I came accross this article on Techdirt about the practice of “Toothing.” I’m still not sure I buy it, and I’m not entirely convinced it’s not a hoax of some kind.
In a nutshell the act of toothing is (allegedly) using the short-range connectivity technology known as Bluetooth to text those who might be near you on a commuter train for random sexual encounters in the restroom. This is evidently a new activity to lighten the daily commute of British travellers.
There are a couple of reasons I’m not convinced. First, as soon as I heard about this myself and some friends tried to find the method to send text messages to one another via Bluetooth with no success. Now, granted we didn’t have the manuals at hand and were only working with phones from two vendors (Nokia and SonyEriccson), but I find it hard to believe that technically adept folks such as ourselves couldn’t give this a go. Since then I have not been able to find out how to text via Bluetooth in the manual for my Nokie or for me old SonyEriccson. Secondly, having been on many a commuter train in Britain, I’ve seen a fair number that I’m pretty sure had no restrooms at all. The ones that did have restrooms make you wish they didn’t. So, I doubt any nookie is going to take place in there.
One cool thing I CAN do with my Nokia 8620 is send images via Bluetooth to those around me via Bluetooth. Considering it’s a camera phone this could certainly open up some very naughty possibilities for those so inclined.
Not me of course. No… never…
