ABSTRACT
In the summer of 2002, Seattle news sources reported on an unusual business venture by two web entrepreneurs. From July 7 to 14, Scotty Weeks and Derrick Clark feigned homelessness in Victor Steinbrueck Park. Attired in “homeless clothes” (carefully selected from a thrift store) and bereft of all modern conveniences (save a digital camera and audio recorder), the duo slept on the streets, begged for spare change, and updated their website (homelessweek.com) daily from a nearby Internet café. Their objective, Clark explains, was to “learn a lesson and see the world with dierent eyes” (qtd. in Jenniges). Feigning homelessness is not an altogether new
occupation-for instance, in 1987 television anchorwoman Pat Harper famously spent six days pretending to be a homeless on the streets of New York to produce the sweeps week news special “There but for the Grace of God,” and diverse ministries have long oered this opportunity to their congregation in an e ort to build sympathy for the homeless-but Weeks and Clark’s venture is relatively unique for two reasons. One, there is an explicit element of self-promotion: although their press releases indicate a desire to gain “humility” and “empathy” through this experience, the clear emphasis on the pair’s personalities and their other web-based ventures displayed on homelessweek.com severely undermines this professed altruism.1
This point is reinforced by the second item that makes homelessweek.com an odd enterprise: the seemingly contradictory exploitation of the homeless on Weeks’ personal website, where one can view “hidden camera” images of the homeless having sex and defecating accompanied with amusing captions and little mention or demonstration of “empathy” or “humility.”2
