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The issue is not the strobes or sensitivity thereto. The issue, as always, is the Nanny Culture, the constant externalization of the locus of control, and every last person’s unilateral demand and expectation that the world must be modified, made safe, and plastered with warnings. Epilepsy, peanut allergies, falls from ladders, side effects of drugs, etc. etc. etc.

The person quoted in this story is...a blogger. Not a doctor, not a neurologist, not a scientist. Strobes are hardly a new thing, having been employed in music shows, haunted houses and dozens of other applications. It’s only within the last 10 years that we have been inundated with demands and warnings.

As with peanut allergies, somehow the person who is affected is entitled carry on with life without a care in the world AFTER the rest of the world modifies itself, often at great expense and almost always at great inconvenience and with the usual killjoys banging on about ‘raising awareness.’

Every human being has these remarkable, portable things called eyelids - always at the ready to snap shut. They also have two hands which may be used to cover the eyes if the eyelids are insufficient. At the first sign of blinking, strobes, flashbulbs, etc. the eyelids can be closed, the hands raised to eyes and the offending photons may be effectively blocked. It’s certainly quicker, more efficient and requires no ‘raising awareness’ except the awareness of the individual affected.

From a FR/libertarian standpoint, surely we know by now that these issues and demands are invariably the thin end of the wedge before ‘benevolent’ government steps in to make such warnings mandatory or even, as in the case of government schools, to place restrictions or even outright bans on that which have been deemed unacceptable. Not only is it ridiculous, it is dangerous.