I Found Some of Your Life

September 17th, 2004

“Double Accidental Excellence / Awesomeness”A few times a year, you find something new on the web which you just know is going to get contagious. Today, via Phillip Torrone, I discovered such a thing.

Here it is in a nutshell: A few months ago, someone found a memory card in the back seat of a New York taxicab. The memory card was filled with 227 photos of some frat boy’s life over the last year. Trips to Amsterdam, keggers, ridiculous mugshots… the whole bit. Rather than just deleting the memory card, this extraordinarily creative (and a bit diabolical) person started a blog and is posting one photo per day from the reel. This, by itself, would not be so entertaining, but in addition to posting the photos, the blogger narrates each photo pretending it is his own life with his own friends. What a great premise for a blog. Seriously, it’s hilarious.

You could say that this is a mean thing to do, but really, can you think of a better way to get this person’s photos back to them? I can’t.

Check it out at: ifoundsomeofyourlife.blogspot.com.

UPDATE: On September 20th, the creator of this site pulled all content offline. I can only guess the cause was a scary e-mail from an armchair lawyer because the original memory card’s owner doesn’t seem to have stepped forward yet.

Like this entry? You probably shouldn't follow me on Twitter here. I recommend the RSS feed instead.

14 Responses:

Keith says:

That is classic. Too funny, thanks for the tip Mike.

#1 - September 17th, 2004 at 4:45 pm
Kevin Navia says:

It seems I’m gonna be hooked on this one. Thanks for link!

#2 - September 17th, 2004 at 8:41 pm
Gabriel Mihalache says:

*Somebody* should expect the visit of some pretty pissed frat boys! ;-)

#3 - September 18th, 2004 at 12:57 am
John says:

Sorry but this just seems unethical. Useing private property to generate hits on your own blog with no or little attempt to find the owners. Glad they didnt find his wallet.

#4 - September 18th, 2004 at 3:47 am
Dan Jallits says:

For some Frat kid, I am really surprised at how tame some of these photos are… I mean if these were photos of me when I was in my early twenties there might have been a question of ethics involved. Unfortunately my wife deleted, or trashed my memories from this period of my life.

John you say this is unethical and that there is little attempt to find the owners.

First, lets revert back to the most important rule of life – “Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers.” This timeless rule is based on the concept that possesion is nine-tenths the law. Therefore, I see no wrong in this. Besides it is interesting how an individual would interpret anothers life without knowing one ioda about them. Unethical would be selling shots of Sheri and Rachel to some e-pornographer.

Second, how would you propose finding the true owner. Drop the memory card off to the local NYPD station so they can enjoy pictures of Lauren and Pam in their pleated skirt and the fictional stories and not us? Get real. At least this way, Frat Boy stands a shot of seeing his pics, and can make a rightful claim.

I think it would be interesting to see how someone would interpret my life if the situation were switched. How close to the truth would they be, or how far off are they. I sure hope Frat boy finds his memory card!

#5 - September 18th, 2004 at 5:52 am
Mike D. says:

Lets revert back to the most important rule of life – “Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers.”

Ha! That is awesome. Probably not more important than the “breathe in, breathe out” rule, but important nonetheless.

I agree that if this reel contained really explicit pictures or if the commentary was really hateful, then maybe this would be a bit unethical, but really… it seems quite harmless to me, and when the dude gets his memory card back, it will be considered a good thing.

I am really amazed at how many baseball caps there are in those pictures. I was in a frat too but I’d like to think I didn’t dress exactly like all my buddies!

#6 - September 18th, 2004 at 11:05 am
kartooner says:

Honestly, I think I would do something similar. If not posting these pictures on Blogger, I’d come up with fabricated stories to piece together the photos and make sense of why they were taken, within what context, etc. and share them with friends and family.

In this situation, the blogger is sharing them with a much wider audience and in this day and age it doesn’t surprise me.

#7 - September 19th, 2004 at 5:58 pm
Nick Fitzsimons says:

“Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers.”

For what it’s worth, there’s an offence of “Stealing by Finding” in UK law. I wonder if there’s anything similar in NY…

#8 - September 20th, 2004 at 2:39 am
yafujifide says:

You beat Slashdot.

#9 - September 20th, 2004 at 3:40 am
yafujifide says:

I make sure to keep naked pictures of myself on every memory stick I own to prevent things like this from happening.

#10 - September 20th, 2004 at 3:43 am
Brian Behrend says:

It’s not like he’s using the images and their stories to drive hits at some ad-filled website, it’s just a site on Blogger with no links to any other sites by the owner. So the “private property to generate hits on your own blog” argument doesn’t really hold.

#11 - September 20th, 2004 at 10:20 am
Seth Thomas Rasmussen says:

Geez you psychos, stop debating this non-existant ethical dilemma. If the photographer finds the site and for some reason wants the blogger to stop, he need simply to say so, and we all move on with our lives. Otherwise, the blogger is merely creating art out of what would otherwise have been… nothing! Absolutely nothing! Some jock’s lost memory card! Honestly, people… I think we’ll be okay.

