I doing they were hoping for anything less than being the butt of a series of hilarious pranks. Audience interaction means they've got an audience, doesn't it? But the exploiting-city-services thing sounds played out. Think of the possibilities!
I'm waiting for the first viral marketing attempt. Suddenly, Kenneth Eng bursts through the door wearing a sandwich board with a blowup of his book cover...
Yeah, I mean imagine if he'd been shot dead by the cops. Think of the possibilities!
I love how he just remains where he is, saying almost nothing.
3 -- Shhhh! Quiet before the writers for Law & Order hear you.
Not a good idea, but definitely funny, especially since we know no one got hurt. They should have waited until April 1, so that they could go down in internet history, but who knows, maybe in internet time, it's already April 1.
The *idea* is funny. The video is dull, dull, dull.
3, 8, 11: I've read Radley Balko's blog too often to think this is funny in the least. There's always going to be some bunch of assholes who think that pushing a random stranger down a flight of stairs is funny. Those people aren't comedians, they're thugs, bullies and sociopaths.
I went to the Jenicam wiki a couple days ago. It turns out that she was from a naturist (nudist) family, so that she had a philosophy behind what she did. Apparently she also had some ideas about being completely realistic, though she didn't follow them all the time. She seemed to want to produce a Borges map of her life which was exactly the same size as her life itself, without any deliberately highlighting or other normative or analytic intervention. I'm sure that the Lit and Cult Stud PhDs are at work on this.
At last an art form just as pointless as randomly selected unedited reality! It does seem like a reductio of realist, value-neutral, radical empiricist methodology.
from the wiki entry on 'jennicam':
"This was a new use of Internet technology in 1996 and viewers were stimulated both for its sociological implications and for the sexual arousal some felt."
"I got some sociological for you right HERE, baby!"
"I only watched Jennicam for the sociological implications. I swear."