
Nasubi, The Naked Eggplant-Man Who Lived Off Sweepstakes - danso
http://www.tofugu.com/2014/01/07/nasubi-the-naked-eggplant-man-who-lived-off-sweepstakes/
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brownbat
This American Life featured interviews with Tomoaki Hamatsu (the "contestant")
and his producer recently:

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/529/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/529/transcript)

Their interviews provide additional details. Apparently the producers did feed
him during the first two weeks, but only bread and water. Hamatsu did
eventually have to eat dogfood. He was really forced to live naked, to the
point where after the ordeal, clothes were itchy and uncomfortable, required a
lot of readjusting. He was bullied into continuing when he wanted to quit.

EDIT: If Milgrim or Zimbardo were getting started today, they wouldn't be able
to do any of their early work at Universities, because of ethics panels that
set strict guidelines covering human subject research. They couldn't do any of
it on reality TV either, because there it would be far too tame.

~~~
pavel_lishin
What are the ethics of doing research on reality TV? A researcher meets a
television producer at a bar, and jokingly suggests an experiment he'd like to
run. The producer pitches it as a reality TV show, and it runs. Would it be
ethical to use the recorded video to write the paper the researcher originally
wanted to?

~~~
imgabe
If it's unethical to do it as an experiment, it would be unethical to do it as
a reality TV show. Experiments are unethical when they're cruel and abusive.
It's not like it's ok to be cruel and abusive as long as you're filming it for
entertainment.

~~~
StavrosK
I think the GP asks "is it ethical to analyze _after it has already
happened_?" I'd say "probably".

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simon_
The year-long isolation seems to me like a much crueler part of the ordeal
than anything food related. We consider it inhumane to do this to convicted
murderers, even when they have interactions with guards and activity time that
make them much less isolated than "Nasubi" seems to have been.

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Theodores
Around the time this TV series aired competitions fundamentally changed in the
UK.

If we go back to the days before the internet it was possible for a
competition to ask a difficult question that you couldn't 'just Google'. You
would have to have the breadth and depth of 'General Knowledge' or you would
need to make a trip to somewhere like the library to look up the answer. This
made it so that some prizes were 'deserved', imagine you had some novelty item
signed by some famous sports-person, you would have to know something about
that sport to enter, consequently there was reward for those that knew their
stuff.

Tie-breaker questions were also quite common, as in 'complete in less than 25
words: I use the product coz...'

Then something changed with how the competitions were 'paid for'. In the days
of postcards the prize came from some sponsor, the TV production crew sifted
the cards and found the ones with the correct answers, then picked out some
quality tiebreaker.

So then it changed to phone lines and TXT messages. Clearly it now cost money
to enter, albeit that cost being a premium rate phone number - '0898' numbers
etc. Money was made off the phones, even if notionally a 'national rate' call.
So the answers were 'a', 'b', 'c' with questions requiring less thought than
you would think possible, e.g. for the Tour de France show a bike would be the
prize and the question being 'How many wheels does a two-wheeled bicycle
have?' a) 2, b) 25, c) 27.

Behind the scenes the phone lines and the organisation of the competition
would be out-sourced to a company with no involvement in the production of the
show. The revenue from the phone competition would be enough to cover the
production costs of the show and the prize would be something the producers
had acquired for free anyway.

At least in the UK it is now not really that possible to live off competition
winnings, as per Eggplant Man. Quality competitions have gone and the
relationship between reader/viewer and those setting the competition has
completely changed. Some things (but not many) were better before the
internet.

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mukyu
I've actually looked for recordings of this show several times over the years,
but sadly have only turned up short clips.

Seems I missed it being put up on Hulu at one point, but you can find some of
it now (sometimes even subtitled in English).

[http://vimeo.com/49589381](http://vimeo.com/49589381)

[http://vimeo.com/53656752](http://vimeo.com/53656752)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sc6kuxHbDk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sc6kuxHbDk)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SUONIiWLjs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SUONIiWLjs)

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mccr8
This article is pretty bad. "Japan is weird! Some weird and horrible stuff
happened... or did it?"

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cmdrfred
If I was in change of a sweepstakes and saw his name come up I'd rig the
contest somehow. Poor guy.

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chunkiestbacon
horrible, absolutely horrible

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jvandonsel
How is this hacker news?

~~~
recursive
It received enough positive votes.

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JoeAltmaier
He volunteered. And nothing prevented him from walking out the door. Not
cruel, but certainly a spectacle.

And not eating for a week or two? Many people do that - its called 'fasting'
and not especially dangerous. I fast for days at a time as I see fit.

~~~
brownbat
He actually tried to quit after they blindfolded him and moved him to South
Korea, but producers just argued with him until he gave up. (This is a guy who
is malnourished and starting to feel the psychological affects of isolation,
he probably wasn't the hardest person to bend to the producers' will.)

He could have ignored them, stumbled naked into the streets of a foreign
country and tried to beg for help, maybe using some form of pantomime.

Not literal locks and chains, but in the beginning, he probably didn't know
what to expect, and by the end of the series, there was some strong
psychological pressure keeping him there.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And still it was his choice. Hard to ignore the strong enticement of fame and
fortune (whether he was right about that or not).

~~~
pavel_lishin
And Stockholm Syndrome victims just get kidnapped by people who turn out to be
right after all.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's a straw man. He's been interviewed, has he made any claims of being
brainwashed? No in fact he continues to pursue the limelight.

