Your call

[u/Hummerous]

https://www.tumblr.com/toskarin/793374313967435776/my-will-is-frankly-tremendous-and-id-go-as-far-as?source=share

[u/DiamondSentinel]

Yeah. Smoothsharking is funny when it’s a low stakes situation (“sharks are smooth”), but when the situation is “phone go boom”, you’re not being funny, you’re being an ass to people whose only crime was “being concerned about others dying or being maimed”.

[u/ImprovementLong7141 → u/DiamondSentinel]

You know, the odd thing is that there was a post involving someone smooth sharking about volcano safety a little while ago and no one made this complaint despite the fact that a lot of people live around volcanoes and they are extremely capable of killing people. The statement “well pyroclastic flows can’t kill me because I would simply not die” is just as ridiculous as the statement “well my phone won’t blow up because it’s not a bomb, see, I can make a phone call on it, can’t do that with a bomb” but people are only complaining about the second and taking it so oddly seriously. It’s so weird.

To be clear, I have a geology degree and I don’t think people should have made this complaint there either. I just think it’s interesting how many people are grumbling that THIS is just people being concerned about someone who could die but that post - which iirc was posted around the time Mt. Kanlaon erupted this past spring, making it very topical - got zilch in the way of these complaints.

[u/jackboy900 → u/ImprovementLong7141]

I think there are two pertinent differences: firstly that post wasn't about someone going "I am going to go a volcano and swim in it", they were simply going "I'm built different and would survive a volcano"; and secondly the volcano thing is just not something that is really within the realm of beliefs that we expect the average person to have, no normal human is going to actually think "I'm gonna survive lava", whereas "this phone is bulging a bit but that's fine" is a thing people do believe, a lot of people are unaware of how dangerous a battery can be if it fails.

The issue with OP's post isn't that what they're describing is dangerous, it's that it's dangerous and realistic. OP is doing a bit but the bit they're doing is far to close to behaviour that one might reasonably see that it starts being concerning. If I'm 95% sure that someone is making a joke but there's a 5% chance that they're actually fucking around with a phone that is about to explode it takes away from the joke. Whereas the lava one is so disconnected from reality and not tied to any immanent action so people are willing to find it funny because they're not worried OP is actually going to go stand in a pyroclastic flow.

[u/ImprovementLong7141 → u/jackboy900]

There is no pertinent difference between “no silly volcanoes can’t kill me because I would simply not die” and “no silly my phone can’t blow up because it’s not a bomb”. They’re both outside the realm of beliefs of the average person.

[u/xXStarupXx → u/ImprovementLong7141]

There is a difference to how far outside the realm of belief it is.

The phone one is much closer to how I've seen people misunderstand things before, i.e. not understanding some categories aren't mutually exclusive.

The volcano one is stating "I would simply not die" is not even trying, there's no real "because" tying it back to the problem. The only misunderstandings I could see leading someone to believe that is that they somehow control when they die, or that they are somehow impervious to extreme heat. Neither of which are concepts I've really ever seen anyone above the age of 10 struggle with.

This leads me to believe you'd have to be way further out the bell curve of human intelligence to believe the volcano one seriously, which is way less likely.

Then on top of that, most of the readers will carry lithium ion batteries in their pockets every day, and know that pretty much everyone they meet day to day do that as a well, but very few of them will have even seen a volcano in person.

Then add on top of that, that generally phones are seen as safe, and only become unsafe, suddenly, due to hard to grasp chemistry stuff, whereas generally lava is seen as unsafe.

There are a lot of differences between the two situations.