Right, but that's not my point. My point is that, if you annoy people, they will shut you off. Period. This isn't about anyone saying "boo hoo, I was moderately inconvenienced, so it's not worth saving the girl's life." It's about a system that will lose effectiveness if it's handled the way it was today.

I turned my alerts off after getting several within 20 mins about flooding after a rain storm

King's beef shouldn't be with the Amber Alert System, it should be with his mobile service provider. I have Verizon and they sent me 2 alerts, not an alert every other minute like King received.

With that being said I could care less if they sent me an alert every 15 seconds and interrupted every channel on my TV if it meant saving a little girls life.

again how come those texts came through in the AM?

The first thing I did when I got my new phone was shut off the alerts.



Problem solved

Yep.

http://i.imgur.com/UYWqVd1.jpg

So perhaps there's just something that malfunctioned in the system here. :shrug:

Yeah, for the record, I've got no issue whatsoever with the alerts on TV. If TV were a one-to-one system, that'd be one thing, but the technology just isn't there to let you "dismiss" an alert on TV on an individual level. Given that, repeating the alert on TV makes perfect sense.

Now that I got that out of the way, apparently there are some misconceptions about what the Amber Alert was designed to do. It is in place to make people aware of a situation and be on the lookout as they live their lives. While it would be fantastic if everyone in a six state area could drop what they're doing and go on a massive manhunt, that's not feasible and anyone who thinks that's what's supposed to happen is living in a fantasy world. I prefer to live in reality.

And the reality is, if you have people opting out due to excessive texts, that's one less outlet available to get the message out, and defeats the purpose. I don't think it's unreasonable to not want your personal phone that you rely on to live your life unnecessarily blown up to the point you have to consider silencing it or shutting it off.

And no one, I mean NO ONE in the other thread complained about "their favorite TV show being interrupted." But yet that was brought up by one jackass multiple times. It's a shame that you can't have a reasonable discussion about a serious issue without certain assholes blowing what one says out of proportion.

And lastly, we can take every possible extreme measure to try to prevent such tragedies from taking place, but as shown in this case, sometimes they simply can't be prevented. The human race shows its ugly side on occasion. I don't like it any more than anyone else. What's important is to not completely overreact and throw out knee-jerk solutions that will not solve the problems. No amount of Amber Alerts are going to save every child from a predator. No amount of gun control is going to stop every school shooting. Throwing people in prison for life for a DWI won't prevent idiots from getting behind the wheel drunk and killing people. It's just the sad reality of life.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything about such issues, but what I am saying is there are always going to be limits to the effectiveness of them and we have to be rational about how apply the systems we put in place.

/mic drop.

It's not a stupid discussion. Just because there's a system it doesn't mean the system can't be improved.

he had his phone off and they all came through at once im betting...


if so it makes his bitching seem even more silly...

Sorry people that work the graveyard shift. Now that you see the daylight, good luck getting back to sleep & not cutting your hand off in the meat slicer tonight.

its stupid because those texts weren't even sent out at the times he got them...

if that shuts they whiney putz up....yes

I did this as well. I'm involved in enough social media that I still had all the information as soon as the alert was issued.

I understand people being annoyed when they get flooded with messgaes, but do a little research if you need to, and simply turn the messages off if that's what you want to do.

Or they could just opt out, lessening the effectiveness of the system as described above.