i dare you
http://www.takethislollipop.com/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/mysterious-site-creates-a-horror-movie-starring-you/
There’s a hot new Web site making the rounds that mines your Facebook account and inserts your photo and other information into a creepy video — playing right into our biggest fears about privacy and the information we share online.
The mysterious site is called Take This Lollipop. After you give the site permission to connect to your Facebook account, it begins playing a video featuring a sweaty, twitchy man, sitting in a darkened room, using a computer to nose around Facebook. But he’s not browsing through just any random page — he’s looking at your account and getting increasingly agitated by what he’s seeing.
The site is generating chatter on sites like Hacker News. It’s similar to the video engine created for the 2004 election by MoveOn, an advocacy group, that let people to customize a faux-news report poking fun at their friends who did not want to vote.
Jason Zada, a television and music director who works in Los Angeles and San Francisco, announced Tuesday on Twitter that he was behind the site.
Mr. Zada, whose resume includes interactive campaigns like the “Elf Yourself” videos for Office Max and commercials for Ray-Ban and Coupons.com, said in an interview that the site was a fun side project for him. He collaborated with a cinematographer, an actor and a developer to polish the final product. He insisted that it was not a stealthy attempt to garner attention for a brand or product.
“People keep asking me what sinister plan we’re working on behind it,” he said. “I just love Halloween, and got the idea about a month ago and decided to shoot it.”
In the first 24 hours of the site being open to the public, more than 300,000 people have given it access to their Facebook accounts, Mr. Zada said. He thinks that it is attracting attention because of its novelty, but also because it taps into broader concerns that people have about how their personal information could be misused.
“When you see your personal information in an environment where you normally wouldn’t, it creates a strong emotional response,” he said. “It’s tied into the fears about privacy and personal info that we have now that we live online.”
But he promises that the site is intended purely for entertainment, and a fun, seasonal thrill.
“We’re not doing anything crazy with the info,” he said. “It just makes you feel that way.”