I'm back! This time with some phonebashing(.com)!

It's about time I posted here again. I have quite a few websites I've been meaning to post about, just haven't gotten around to it. Story of my life to be honest, but finally I decided to get back to it! For today's post I conveniently decided to cover a very small website, but a relic nonetheless. Might as well ease myself back into things. The website in question is phonebashing.com. This might actually suprise a reader or two (especially zillenials) because the idea of being anti-mobile phone has been getting fairly popular in certain circles (and amongst people who hav little-to-no self-control). However this idea, according to this website, has existed since at least... Well since at least he time when Siemens made phones and the screens were monochrome. There's no copyright date for this website, but udging by it's design it's clearly been kicking-around for quite a while. So let's go through what it has to offer.

Upon entering the website, you're greated to the above. Already a veeeeeery early 2000s design here, but I appreciate them making the content centered instead of hugging the rightmost-quarter of my screen like many older sites do. The low-quality image of the guy in an anicent mobile phone suit making a very ominous pose, and the mention of some "Solid Gold Chart Busters". I'll get back to them later. For now we just some some blurbs explaining how the people who made the website are anti-mobile phone, and a link to a video. Not just a video however, a video download. VERY clearly an early 2000s website. Upon clicking the link we are sent to a page where the video should be, however it seems like in the 20-or-so years the website has existed, the file for it has either dissapeared or broken and can no longer be downloaded or watched. Imagine that... Being able to watch videos from the internet without downloading them. High-tech.

Now let's continue down the main page, as gleaning any videos from this website in current year seems to be a lost cause (and trust me, I've already tried to). Upon scrolling-down we get to see 6-more whole video clips (or pages which once held video clips), 2 images from what I assume to have been the shooting of the music video, and a couple of paragraphs titled "Theft of the Suits". Upon first-glance it appears to be the start of a text-written manifesto, however it seems like an explanation for their phone genocide is limited to the top paragraph, and even then it seems like any real explenation is boiled-down to a group of friends wanting to do a "fiendish project". A bit of a shame but I guess they assumed their video would be available forever. Anyway, rest of the first paragraph and second paragraph describe a heist of the phone suits that were most likely seen in the first video. Apparently they just pulled-up after the video finished shooting (they had a friend who helped in filming), put the suits in the car, and drove away. Who knew theft could be that simple? On another note, I wonder where those suits are now...

Finally, at the very bottom of the first page, we have a paragraph titled "Official Site". It mentions how with the launch of the Virgin Records site (which most-likley dates this to before the 2000s) the "Solid Gold Chart Busters" are unacknowledged for their work, despite being able to listen to the song. Who the Solid Gold Chart Busters are, whether the website creators or another group, remains unknown to me. Apparently the website creators are also mad that Virgin didn't explain the "true" meaning of the song, so I guess there was some corporate shennanigans going-on at this point but this context has likely long been lost. There was also supposedly a link to the Virgin Records website, but it seems to be so broken that it's no longer visible. Now, finally, onto those 6 other clips.

All of these clips are in the format of the page for the first video we looked at, so you're not missing anything past the border of the screenshots. The description makes this clip sound a whole lot like a mugging, which... doesn't exactly reflect greatly on our webmaster lads. I guess it's all for the meme/vine/tiktok though, since the confronters are wearing the phone suits...

Second clip! Apparently this "grab" was so fast the clip had to be slowed-down. Of course we wouldn't know. Anyway, this happened right after getting off the train from their first "grab", and the lady who phone was bashed was... I guess just kinda standing there minding her own business from what was described. So naturally, our phone-suited lunatics decided she was the perfect target for their warpath. They take her phone and drop it down some stairs whiel fleeing. And I'm not gonna lie, this is starting to sound a little too much like those old YouTube "pranksters" who would harrass randos in public about a decade ago. Granted we don't have these clips anymore (at least not here) to verify if this really is a YouTube-style "prank" or if it's all staged. The description leads me to believe the former.

This third clip, as the description says, shows the phone of a guy "envolved" in his BMW getting grabbed and bashed, however our BMW guy isn't going down without a fight. He starts chasing the phone-dressed maniacs down the street (understandably) and even catches one, though he lets them go for whatever reason. Kinda wish he started throwing hands, but I guess Mr. BMW made his point (though not before getting his swanky phone totaled).

This next clip described an encounter with a "hippy chick" having "a pint", meaning this confirms to me that this comes from good-old Great Britain. I guess we could've surmized this already by the fact that nobody got shot. The only noteable things about this clip is that the "hippy chick" was their most formidable foe encountered yet (or would've been were it not for her platform shoes), and that I can seemingly forever open the webpage within the small box which once housed the video, as demonstrated by the 2 vertical scroll-bars. Godspeed to the "hippy chick" and her platform shoes.

As the description states, this next clip shows Call-Qaeda's next attack at a barber shop of all places! It's one thing to go after podestrians on the street, another on a train, but our cellphone terrorists get very bold with this barber shop stunt! They like to think that all the "punters" of the store where glad that the victim had her phone grabbed-and-bashed, but I'm sure Osama Bin-Laden also thought similarly. Also, as shown by the highlighted text, this seems to confirm that the clips are gone-gone from the website in it's current state. Unfortunate but maybe these videos don't deserve to be immortalized on the internet, at least not without an accompanying arrest record.

Finally, we're at Call-Qaeda's final video. Their (seemingly) last victim was apparently a student, and according to the description, our pholesters "hooked up" afterwards. Whether consentually or not or if it involved their student victim we may never know. Apparently their cell-pholesting ring was almost busted after they almost ran into two "old bill". Whatever that means. You know what, I kinda wish they ran into those two "old bill", but we can't always get waht we want. And with that, our time on phonebashing.com comes to an end. This turned-out to be much longer than I anticipated, but I guess I'm better prepared now for much more volumnous websites that I've been planning to cover! And while having a final look at the homepage, I saw their disclaimer that apparently all of these people were real, unsuspecting podestrians who were victimized. Guess these fellas were truly the glue-eating YouTube pranksters of their day. Very ahead of their time I must say. And if anyone's wondering how this has been hanging around for so long, look no further than what appears to be an affiliate link to the American Casino Guide for new Jersey that i forgot to mention earlier. Maybe they're not British after all, though that doesn't explain British slang. According to a Reddit post I found, I have been able to get a little more context for the time period. For one it confirms that this is a pre-y2k website as we got hinted at earlier, and that apparently there was a period of time where (to quote the Redditor) "twenty-something's made fun of thirty-something's for using them in public." This time-period must've been brief consdidering this is the first time I'm hearing about it, and I like to imagine I know fairly decently what was popular in the 90s, and this is the first time I'm hearing about it. To finally conclude, one must wonder what these guys have been up to in the 25+ years since their terror spree. Did they give-up their anti-phone jihad and give-into the march of progress? Where they ever charged for their crimes against phonanity? Do they still have those phone suits in a box somewhere, waiting to be unpacked and worn again? These questions may never be answered, but considering that as recently as roughly 2 years ago (according to the Reddit thread) the videos were still, y'know there, I think I have a decent chance of being able to find them. So there's that at least.