoot up heroin in parks all day.
We can solve homelessness once and for all by making every part of civilization just suck as much as possible. If literally no part of our society is capable of supporting safety and life, then all the homeless people will just move along
Homelessness? Oh, you mean unhousedness! Many of them are also unreadful and non-jobulated.
What's the point of your comment?
Not to speak for them, but likely that the meteoric rise of the word “unhoused” as used in the title of this post is a ridiculous trend. Homeless people need shelter, not a new and supposedly less offensive word to describe them. Not to mention “unhoused” does not even sound even remotely nicer than “homeless.”
My highschool did this with classical music to make us fuck off after school was over. Jokes on them in into that shit
Everyone likes at least some classical music, most people are far too cool to admit it though.
Growing up I absolutely did not like classical music. Turns out it was the recording (bad micing of the orchestra) and mastering (the old "super quiet, super quiet, super quiet, briefly louder, super quirt thing). For mastering you could claim you're being true to the original performance (lots of dynamic range), but when you're listening to a live performance that's all you're doing and there's no background noise.
Turns out I do like classical music, I just really didn't like the way it was recorded and mastered back when I would be exposed to it as a kid.
Deleted by moderator
Lmao they thought you were being spicy🤣
At least its music, though this does confirm that Baby Shark is something they'd have played at Gitmo if it'd been around 2 decades ago.
I have been to many places where things like these are everywhere:
Imagine this but diesel powered, a bit chonkier, and they just emit this high pitched scream (there are other versions called 'mosquito alarms'), and has extremely bright, blue strobing lights that will induce seizures in anyone susceptible.
JFC, the cruelty really is the point...
I always feel an urge to sabotage those things when I see them, were only they not covered in literal cameras
IR LEDs + Disposable, thick framed novelty glasses
Clothes you can toss or donate
Ingress and Egress method about 1/2 mile away from target, different locations and methods for each.
Ability to sprint for 10 minutes
Above average situational awareness
Do not bring your phone
Don't return to the area for 3 months
I mean yeah I reckon I could if I really wanted to but that's a lot of effort to temporarily disrupt surveillance of a random walmart parking lot
Oh if *baby shark* had been around two decades ago…
They have one of those outside the Home Depot in DC playing classical music to pacify all the day laborers hanging around hoping to pick up work.
Just in case people do not fully grasp the amounts of "doo"s in this song:
Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Baby shark!
Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Mommy shark!
Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Daddy shark!
Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandma shark!
Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Grandpa shark!
Let's go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Let's go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Let's go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Let's go hunt!
Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Run away!
Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Safe at last!
It's the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
It's the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
It's the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
It's the end!
I love that song doo doo doo doo doo doo.
The last two verses on repeat are I think my new sound track to the end of times
That's a lot of doo doo
I mean, this will keep me away too, and I'm "housed" and even occasionally legitimately go to malls with money to spend on things. You play even one loop of that song and I'm Swayze.
I am willing to bet most people going wouldn't even notice because it is only being played in emergency stairwells. Glad it made the news, this shit is infuriating. However, I believe most people agree with it, even if they won't admit to it.
Dirty dancing.
Road House
Interesting case of military tatics in a civilian settings. First Decide is blasted at the Vatican embassy, then born in the USA is looped at Guantanamo Bay, now this
I honestly don't know if this is better or worse than the ear murdering high pitched screeching they play in the stairwells at a mall in Ottawa
*laughs in deafness*
Fuck the people who work there, amirite?
Yes, that is the basis of the economic system.
Ah that's a joke.. Ah hahaha. *puts away rubber socks*
Feel like that's just the message of the "Baby Shark" song. A big "Fuck You" to anyone unlucky enough to hear it
You mean those who work in the emergency exit stairwells?
Doesn’t this violate the Geneva convention ?
How so?
It's a joke. The implication is that the repeated playing of Baby Shark could be considered torture, other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment and punishment.
