Re:What We Know About Evan Ratliff, So Far
by hughprime on Monday August 24, 2009 @05:34PM
(#783439)
While it might be a fun game (more fun for Evan than for the rest of us, I'm sure) and I'm sure it's a great publicity stunt for Wired, I'm not sure what it's supposed to prove.
Playing hide-and-seek with a vanishingly small number of Wired readers who actually bothered to memorize what this guy looks like is very different from playing hide-and-seek with the police.
Re:What We Know About Evan Ratliff, So Far
by ck113 on Monday August 24, 2009 @07:01PM
(#783610)
I think it's interesting. Not so much the ultimate question of whether they can find him, but rather the things we learn along the way about exactly how much a reader base with no special (e.g., law enforcement) privileges can dig up about someone they've never met. Not just general character facts about him (he's left handed), but also time- and date-stamped activities (he took a picture of his cat at this time and this place).
It would be a lot more interesting if each bullet point of information came with a link to a 'trail' describing how that factoid was uncovered. (For example, I'd be particularly interested in learning how we know about his ATM activity. Assuming no one got a court order, how we anyone get access to that info?)
Re:What We Know About Evan Ratliff, So Far
by hughprime on Monday August 24, 2009 @06:11PM
(#783532)
That he's not trying very hard to vanish? The guy is still taking photos of his cat and uploading 'em to flickr. Also, he's hanging out in Wired reader central -- San Francisco and Santa Monica. If he really wanted to vanish he'd be camping in Utah by now.
Unless of course he's camping in Utah while leaving a false trail in California...
Re:What We Know About Evan Ratliff, So Far
by unalone on Monday August 24, 2009 @08:02PM
(#783731)
If he really wanted to disappear, he would delete his Flickr account, shut down his email address, and not say a word about where he is to anybody enough of an attention whore to pass the news along to Wired.
Playing hide-and-seek with a vanishingly small number of Wired readers who actually bothered to memorize what this guy looks like is very different from playing hide-and-seek with the police.
It would be a lot more interesting if each bullet point of information came with a link to a 'trail' describing how that factoid was uncovered. (For example, I'd be particularly interested in learning how we know about his ATM activity. Assuming no one got a court order, how we anyone get access to that info?)
Unless of course he's camping in Utah while leaving a false trail in California...
http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/08/author-evan-ratliff-is-o...
Otherwise, he would just go sit in the woods for a month and it wouldn't be much of a game.