You'll never happen what guessed yesterday.

But yes, it is true, I'm not kidding. I was there and saw it happen.ⁱ Oh, the horror. The humanity!

What, you might inquire, was his idea. And what, I might tell you, what his idea was : A smartphone app.

Blown away yet ? Good, cause it gets better. A smartphone app intended to work as a social media device, dedicated to a hot social topicⁱⁱ - in this case rape - which will be financed by advertising. You think I'm making this shit up ? Sorry, you can't make this shit up. No one can. Not even me. It's ideas, okay ?

I could spend the next five or six pages, Internets or lives making fun of this enormity, because it does have ample potential indeed. Imagine, the BloodBook, where you and all your raped friends and sibilings can exchange instagrams of stitch puss stains and bloodied, torn tube tops. And I guess food, too, so Instagram doesn't sue. All major FMCG retailers could create a special rapevertising department, dedicated to keeping all the eleven year olds with traumatic HSGⁱⁱⁱ appraised of the latest trends in crotchless knickers and easy access yet supportive tit garments. "Nine out of ten rapists agree : the new Axe with natural herbal Bridewort^iv extracts is where it's at! Axe, for cunts!"

Tempting as that may be (not rly), I'll instead take the time to show you how this would indeed make millions, in my hands, if I could be bothered (not rly). So : India consists of about a billion people, toiling in abject poverty, the sort that dehumanizes - and at this juncture let us take a deep breath and observe a moment of silence in the memory of this unfortunate child, and her nameless, countless peers. It sucks, okay ?

India however also consists of a softer side, a kinder side, a well to do side. However many millions those people are, that can afford cars and are avid buyers of iPads, that live in guarded compounds and wash each day whether they need to or not, there's more of them in India than in any one European country. Which means you can make more selling luxury cars in India than you can make selling the same in Switzerland, even if India is, to this day, chiefly this :

Rape is and will likely remain a social control mechanism, with important roles in social regulation. As such, the experience of rape per se as a daily event in the lives of hundreds of millions of poor and defenceless Indian women is substantially different from the experience of the retelling of rape in the lives of millions of rich and thus privileged Indian women. After all you want to be a good wife so you don't end up like that girl on the train, don't you dear ?^v

The news of rape and the act of rape are different bars of soap, if you will, packaged by an ever-serving society for the consumption - voracious, abandoned consumption - of entirely different demographics. This is, of course, eminently exploitable for economic gain (the process is canonically called rent-seeking behaviour).

So yes, the rich women that married well, and perhaps rich for the first time in their lives, are incrementally so much more likely to buy an iPad for their preteen daughter if the USP, as our friend calls it, can be adjusted to include the appearance, and the pretense, of protection from that one true leveler of women, other than childbirth : proper accuplation^vi. Her daughter is in no particular danger of being raped, yet she eminently can afford to buy a rape protection device, and so a rape protection device is the best thing to sell her : it'll necessarily work. Great business, perhaps a little US-like, but great business nevertheless. It's after all much better to satisfy a perceived need you've created than to actually satisfy an actual need (star-eyed naivete of adolescent heroic fighters for the side of good notwithstanding).

There is a little twist that indeed would turn the proposed object, as abjectly useless as it is, into a massive success. That is, the alarm should use the very stern voice of male authority figures in Indian society. The perpetrator's own grandfather would be ideal, but absent that good alternatives would be the Prime Minister, various religious leaders and so on. Girl pushes a button, out goes the voce of superego blaring "Are you about to be a naughty boi ???". It wouldn't cost much to do, this, which is the genius of it : all these schmucks would probably donate their juju for free^vii to be caught in the fledging magic box, thus creating something much more adequate for the Indian market than the nude and rude iPad : an actual portable box of the covenant, if you will.

You may or may not know this, but in the "uncivilised" ie still pretty darned real world, adolescent women from rich families still get chaperones to this very day. It's not an old hag anymore but usually a girl or a few of the approximate age of the princess, and vaguely related, usually from a poorer, cadet branch of the family. From Eastern Europe all the way to Vladivostok rich girls from rural or low urban backgrounds go around with a poorer cousin-third-removed or posse thereof. And since we're talking Vladivostok, what do you think Nicole Ritchie was doing with Paris Hilton ? Hm ? Sure, they eventually outgrew it, but the social dynamic is the social dynamic and things don't change just because you think you left Kansas long, long ago. Kansas ain't leaving, get used to it.

So then, the princess getting a tool of magical power, a juju amulet of wonder which can extend her imaginary protection to her indentured servant girls ? Definitely a good move, it will reduce the cost of recruitment, and the maids can go home to their mother and tell her all about how magically protected they are by the benevolent, almighty influence of their mistress.

In other words : done right, by someone with a billion in the bank and all the right connections, this is a winner, one of those things that changes the world, if just a little. A revolutionizer, as they say. It just so happens that those who could don't care to (not least of all because they despise the whorle stack involved, or because they think the whole thing is stupid if not outright going the wrong way and the very fucking seed of ruin for the poor unfortunate Indians), and those who can't don't matter. Not in this discussion, not in any other discussion.

PS. How many impotent Western feminist men does it take to rape a plump and juicy Indian teenager ?

1. Well in fairness I wasn't there for the having, praise be to Trompi, for that might have been a little gross. No, I merely was there for the announcing, thankfully, which is about all one can take of these things. [↩]
2. These are better than revolutionizations, the hot social topics. Or at any rate so has the circus decided. For purely economic reasons, of course, which'd have nothing to do with the economy of spectacle and everything to do with actual, real, honest to god economy. Seriously. Now why don't you believe it ? Heathens! [↩]
3. HIV (or I guess hepatitis) plus syphilis and gonorrhea. Think of it as a... cocktail. [↩]
4. Filipendula ulmaria. [↩]
5. Knew you would, knew you would, knew you would, say no more, nudge nudge wink wink said he knowingly. A wink is as good as a slap on the butt to the blind slut, aye ? [↩]
6. It may be ideologically inconvenient for you to consider that mammal copulation is not designed with any view to female input - generally if she can't run fast enough she's meat. Convenient or inconvenient, a fact's a fact, and fucking isn't made with an Accept / Ignore / Cancel button. Not for women, at any rate. [↩]
7. Not exactly for free, obviously - they get the confirmation of their juju working and being powerful, which increases the very juju in question. [↩]