Want to play billionaire for a day? This app lets you rent your own armed goon squad Need to turn heads and burn cash while out on the town? A new app lets you hire armed bodyguards to escort you around - chauffeur included - provided you're in Los Angeles or New York City. Protector's mobile app officially launched yesterday on the Apple App Store. It's recent surge in popularity is largely due to a pair of …
But if you are a total nobody or TikTok influencer (but I repeat myself) then nobody is actually planning to harm you - so you don't really need anyone to be armed.
All you really need is a bunch of mates arsing about, or some unemployed theatre school kids and a Turo subscription and you can play-act all you want safely and cheaply.
If only someone's babysitter had thought of this in 2016 we would have been saved a lot of trouble
'Security professional' turns up late and is a middle aged, overweight man in a dirty tracksuit who hasn't seen a gym or soap for quite some time. He's 'forgotten' his gun, so has brought his son's Nerf blaster instead. Apparently, his Escalade is in for a service and the 'courtesy' car is a filthy, tired, beaten up sub-compact. The area is new to him, so he gets lost several times trying to take you to your function before accosting random strangers for directions because the battery on his smartphone has died. You eventually get to the venue several hours late but he says he'll have to leave you at the corner because that's all he's been paid for. His parting comment is a request to give him a 5 star rating. It is now starting to rain and you've left your umbrella in his car.
This post has been deleted by its author
... that this kind of rent-a-goon has been available to all and sundry for many decades (check out old B&W videos of boxers arriving at fights, for example). They can be found in the yellow pages of any phone book. The only difference here is the app ... which comes with added cost, of course ... and the fact that various online outlets are giving this particular company free advertising.
If you're paranoid enough to feel the need, save a few dollars and pick up a phone book.
In 1972, a cracked commando unit was sent home by the military for a being deemed mentally & physically unfit.
These men promptly escaped from their mothers basement to the Los Angeles transit system.
Today, still unwanted by the government, they survive as ubers of fortune. If you have a problem, If no one else can help and if you can fund them. Maybe you can hire, The Z-Team.
"...and pick up a phone book."
Not seen a dead tree Yellow Pages† for ages (or any other business directory.) The A-M was really just the right thickness to put under your 41 kg 21" Sony Trinitron CRT monitor.
† for me a great source of amusement when young system people that juggle ldap or ad with aplomb flee in terror from yellow pages (nis) even after explaining it's just a collection ndbm(3) files exposed on the network via a rpc service. Dangerously simple. :)
When you can hire the Hells Angels for $500 in beer (1969 price). And they look a lot more foreboding than the Protector options.
The son of a friend of mine was sent for a year to a french school in a scandinavian country (it is complicated).
There he became close friends with two classmates who were both aristocrats in an african country. Both guys were heavily pigmented and MASSIVE.
This group of 3 would roam the streets of the capital in the evenings, as one likes to do at that age. The locals would see one pale teenager built like a beanstalk with the two aforementioned caracters approaching, immediately make the wrong conclusion (Russian Mafia + 2 bodyguards), and hurry over to the other side of the road, while the reality would be a much more procaic european nobody flanked by two african princes*......
Looks can be decieving.
*: No, they were not offering unbelievable financial opportunities.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
