An App to Publicly Humiliate 'ParkingDouches'
By Claire Suddath on May 23, 2012
Russia has a lot of problems, what with its recent wave of political
unrest, newly reinstated President Vladimir Putin‟s crack down on
protestors, and, of course, its unforgiving winter. According to Russianonline newspaper
The Village,
the country also suffers from an
inordinate number of what it calls “parking douches.” “There is a big
infrastructure problem here because our cities are not equipped for
parking. There aren‟t many ways for people to park legally,” explains
Katya Bazilevskaya, marketing director of Moscow-based Look at
Media, The Village‟s parent company. “People park at the streets
everywhere. Some of them are exceptionally impolite.
They will park in your yard, in front of your apartment building, right
next to other cars.” And so the paper has released a video about a free
smart phone app that allows you to photograph these inconsideratedouble, triple, and sidewalk parkers and share their information onFacebook (FB).
The goal of the app is to “make such practices socially unacceptableusing digital media,” according to
—
license plate, carmodel, and color
—
the app will turn it into a pop-up banner ad that reads
“[License plate number] annoys you on here just as he does on [Str
eet
name].”
The ads are targeted to nearby computer users via their IPaddresses so that the only people who receive information about anoffending parker are the people who live or work nearby it. To get rid of
it, you have to share the car‟s information
on Facebook.
It‟s essentially a crowdsourced version of a public shaming sentence
akin to those enacted in certain areas of the U.S. In Putnam County, Fla.,and Aberdeen, Wash., people convicted of shoplifting (or in at least onecase, embezzlement) have b
een made to stand outside holding “I stole”
signs publicly marking them as criminals. The sentences have had
varying levels of success, and it‟s likely that the parking app will too.
According to Bazilevskaya, more than 4,500 people have downloadedthe app since its launch last week, although most of those people are
“big activists. They are using it a lot.”
The Village’
s app has one flaw: It forces people to suffer through pop-up
ads on websites. Still, it‟s a pretty ingenious way to solve Russia‟s urban
parking problem. A savvy policemen could use it to find cars thatdeserve a ticket.
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