Queensland Uses Anti-Zombie Prejudice to Promote Social Media Website
This is just bizarre.
Basically, Australia’s had a lot of natural disasters lately. Last year, it seems, a lot of Aussies in turn used social media, Facebook and the like to get updates on public safety related information, rather than legacy media like TV broadcasts and radio.
All well and good so far.
To facilitate this use of the internet for public safety, the Queensland cops have in turn created a web portal that has links to their social media and that of their various public safety partners. Basically you can load one page to see what’s currently on fire/flooded/being attacked by angry koalas across the whole area.
Again, all well and good.
However, it was felt that stress-testing the site was necessary, given the rather high demand placed on their Facebook pages last year, so the Queensland law enforcers decided to create a fake emergency of sorts to crank up the page hits: a Zombie Apocalypse, set on World Zombie Day.
We’ve dealt with floods, a cyclone, bushfires – even a couple of earthquakes – but now Queensland should prepare for a possible zombie attack, police say.
Police plan to test a new disaster information website on Saturday, World Zombie Day, “by helping Queenslanders survive a possible zombie attack”.
Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett says the aim is to get as many people as possible to visit the Qldalert.com page in one day, to replicate the traffic that would be experienced during a disaster.
The whole exercise feels kind of surreal to be honest. I mean, there was an actual press conference about this site launch, peppered sporadically with Anti-Zombie hate speech:
Tying it to World Zombie Day is a particularly low blow, given that WZD is a consciousness-raising event that tries to use public spirited Zombies and their allies to collect food for the needy.
Exploiting a charity? For shame, Queensland. For shame.
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