I recently heard about www.barebones.tv, a small family from a Liverpool suburb who have converted their home into a ‘big-brother-esque’ surveillance house with cameras in a lot of their rooms on the lower floor. Live streams let anyone in the world see what the Walmsley family are doing at any time of the day. A great idea for a social experiment, so why is it the single worst idea for an internet project ever devised?
The problem with being just a regular family putting their lives on the internet is just that.. they’re a regular family who have just exposed themselves to the world. Granted, a fairly dysfunctional family with a bit of money behind them, but still fairly regular. The kids go to the local school, the eldest sons work at local firms – word was going to go round town pretty fast and it wasn’t long before they started to show their faces on the internet.
You could probably say that it was looking well for the Walmsleys until 4chan’s anon heard about it (a cleaned up thread can be found attached to this post – that was some job!). There’s not much that goes on that 4chan’s /b/ doesn’t hear about, this wasn’t much of an exception, and when a “localanon” (not myself, I hasten to add) leaked their home phone number, the show suddenly became more promising. A family with a relatively short fuse to receive phone call after phone call from the rectum of the internet…… pure gold. There’s no greater delight than to hear memes bellowed cluelessly down the phone and to a live audience over the internet (even if they are mainly from 4chan)
“WHAT? WHAT’S OVER 9000?”
That is until rule number 1 is broken.
“My home phone number has been publicised on a website called 4chan.org?”
I believe they cancelled their phone line, or blocked incoming calls much after this point… or perhaps it was after the request to marry the 14 year old daughter of the family.Either way, the plug was pulled on the phone party. 4chan needed new ways to torment them.
Another problem with broadcasting your house to the internet is that it makes it very easy to get an idea of the layout and style of your house – even more so if you broadcast your back garden. In fact, it’s probably the best way to make sure you house can definitely be identified from google maps and aerial photographs. Nice move. With a little help from “localanon”, their address accompanied their home phone number.
So, if you’re ever thinking of putting live streams of your family on the internet, take a quick scout of 4chan’s /b/…

4chan thread - barebones.tv
EDIT: They also like putting shoes on their heads.
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