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YouTube Video Attracts 5000 Calls
Techtree News Staff, Apr 24, 2007 1410 hrs IST20-year old Ryan Fitzgerald, who lives with his father in Southbridge, and generally leads a school-free, job-free life, has plenty of time on hand...
Twenty-year old Ryan Fitzgerald, who lives with his father in Southbridge, and generally leads a school-free, job-free life, has plenty of time on hand...
Fitzgerald says he is 'easy to talk to' and as if to prove a point, on Friday, the spiky haired young man posted a video with his cell phone number on YouTube.
Looking into the camera in earnest, Fitzgerald announced to the world, 'Girls, guys, whoever you are, wherever you're from, talk about whatever." Seized with this sudden desire to 'be there' for anyone who needed to talk, Fitzgerald pronounced, 'I never met you, but I do care'.
The results: at last count, Fitzgerald has reportedly received over 5,000 calls and text messages.
While the youngster planned to take and return as many calls as he could, he realized at about 5am on Monday that he was going to run out of 'free weekend minutes' on his T-Mobile service.
A harried Fitzgerald said he hasn't figured out yet - what to do, but that no way he would hang up on people, and say he does not have the minutes to talk.
Fitzgerald said he drew inspiration from Juan Mann's video, wherein clips of Mann offering 'free hugs' to complete strangers became a runaway hit on YouTube.
Neither is Fitzgerald the first person to post his number on YouTube. Before him, one Luke Johnson from Arizona did the same to see how many calls he got. According to Johnson's latest voicemail recording, the man has got more than 138,400 calls so far.
The rationale behind his experiment, Fitzgerald said, is that he wanted to try a twist on the theme of random human connection. However, he said, his mission, unlike that of Johnson, is about genuine human interaction, and not sheer volume.
The flip side is that while Johnson's phone company offered him unlimited free minutes, Fitzgerald would end up being charged for that part of his generosity, which exceeds the free minutes due to him.
Explaining the genuine interaction bit, Fitzgerald said, some people's own mothers will not take the time to sit down and talk with them, but some stranger on YouTube will.
Apparently, Fitzgerald stayed awake the whole of Saturday night talking to people from Maine, Utah, Germany, Mexico, Alaska, Denmark, and a whole lot of other places.
He said that while around 70 percent of the callers wanted to simply shoot the breeze for a while, others wanted to talk about deeper things like 9/11 conspiracy theories, how hard it is to be gay, et al.
Fitzgerald recalls that a Swedish man actually called to thank him for 'trying to make a difference'. Whereas a couple of teenage girls who said they were from London, asked him his favorite color, favorite food, and ultimately finished with a big collective mmwwah...
Fitzgerald says some callers did give him the heebie jeebies, for instance, the man from Maine who threatened to become violent if Fitzgerald did not meet him.
A criminologist at Northeastern University, Jack Levin, warned that what Fitzgerald did is 'extremely risky'.
He said Fitzgerald may feel safe and not understand that he's being manipulated by some sociopath, who will fabricate his characteristics in order to have a personal encounter.
Levin said there's a good chance Fitzgerald will be fine, but why take a risk like this when there are so many other, far less dangerous ways to be altruistic, generous, and helpful to other people.
On YouTube itself, Fitzgerald's video drew a plethora of responses, prominent among them being words like stupid and desperate.
Fitzgerald's own father, a clinical psychologist, did not approve of his experiment. Not so, Fitzgerald's identical twin, Sean, who felt the exposure could help the two of them move ahead in their plans to become actors and models.
Meanwhile, all of this has kept life unusually busy for the otherwise unoccupied Fitzgerald, whose normal activites include: bowling, writing computer viruses (just for sport), researching on the Internet, and hanging out with friends.
And, it has led him to re-visit his aim of studying computers. He now thinks he might excel in a more people oriented field like Human Resources or Psychology.
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