Homeless people aren't POWs though, doesn't it only apply to POWs?
yeah it's completely legal to torture people so long as you don't call them your prisoners
Dude, I'm not saying this is a cool and good thing to do lol, fuck them for doing this, for real. It's that the Geneva convention has to do with stuff relating to war and a lot of the things people say violate it often don't. Like people will say that tear gas is a Geneva convention violation but it actually says tear gas is allowable for controlling prison riots.
I just wish people would point to actually relevant documents when criticizing people for their misdeeds if they're bringing up documents. The truth is we shouldn't need some document to criticize this action. It's inherently disgusting. It distracts from the point when people bring up irrelevant things like the Geneva convention.
The War on Poverty has been waged relentlessly and mercilessly for decades
I'm not supporting the displacement of homeless people lol, I'm just saying we shouldn't bring up the Geneva convention as if it's relevant when talking about the displacement of homeless people.
Reminds me of when I briefly worked in an office upstairs from the Seattle Mariners headquarters. Every time I went up or down the stairs I could hear the Mariners theme song playing in their lobby, so presumably they had it looping nonstop. I don't know how that receptionist didn't run screaming from the building by the end of the day.
What's with the wording of this title? "Unhoused people" instead of "Homeless"/"Homeless people"
Homeless and "actually sleeps on the streets" are different things.
It's like the difference between calling someone wittless and uneducated.
One implies that's just how the person is, the other implies a failing of society/family.
I like the word unhoused, it implies they should just be housed if they are homeless. Everyone should be housed, even if they don't own a home
A home is an abstract thing, a house is a quantifiable object.
Also it kind of implies that society should provide a house for them.
If you are crashing on someone's couch then you are housed but still homeless. It's a bit of a dilution of the usual meaning of homeless but it also emphasises that housing is very precarious for the homeless.
It's another one of those whack a mole words people are pushing. Once everyone gives in and we start using unhoused, it will suddenly switch to uninhabited because it's racists to houses or something!
It's annoying as hell, because instead of fixing the issues we're mastrubating about words and alienating people that we need to fix the issue.
@madcaesar There are plenty of people I block just for being needlessly tiresome, on the logic that they will probably never say anything that will make anything better for me or anyone else, but will still fill up the world and my life with pointless, irritating noise.
You're today's winner.
So you're saying we can make you go away with repetitive noise? *Hmm....*
@Warl0k3 What I've learned from decades of being online is that many people are just kind of pointlessly tiresome, essentially just producing meaningless noise that benefits no one, though maybe it helps them in some way, I don't know. There's a vast over-abundance of this kind of online noise, and it's always disposable.
Even many total assholes online have something useful of interesting to say. But useless noise is just that, and I have no problem blocking such people.
*"Bay-bee shark doo-doo, doo-doo doo-doo..."*
Sarcasm aside though, I think you might have fallen into the habit of using your disinterest performatively to try and discourage the kind of noise you're talking about. I get it, I do, but calling people out that you're intending to block either hurts the people who've made one dick comment *or* encourages the kind of people who make said dicks comments because it amuses them. The people you don't like aren't going to start respecting your opinion *or* regarding your actions as understandably reasoned just because you point out what you're doing.
The third option is that you're doing it to be smug? But from a brief scroll through your comment history that seems really unlikely. So, given the absolute hell the world is devolving into, does this really do anything positive for *you?* Because to an outside observer, this seems like the non-cathartic type of void screaming. I'm truly sympathetic there, and it might be worth it for your own peace of mind to start blocking more frequently but just moving on from there. Giving attention to people you write off as without value cannot be personally constructive.
What a sad way to live :/
I heard a really good explanation of this on NPR. Homeless is a label put on a person, similar to saying a person is a redhead. The implication of saying that someone is homeless is that it defines who they are, that it cannot be easily changed.
Unhoused is more descriptive of the situation that a person is in. This is a condition that can be changed, it isn't who the person is.
As I revisit this and think it through though, it seems like another way of pushing the goal. There are absolutely negative connotations with the word homeless, but the same venom will eventually attach to unhoused as well.
