If you go to Google and search for this phrase: “inurl:”ViewerFrame?Mode=” -inurl -intitle” and do a little clicking around, you can view and control open security cameras. It’s actually pretty addictive, which is weird because most of the time you just end up staring at deserted Italian marinas, or endlessly whirring cameras around in car parks in Tokyo trying to get the attention of people who aren’t there. Anyway, we’re probably pretty late on this one. We lack the hacking skills of Johnny Lee Miller, so we’ve almost certainly been beaten to the punch by some dude from Sussex with battered Converse and sodden corduroy flares who turned the Tokyo car park scenario into “An amateur photographer’s analysis of the human condition in 2k10”.
As all of these cams are open, you’ll sometimes end up on one at the same time as someone else, meaning you’ll have to fight for control of it. Experiencing this is a bit like that Hackers clip up top. Well, that’s what it looked like to me anyway. Except in my head The Prodigy was playing way louder.
Videos by VICE
Here are some of the views I’ve spent the last three hours tussling for control of:
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Adorable giraffes hanging out at the zoo (I moved it from left to right constantly, and the baby one looked at me. I think.)
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A weird doll called Martin in an office that really needs to take down their Christmas tree.
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I’m not sure what makes me feel more uneasy: Martin’s smile, or the fact that the whole world can spy on what happens in this maternity ward.
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A mirror reflecting the sun into the camera lens (possibly some sort of bullshit “look at YOURSELF” metaphor).
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An observatory in a back garden in Pennsylvania, which made me feel a little sad about my own back garden that contains nothing but cigarette ends.
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At first I was like, “Aw pretty, a ferris wheel!” and then I saw the Statue of Liberty and I was like “WTF why has New York been plunged into darkness” but then I put it into Google and realised it was an artificial island called Odaiba that you can reach by crossing the Rainbow Bridge out of central Tokyo. Then I remembered that I had been there once. It’s nice to see life from a different angle sometimes.
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Something called a “royalty room”, which hopefully is a room for someone’s dog. Not a child jail cell.
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Sprinklers on some kind of ranch. It looked quite picturesque at dawn, but when I went back later it looked like the sort of place where animals die and people get raped.
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The promisingly titled ‘Terrorcam’. The only thing terrifying about this is that guy’s lack of any discernible arse.
Ah. So this isn’t actually that interesting. I guess I was hoping I’d see some sex or violence or at the very least some people… I guess I’ll stick to YouTube. You can’t pan from left to right and there’s less scope for making the occasional American scientist feel paranoid, but that’s the price you have to pay for seeing things like “stuff happening”.
JAMIE LEE CURTIS TAETE
