Many young Bostonians think city overreacted

No concern in other cities
The devices didn’t prompt calls of concern in any of the nine other cities where Turner said the devices were placed. Police in the other cities fanned out to find and remove them after Boston’s scare.

Some enterprising people got to the devices before police: At least seven were for sale Thursday afternoon on the Internet auction site eBay, ranging in price from $500 to $2,100.

Most of Boston’s colleagues in law enforcement in the other cities chose their words carefully.

“I wouldn’t want to give my opinion, but in today’s world it’s better safe than sorry. Someone (in Boston) clearly thought there was a threat,” Atlanta police Officer Joe Cobb said.

In the Seattle area, authorities thought the devices were “obviously not suspicious.”

“In this day and age, whenever anything remotely suspicious shows up, people get concerned — and that’s good,” King County sheriff’s Sgt. John Urquhart said. “However, people don’t need to be concerned about this. These are cartoon characters giving the finger.”

Tobe Berkowitz, an advertising professor at Boston University, said it’s easy to understand why there is a generational gap between the way the target audience for the promotional campaign reacted and the way older Bostonians reacted.

“For people who are hip and live in the world of blogs and all sorts of cool alternative media, it’s one thing,” he said. “But for the rest of us ... they don’t get it as a marketing or a clever event, they see it as a huge disruption of their lives.”

Publicity stunt approved by Cartoon Network
The publicity campaign was conceived by the Adult Swim marketing department and approved by the head of the Cartoon Network, Turner spokeswoman Shirley Powell said Thursday. She said the devices had been up for two weeks around the country and the network had not received any calls about them.

“We were simply promoting a TV show,” she said. “If we had ever perceived this to be something threatening safety, we would never have proceeded with it.”

The network told the marketing company to decide where the devices should be placed, with the mandate they should be in places likely to be seen by young men. Adult Swim’s target audience is men aged 18 to 24.

The marketing company that placed the signs, Interference Inc. of New York City, did not return calls seeking comment and its offices were closed Thursday.

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