This guy doesn't have any cents!

This story has been circulating around for a while now, and I personally took a small look at the story a little while back and didn't pay much attention to it. So today I decided to look into the story a little deeper to find out what all the fuss was all about and form my own opinion on what happened.

If you haven't already heard about this story as of yet, it's basically all about a man from Adelaide who decided to pay his $60.00 parking fine in 5 cent coins. He went into a bank, asked for $60.00 worth of 5 cent coins. They provided him with this all in coins in small bags and he goes to a side counter and open them all up and put them into one big bag. He then proceeds to the RTA (I think), and tells the woman behind the counter that he wishes to pay his fine and dumps all the coins on the counter and pushes them all towards her desk. During the whole time he was filming this whole affair on what appears to be a hidden camera, and got the attention of ACA as well as Youtube which he posted up himself.

What has amazed me about the whole thing is mostly the comments which are following this whole video, and I'm honestly shocked that some of the Youtube comments seem to have much more maturity about the whole thing than the comments on ACA (which really shouldn't surprise me that much). Basically the shameful comments are praising this guy in his ways to 'stick it to the man.' How is paying a fine in coins actually doing this? All you are doing is causing yourself some trouble for going out of your way to the bank and line up in a queue to get the coins which they will have to count for you. Then going to the side counter to open up each of the bags and put them into the cloth bag which you will then have to carry with you. Also having the poor cashier girl (who before never had a beef with you until now), wanting to count all of this change. The cashier girl repeatedly tells the guy politely that she cannot accept payment in this form (as it is against Australian law to pay a fine with anything less than a 5 dollar note - which he really should have looked up beforehand).

Because of his constant arrogance at the woman behind the counter he then draws the attention of either the supervisor or security who checks what all the commotion is all about. The man refuses to give the guy the time of day, as he isn't the 'cashier' and proceeds to cause further trouble. He is then given two options, either collect the coins and change them for notes or walk out. He chooses the latter and starts saying "I've tried to make payment, he just told me to leave... I'm out." While continuing to shove the coins back at the girl who is being polite and piling them back up for him. I personally found it hilarious when he used the excuse "That's all I can afford to pay in those pieces." *Insert facepalm meme here* Great excuse there Sherlock!

He's excuse? They are "all part of a corporation" which he doesn't want to deal with. What corporation is that? The government? Well big whoop! You had a parking fine, you were in the wrong and you decide to not only take it on a woman who was just doing her job, but also another person who honestly probably wouldn't have noticed you. He then also demands to know their names, and when asked for his told them that they didn't need to know that kind of information. I may have a little respect for the guy if he actually told them, I'll wait here until you count them all. but instead he decides to take off.

Is this is what people have come down to? They do something wrong and decide to take it out on the wrong people? I mean if he wanted to dispute the parking fee he could have taken it to court, write a letter in protest or maybe even get a petition for people to sign. How about actually go up to ACA and tell his version of events. Nope. Apparently this kind of maturity wasn't common for this guy, he decided to show how a adult man can act like a 11 year old boy. Good going there bud.

Amazingly even though it is against the law to pay in such small change, they are offered to hold onto his coins in a safe until he can come back and claim them and continue to pay his fine in a proper way. So not only did he just make an idiot of himself on his own camera, but he'll have to come back to the same place with his tail between his legs to claim back the coins.

On a side note there should be another issue which needs to be brought to attention. This guy can get away with filming people and posting it within the media as it isn't against Australian law to take a photo of film someone without their permission. The only exception is employers filming employees, anything for commercial purposes, and lastly anything that is considered indecent or offensive. But I think that is another blog for another day.

This isn't a hoax!

From sharing a page for a child dying of cancer so that they can receive donations from every like the picture receives, to Heineken sponsoring a dog fight. Just about every day within social media networks like Facebook, we are constantly bombarded with ‘shocking’ news stories. Most of what we are confronted with is information of events which hardly seem that it could be possible at all. Yet because there is a picture of a dying child or because it has a lot of detail about the situation, some of us are compelled to think that the information that we are presented with is correct. Mostly due to the face that we do not want to come across as a cruel and insensitive person so we’d like to feel as though that we are contributing in some way.

Before the whole social media uproar, I personally learnt the tough way that everything that I read or see on television (including news shows) isn’t necessarily the truth. It’s a skewed truth of what that particular show wants me to believe or their personal view of the story. You only have to listen to the many stories from different people who experience a tragedy to hear countless different versions of the same event. So why hasn’t a majority of people caught on to the fact that social media is doing the same thing but on a much wider scale? I mean does anyone still believe anymore when they receive an email either claiming that they’ve won millions of dollars, or that there is a wealthy person who is looking for someone to hold their millions for them anymore? No! So why is this any different? The even sad thing is that some of these stories also appear every year, and every year there is a group of people who fall for the same hoaxes.

I personally think that there are three factors involved. Firstly it brings to some of us a sense of guilt involved. This is just simply from noticing that every post that the hoaxes are involved in have sentences within them that say the same thing over and over. Things like ‘Like if you’re against rape, ignore if you are for rape.’ Of course none of us are for rape! But for many people to simple ignore this will imply a sense of guilt, and there is nothing to be guilty about. This especially happens if a friend of yours has shared the article and you may think that your friends and family will think of you has a horrible person if you do not contribute in some way.

Secondly I think it comes also from laziness. The whole TL; DR (too long; didn’t read) type of lazy or just couldn’t be bothered looking into it. So they shared and are not even bothered to look into it, or find out what it is all about.

Lastly, the only other explanation that I could think of at the top of my head is that people who share this type of information actually believe what the information is telling us. For these types of people I have a couple of websites for you. Hoax-Slayer.com and Snopes.com. These particular websites have information about any old or new stories that you seem that are just isn’t right. If you’d prefer, a simple Google search would suffix or just simply use your common sense.

I recently heard within my favourite weekly podcast (http://www.chillpakhollywood.com/) that you could come up with the most out there theory or idea about anything , and you’ll find somewhere within the vast internet a webpage dedicated to it with theories and facts. You could even come up with the theory that monkeys have been living within planet Venus before the arrival of man and there will someone backing up your theory. This personally proves to me even more that we should all be careful of the things we see and hear not only on the internet but also within new stories.

I could go on and on about the subject, but the main thing that I wanted to point out to everyone is mostly just have a second think before you go sharing a story that seems very unlikely. Take a bit of common sense and also have a look within the internet itself to see if there has been any repeat of this happening in the past before. I can almost guarantee you that there are a lot of these stories they have all been around for many years, and it's making its yearly cycle.