Jokes on them, noise canceling headphones are cheaper than a house
The gas station near me blasts very loud opera music at the area surrounding the building. I think it's also to prevent kids from loitering as there is a school nearby as well as plenty of homeless.
Classy
Having been in areas where homeless people gather, they can be an unpleasant bunch, if not outright hostile. I get why things like that happen.
Unhoused? Has homeless as a word been banned?
I think the idea is to put the responsibility for housing onto society/authority as opposed to the victim.
Doesn't homeless imply its society's fault too?
Perhaps to some people, but to me it does sound like a homeless person just happens to be without.
Whereas an unhoused person has been let down by whoever is responsible for ensuring people are housed.
I dont see how. If anything, its just a matter of time until you see houseless as being their fault. Because the baggage is something you (and society in general) is adding. Its not implicit in the word itself.
I've been using it a couple of years now and I'm not victim blaming yet.
But I guess "a matter of time" is pretty open ended.
I tell you what though, it's a personal choice, so you keep saying homeless if you like.
Not sure about Canada, but in the US:
Homeless = no permanent residence, which also includes couch surfing, parents and children who just fled an abusive family member and are temporarily ltaying with friends or relatives, and people who are living in their car. All people without a home.
Unhoused = homeless people that don't have a roof over their heads. Might include living in a car.
They are synonyms. Please don't make things up.
Edit: to all the knee-jerk downvoting. This is literally a quote from an article the user himself supplied as proof that there is a difference.
It's literally just a pc synonym of homeless.
They are not. I work with data collections on students and have had to explain the difference to people who don't understand that a kid who is kicked out of their home and is staying with friends is homeless even if they are not out on the street for federal reporting.
Homelessness defined in law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/11302#
A more thorough explanation that contrasts the terms: https://invisiblepeople.tv/homeless-houseless-unhoused-or-unsheltered-which-term-is-right/
And what's the definition of unhoused according to law? You aren't wrong in what you just said but its missing the point, unhoused literally means the same thing. The goverment only uses the term homeless if I'm not mistaken.
That's a quote from the link you just gave.
Amazingly enough, most words aren't defined in law!
@Grimy Believe it or not, different dialects may have different meanings for the same words.
Yes, but academically and more broadly in society, homeless means unhoused (by broadly in society, I mean in the common language like how third world is a synonyms for developing country even though academically it means something else.)
Important to note that he said in the US, not his hometown dialect or something. It's a blanket statement that is completely wrong no matter how you look at it.
@Grimy Canadian English is a dialect. So is US English. And both have sub-dialects, as well as registers. These are real differences that really do affect how specific words are used and understood.
@Grimy You are relying on a rhetorical device called an essentialism: an assertion of fact without evidence, a claim asserted as established fact without supporting argument or proof. Put another way:
Things aren't true just because you say they are, no matter how sure you are.
Essentialism isn't merely poor forensics. It's very literally gotten millions of people killed.
We always want to make every effort to use good forensics in arguments.
I don't believe you actually KNOW the facts.
Welcome to the euphemism treadmill
In the US they mean different things, as homeless includes people living in other people's homes. That can include people whose house just burnt down and are living with friends or family because they lost their permanent residence (home). Unhoused is about where they are staying.
People on the street are homeless and unhoused.
And you really think people use and understand these terms like that?
You may be correct in the academic sense, but completely wrong in all other senses.
Are you suggesting that the incorrect terms should be used to cater to those of you that don't know there is a difference? Even if you were unaware that there is actually a difference, was the intent and meaning of the headline lost in confusion, or did you understand exactly what they meant?
The "correct" term is the one the target audience understands to mean what is happening.
The "difference", again, is academic. They are de facto used interchangeably. Did the author know the difference? No idea. Could anyone tell, which group the people in question belong to? Probably not.
So what exactly are you trying to achieve here?
He isn't correct in an academic sense. They are synonyms. Unhoused is being used because homeless has negative connotation to it.
