[ExI] focus

[SR Ballard]

>
> A video of the incident showed what a witness said: when the shooting
> started, plenty of the contestants never looked away from their screen.  In
> the news video, the shots can be heard in the background, people shrieking,
> but whoever had the camera never seemed to notice.
>

Well, to me, with friends who participate in such competitions, it doesn't
seem that far fetched, or strange even. Competitions of this type usually
work in a specific way and are trained in a specific way as well.

An important component to recognize is that basically 100% of the time, you
will see these kids wearing huge headphones. They are a point of pride, and
usually quite expensive. They will generally combine powerful noise
cancelling with strong speakers. And generally the sound piped into these
headphones will be quite loud. Very likely they could not physically hear
the gunshots. If they did, they would have been muffled and easily be
mistaken for something falling or breaking. They likely could not hear the
screaming, and if they could, they easily could have mistaken it for
cheering.

Additionally, they would not have been able to see people panicing or
running. They are seated in a way that makes it difficult (sometimes almost
impossible) to see the audience.

Imagine if you were in a sound proof room recording a heavy metal album,
with your back to the window. It's unlikely that you would notice a gunman
in the sound booth on the other side of the glass until it was all over.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20180827/8f3a9011/attachment.html>