Escaping Flatland

The Internet Sexuality Information Services (ISIS) has created inSPOT-LA [Link], a website for people (mostly homosexual) who have a Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) to inform their recent sexual partners anonymously, by sending ecards. This would alert them to risks of possible infection, and allow them to get checked sooner.

A brilliant idea, I think - circumventing the social ignominy of direct contact while ensuring that the crucial message is sent. Good intentions, meet anonymity. And the ecards express a range of emotions - from the stick-to-the-facts to the colorful to the tongue-in-cheek. Only in California.

Now, if we combine the need for anonymity with impure intentions, there might be a larger market awaiting us. I'm sure Sherron Watkins (who wrote a memo on Enron's dizzying accounting schemes to the CEO), Jeffrey Wigand (the tobacco industry's ultimate insider), and FBI Special agent John Roberts (who spoke of discipline problems within the FBI) would appreciate a Whistleblower's ecard.

These ladies (Desperate Housewives) might like a snitch-on-friends-and-neighbors ecard. And these folks (Coulter, Moore) would be partial to a slander-your-political-opponent ecard.