@Grimy Maybe. But unless you can produce a source, it sounds to me like you're only guessing, and forming an essentialism from your feelings and assumptions rather than from evidence.
Language has power. You'll notice successful effort on the right to get pundits to refer to Oil as Energy. Oil has negative implications, energy has positive. Homeless has negative implications for the person, unhoused has negative implications for the government.
There’s also the difference in how the word is used more as an adjective than a noun. In the same way calling someone a disabled is a lot more dehumanizing than saying they are a person with a disability.
Ugh how did this super old song become a thing.. I swear people are getting dumber. I hated it when they sang it at summer camp, and I still hate it now.
Because small children absolutely adore it.
Super old? 2016?
This was an old camp song when I was a kid
I was forced to sing it in school in the 90s. Along with the Jamba The Hutt/McDonalds song.
This comment thread now feels uniquely American.
I have never heard those songs, in the 90s at school and scout camps in Australia we would sing Ging Gang Goolie, Alice the Camel, and Ain't no Flies.
Also for some reason we would chant about how ugly and unlovable we are and resign ourselves to eating worms.... Children's songs are so unhinged.
Oh it's much, much older.
Prehistoric
So as a worker with a house, can I sue when I go insane from hearing that song over and over? Didn’t they do this in Guantánamo to torture and break people?
They only had death metal and industrial goth music back then. Nothing as terrible as Baby Shark existed at the time.
They used the Barney theme song as a torture device, it's gotta be equally bad
The article said they play it in the emergency exit stairwells. Odds are you aren't going to be in that emergency exit long enough to go insane.
Jokes on them. The homeless loitering are veterans that lost their hearing in the wars we’ve been fighting since 2001.
In Montreal?
40,000 Canadian troops were in the US war in Afghanistan from 2001-2014
The article says the music is played to keep the emergency stairwells empty. If you haven't lived around unhoused before, they can take up a lot of space with their belongings and can be pretty unresponsive.
Exactly the kind of thing you don't want in an emergency stairwell.
Honestly if the owners of a building CAN'T keep the emergency stairwell clear then the building should be shut down for everyone for safety reasons.
Yeah, if this were a problem with teens they would likely threaten to trespass them.
Great way to lose customers
Having said that, what's up with the "unhoused" thing? It homeless. Are we now calling it differently because homeless is now all of the sudden insulting? How long until "unhoused" suddenly is a bad word?
Can we please just stop pushing changing words? Homeless is fine, you're without a home. It sucks, people should support you, not shun you, but changing words is just virtue signalling that doesn't do anything to make anything better for anyone
.... And if you are the type of neoliberal politician that wants to pretend they care about people while never actually doing anything to help anyone other than the megacorps when you get into power -- Then this is literally all you'll ever do for people. Linguistic fuckery. Making up new words for things. Fucking around with definitions. And you know that there will be an army of people who will defend this, and shoot down people who actually want to do something on grounds that they said the "wrong" words.
The argument for 'unhoused' is that it humanises the person -- But it's really pushing it.
Yeah, this... Stop haggling with words, actually do something to fix it
Spoiler: they won't
Homeless what, exactly? Sorry, you're gonna need to throw in the word "person" just to be clear.
I'll asume y'all are stupid and privileged and not just cruel. Home can be a public shelter, it is about people. A house is a thing you rent or own.
Not everything is politics, virtue signaling or about you. We use different words because language changes, because society changes. That is why you don't speak Anglo-Saxon anymore.
It's about precision. The condition people are talking about is not having a house, regardless of whether they have a home. This is why unhoused is being used more often.
It's not part of an agenda, it is not about you. Grow up.
It's not precise. A shelter is just that: shelter, not a home. An apartment can be a home, but is not a house.
Of course! Relax. It's more precise to be clear they're talking about people unhoused.
homeless
Some of the remixes are real bangers. Like the one where they do the Finger Family song and mix in the baby shark song *chef's kiss* 😘🤌