I should be constitutionally exhausted by now after so many strokes of genius, but they just keep coming. If anything I might regret having not thought of this sooner, but then I don’t think I could have followed through with the more seditious possibilities. It seems I’ve overlooked an obvious and untraceable way to torment the kiosk people: the feedback form. You can use the form to report if the unit is damaged or vandalized, but you can also make freeform comments. I could demand they send 5000 Bitcoins to me as ransom to make me stop doing this, but of course I would never do such a thing. But I have a somewhat anarchistic idea: I could dial some innocuous toll-free number several times, then use the feedback form to claim that ice cream jingle music had been blasting from this kiosk. Given the manner in which they have handled situations like this on social media it seems they just take the word for it from whoever reported noisy kiosks, and block whatever the last number dialed from the location. If I call something like 1-800-COLLECT and then use the form to report jingle noise they might just go ahead and block 1-800-COLLECT thinking I had somehow used that number to connect with the jingle.

To take it to another level, if they actually did block that number I could next call the food stamps hotline, which they have repeatedly bragged about for being the most-called number from those kiosks. Their boasting about this probably ignites laughter in some circles for a variety of reasons but all I hear in that comment is a feeble attempt to make the public think these kiosks are a valued and even life-saving part of the city. People calling that line could just as easily and with greater dignity use a payphone, which would presumably not attempt to end the call after 10 minutes, as is now the case. It still bugs me how their reaction to the Vernon Boulevard incident included the suggestion that I was somehow depriving people of access to the food stamps hotline. How stupid do these people think their public is?

But I wouldn’t really want to have any part of blocking access to the food stamps number, as much as it might throw egg on the proverbial face of the company. I mean if I was able to pull that off I would promptly alert them that this had happened. But I do want to explore the possibilities of tricking those folks into blocking legitimate numbers out of fear they are being called to channel ice cream noise. I could also just torment them with claims that explicit pornography is being displayed on the tablet screens.

I have used the feedback form at least once in the past, so I don’t know how I put it out of my mind. They had featured a feedback form on the top screen for a while, putting it in a place more prominent than now, which is below the fold and for whatever reason seems to require multiple touches before the form turns up. The featured feedback form was asking the general public what features they’d like to see on the kiosks. I typed in “BRING BACK THE PORN” and tweeted an image of the screen before sending the message. It got one laugh.

What I think I will end up doing with the feedback form is something simpler than all this, and not villainous. I’ll get a burner e-mail account and tell them “IF YOU WERE SMART YOU WOULD HIRE ME. REGARDS, THE ICE CREAM JINGLE BANDIT.” Then I’d leave that burner e-mail address to create the remotest possibility that they might actually want to contact me. That is, truth be told, what smart companies do. This is not a hack in the truest sense of the word but when network hacks occur it is not uncommon for the company to hire the intruder, since it is better to have them on your side than not. It would also be something of a happy ending to this story, which for as much as I think about I am keeping it in perspective. It’s not en epic big deal, or at least it shouldn’t be. But social media has done what social media does. It conflated some relatively isolated incidents an made it seem like all of New York was experiencing loud and obnoxious ice cream music.