(Thanks for the head’s up, Mike! Best blog find since The Dullest Blog in the World)

#12 - September 20th, 2004 at 10:30 am
Chris says:

I wish I could join in the debate, but seems I’m too late. The site is gone. All that’s left is an apology to those who found the site offensive.

*sigh*

Always arriving at the gate after the plane has pulled away.

#13 - September 20th, 2004 at 6:55 pm
Stu says:

US law states:

One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him
knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who
appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another
person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just
efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is
guilty of theft.

#14 - March 10th, 2007 at 8:17 pm

Shared

Hundreds of headlines wash over us every day. And part of why many of us engage in this flow is because we have faith that over time, this torrent of episodic knowledge is going to cohere into something more significant: a framework for genuinely understanding an issue. And we live with it ’cause it sort of works. Eventually you hear enough buzzwords like “single-payer” and “public option” and you start to feel like you can play along.

But mounting evidence indicates that this approach to information is actually totally debilitating. Faced with a flood of headlines on an ever-increasing variety of topics, we shut off. We turn to news that doesn’t require much understanding – crime, traffic, weather – or we turn off the news altogether.

- Matt Thompson on why the way we report and consume news is precisely wrong. Matt is, of course, precisely right. If you’re at SXSW next week, I don’t know how you could justify missing this talk.

Cameron’s Colosseo letterpress poster is now available: The only question is, black or white? The black is oh so tempting!

Jon Stewart Skewers Media’s Obsession with Chat Roulette: Funniest Wii Craps reference ever, as well. It’s really interesting to me that Chat Roulette is getting this much “attention” when TinyChat has been around so much longer, essentially does the same thing and more, and is much more useful to the average person. Just goes to show how viral public sex acts can be.

"Add features and customers forever and rake in the dough.":

The 2005 email that spawned Picnik, Google’s latest buy. If you’re thinking about launching a startup, you should study this e-mail carefully. It’s a perfect example of exactly how a crazy little thought becomes a big idea, and even on its own, it’s better than most “official company business plans” people present to VCs. I gave a talk at Webstock in New Zealand a couple of weeks ago about creating a startup and I wish I had this to dissect at the time. Really good stuff.

50 Useful Coding Techniques (CSS Layouts, Visual Effects and Forms):

(via doug)

Tumblr Finally Rolls Out Comments. Sort Of. Trolls Not Welcome. :

I actually really like how clubby it is. Unfortunately it means I won’t be commenting on any Tumblrs since I don’t officially “follow” anyone besides via RSS, but that’s probably ok. Maybe the answer to the world’s wide-open commenting problem is something like this.

Episode 2 of Dan Benjamin's "The Conversation" is Live:

I was a guest on Dan Benjamin’s new weekly radio show last week, along with Merlin Mann, Christina Warren, Adam Keys, and Dave Nanian. Subjects discussed include Newsvine, keeping your own identity after becoming part of a big company, and the RADICAL concept of only publishing stuff to your readers and followers that is actually true.

LESS - Leaner CSS:

Given that pre-compiling CSS is an official “best practice” these days, why not use that compile step to extend CSS in powerful ways? LESS lets you use variables, nested rules, and other niceties at author-time to clean up your rules and keep everything tidy. I believe The Wolf made something like this a few years ago, but I haven’t heard about it since.

How 3D works, and why it's back:

Great article on the ins and outs of three dimensional imagery. Still doesn’t change my opinion that well-shot conventional cinematography is more impressive than the novelty that is Avatar.

The Importance of Removing Features:

This is one of the most useful articles I’ve read in a long time. As we work on focusing, strengthening, and simplifying Newsvine, the concepts discussed by Lukas ring true. “Saying no” has never been a strong suit of mine. It’s very helpful to remember how important of a quality it is. (via fullstopinteractive)

Newly released video of the space shuttle Challenger disaster: It was 24 years ago, I was in 5th grade, but I remember it like it was yesterday. School was stopped immediately and they wheeled out televisions in every classroom for us to watch the news footage. It’s great that this video has been released, but holy crap, how do you tuck something that away for two decades???

A nicely done british parody of 60 Minutes style video journalism. It’s easy to miss how formulaic our news is sometimes. (via B-Tizzle, originally via E-Chizzle)

Colosseo: This is why Cameron is a king and we are all just pawns in his world. I can’t wait to get my hands on this poster. I will point out, however, that the outro credits on the video need some kerning. Someone is going to lose their right hand for that.

Spezify:

New ways of searching are almost never as useful as old ways of searching. Spezify is pretty awesome though. It’s a visually interesting, never-ending, horizontally and vertically scrollable, topic explorer. I don’t think I’d use it for digging deep on anything, but to get a quick visually rich sampling of a topic, it’s quite fun (via tiff, a long time ago actually, over email).

Realism in UI Design:

Reminds me of my favorite logo design advice: “Never waste a stroke”. (via gruber)

Overshared

At the first Doughty show of the night at the Triple Door. If you're in Seattle you should come down for the 2nd at 10. Excellent!