BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before

Subject: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 Jun 22 - 11:00 AM

Well, I knew that I was a good ten or twenty years behind the times,
but this one stopped me.
I have never before heard of putting someone or something 'on blast'.
Now there is a hot-off-the-wire story about
a FedEx driver who responded to a plea from an Amazon driver
to buy him something cool and wet to drink (no not THAT!),
and the FedEx driver listened in disbelief as
the Amazon driver compared what kind of money the two drivers work for.

So the FedEx driver got out his smartphone camera and all,
and went viral on social media,
calling out Amazon.
Now, 'calling out', I knew already,
but "put Amazon on blast'?
That one was new to me.

Yes, thank you, I know about Amazon exploiting its employees.

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 Jun 22 - 04:53 PM

. . . anybody?

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: Charmion
Date: 25 Jun 22 - 09:56 AM

Keb, in the military headquarters where I used to work, “going on blast” meant TYPING IN ALL CAPS and cc-ing the world with an email, especially when complaining.

A conductor for whom I used to sing liked to characterize a sound effect he wanted in the opening chorus of the Carmina Burana as “molto con blasto”.

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Jun 22 - 09:21 PM

I thought typing in all caps was called SHOUTING?

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: Charmion
Date: 26 Jun 22 - 08:29 AM

Yes, it is. And when you shout (figuratively) at everyone in your grid square, you’re on blast.

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: Mrrzy
Date: 26 Jun 22 - 10:02 AM

I would have guessed it had more to do with ccing the world than the all caps.

I think blast in this context is sending something to many, not something loud.

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 26 Jun 22 - 10:31 AM

I've found it online in a few places. The Yhe Free Dictionary gives:

put (one) on blast

To publicly attack, scold, shame, or mock one, typically on social media.

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 26 Jun 22 - 01:32 PM

> CCing the world

Back at a previous place of employment, every Michaelmas term, one or more of that year's bunch of freshers would use the wildcard facility of the campus e-mail system to send out a naiive query to everybody on site. Said system would then promptly melt down under the load of old farts being loudly annoyed, and showing they didn't know how to *not* Reply To All. Most frustratingly, there was a flag available to centrally disable wildcarding, but Management refused to have it set.

.... which (back at the subject) is as good a demo as I've ever seen of the expression "blast radius". SHOUTING merely compounds the offence.

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: keberoxu
Date: 26 Jun 22 - 05:36 PM

I suppose the social-media contributing factor of more recent years
is a big part of the 'blast'.

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 27 Jun 22 - 07:49 AM

> showing they didn't know how to *not* Reply To All

.... then the much larger secondary wave of people shouting "Don't use Reply To All" who themselves replied to all. Did anybody ever apologise? did they Microsoft.

We now return you to your expected Subject.

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Jun 22 - 04:56 PM

I suppose this was a known expression
even before there was a Twitter in the Oval Office?

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Jun 22 - 02:59 PM

That witness to the Jan 6 committee
did a good job of blasting somebody.

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Jun 22 - 04:10 PM

Charmion, in the military outfit where I used to work, we had only manual "mill" typewriters, and they typed only in ALLCAPS. That's what I learned to type on, in a daily class at 6 AM that I had to attend until I could type 20 words per minute. 'Tis a wonder that I ever learned how to use the shift key.

So, does "put on blast" mean typing in ALLCAPS, or didn't we settle that issue yet?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: 'put on blast', never heard this before
From: Charmion
Date: 01 Jul 22 - 07:21 AM

No, Joe, it’s the “cc the world” part, followed by Reply All responses, that creates the blast.

I learned on my Dad’s ancient Royal portable typewriter, which had been customized for a translator with diacritics for languages other than English in some very strange places. As a teenage Navy radio operator, I used a Korean War-vintage Teletype machine that probably had the same three rows of keys, and a shift key that alternated between letters and symbols. We had to type messages comprising long strings of coded address instructions followed by (so help me) five-character code groups that looked completely random to us. Required speed was at least 35 words per minute, and only two mistakes were permitted in any message. The Navy was hard-core.

I can type like the wind on a modern computer keyboard, but I never learned to integrate that top row (numbers) of a standard QWERTY keyboard.