Empathy is one of those weird things that everybody has, but it just seems to disappear in very specific environments. The ultimate environment for this is probably the drive-thru of a fast food restaurant. In these heterotopias, the basic components of the human psyche seem to evaporate and be replaced by some primal mindset that is focused only on food. However, the very nature of the drive-thru is counterproductive to this primal mindset as the human is stuck in a car with no outlet to release their energy. The drive-thru is a trap that we put ourselves into because of the supposed promise of food at the end of the tunnel. In the drive-thru, empathy disappears and humans only care about the product.
With that said, there is a unique type of person whose lack of empathy breaks so many barriers that they are able to break the rules of the already-odd setting of the drive-thru. They are the rulebreakers, and they do an act called “fire in the hole.”
Fire in the Hole is a fairly simple concept at first glance. The patron orders a large drink, or a slushie or icee of some sort. When it is handed to them, they proudly denounce the drink as they scream “fire in the hole!” and hurl the drink back into the window they just received the drink from. A simple prank surely, however, there are hidden layers to the fire in the hole that elevate it to an entirely incomprehensible level of prank. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the fire in the hole isn’t just a prank, but rather an act of deliberately questioning our society’s values, fears, and order.
Only a very powerful person has the capability to fire in the hole. I know this because I am not strong enough myself. Every single step of a fire in the hole (hole?) is an act of domination. First, there’s the fact that the hurler goes to the drive thru and usually orders only their large drink. They have already sacrificed their time simply by performing the process of making the drive over to the fast-food establishment and ordering their drink. In the second step though, they literally hand over money to the establishment just to be able to fire in the hole. The immediate statement said by the drink launcher is that money and capitalism mean so much less in the world than the possibility of humor occurring. It launches societal standards to the side in favor of a one-time joke.
The second reason fire in the hole is such a power move is because there is a sense of absolute recklessness that goes behind the action. After that drink is launched through the window, the thrower doesn’t know where it’s going to go. They don’t know the intricacies of the interior of that fast-food restaurant. For all they know, that drink could make its way right on to the face of the employee. Even worse, it could really end up (for lack of a better term phrase fucking some shit up and landing in a fryer and ruining tons of food and even potentially causing some kind of fire.
Our society is built on the idea that patience and mutual trust between an employee and a consumer is rewarded for both members. Ideally, an employee wants to spend as little time thinking about a customer as possible and move on. The consumer enables the employees trust because they want to gain their product as quickly and in the most harmless way possible. Fire in the hole deconstructs this trust.
I also don’t want my position on firing in the hole to be misconstrued.
While it may be an action of pure humor, it is still objectively wrong. Firing in the hole is an amoral action that pushes empathy to the side in order of selfish laughter. Is the laughter really selfish though, if it can provide humor to thousands of viewers on the internet? The answer is definitely yes, it is still a 100% selfish and borderline evil action. So, I certainly am not condoning or advertising people to fire in the hole. However, if you do, please forward me the link to the video.
