sirfrogsworth:

At first glance, this may seem like trivial stupidity. Our nation’s press secretary uses a government account to gripe about a product. It might be something more suited for a personal twitter and not an official mouthpiece. Beyond that, disparaging a corporation as a high ranking government employee crosses a few ethical lines. Not just metaphorically. There are written guidelines in place saying this is a no-no. 

But people will say, “It’s the Trump White House… what’s new?”

Then there is the domestic stupidity. Why was her 2 year old son alone talking to an Echo? How does he know how to use it? Why were parental controls not on? Why is the ability to auto-order items activated? Does a child that young even have the capacity to idolize Batman? What forms of Batman media is she showing this kid? Even the Animated Series is a bit dark for that age. Why didn’t she just cancel the order and get a refund? Amazon makes that process quite painless, and if you do it soon enough, the item won’t even ship. 

It seems like she could have just read her manual, turned on a few options to prevent this from happening again, and all is good. There is no need to nag a company for something that is mostly your own fault. Especially when your position and method of complaint could actually hurt sales. It was even covered on Fox News afterwards, doing more damage. 

I found this all frustrating, but compared to some of her other sins, I mostly felt “meh” about it. I was about to roll my eyes and file the memory of this story in my brain’s trash bin… but there was something bugging me and I couldn’t let it go quite yet. 

Is this even possible? 

Can a 2 year old yell “Batman!” at an Alexa device and order a toy? I headed to the google and found that several tech blogs have already tried to figure this out. First of all, you must address Alexa first. You’d have to say, “Alexa… BATMAN BATMAN BATMAN!” Would a 2 year old know this? Let’s say he did address Alexa properly. What does the device do when you yell Batman at it? Apparently, a whole-lotta-nothin. You basically confuse the cyberlady contained in your Echo.

The tech blogs then tried thinking like a 2 year old. Are there any phrases he could have uttered that would order a Batman toy? They tried “Give me Batman!” and “I want Batman!” It wasn’t until they said, “Alexa, order Batman!” that they had any success. However, Alexa will then ask you directly if you want to order Batman and you have to say yes. This is looking to be one smart 2 year old. 

It was at this point that I put on my tin foil conspiracy hat. Because this seems like some epic bullshit. 

Trump very much dislikes Amazon and a Mr. Jeff Bezos (who recently became the world’s richest person). He has tweeted numerous complaints about Amazon in the past. He said they didn’t pay taxes (hah, that’s ironic!). He claimed they were a tax shelter. And he argued they screwed the US Postal Service. Honestly, it all sounds like jealous ranting to me. I’m pretty sure Trump believes he should be the richest man in the world. He is a Very Stable Genius™ after all. Why has his unmatched intelligence and epic business know-how not gotten him every bit of wealth on the planet? Why does the moon not have a Trump logo on it?

Is it possible that Mrs. Huckabee Sanders manufactured this anecdote to please her Lord & Master? Maybe there is some truth in this story and she molded the events so she could shit on Amazon. Could Trump have directly asked her to do something to piss off Jeff Bezos because he was just announced the richest man? Is “my 2 year old” Trump’s secret service code name? Or is she secretly a huge Batman fan and needed to give her husband an excuse for why she spent 80 bucks on a figurine? 

I don’t know what to make of this. I will probably never learn the true story. Much like JFK, this mystery of epic proportions will never be solved to everyone’s satisfaction. This Batman figure will be stored away next to JFK’s missing brain and the Ark of the Covenant. Perhaps in 80 years they will declassify the documents of Operation Dark Knight Echoes and we will finally learn the truth. 

For now, I’m going to take off my tin foil hat and continue with my original plan. Roll my eyes and try to unremember this nonsense.