Video interviews with the homeless for $1USD/minute

http://www.randomli.com/projects/the-one-dollar-interview-project/

by marcamillion • 15 years ago

16 17 15 years ago

atgm• 15 years ago

I like the idea, but it kind of feels like taking advantage of the homeless. Sure, some money is better than none, but only five bucks for a 5-minute interview? It almost feels demeaning.

amock• 15 years ago

$1/minute is $60/hour, which isn't bad. People work on Mechanical Turk for a few cents per minute.

warrenwilkinson• 15 years ago

Actually, I also thought the $1 per hour thing sounded low until you wrote it's $60/hour --- a fantastic rate. Funny how numbers play on your senses...

burgerbrain• 15 years ago

Or think about it this way: buy me a pizza, and I'll talk to you for as long as it takes me to eat it. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

evansolomon• 15 years ago

I'd gladly accept $1/minute to do interviews (probably less if I actually thought about it, but $1 is a no brainer).

liedra6• 15 years ago

I have to agree with you. There's a whole area of study when it comes to research ethics and vulnerable people. Especially when you start publishing such interviews to the internet. It also bothered me that the project owner mentioned that it was for our "entertainment", which is just awful. Noone should ever be our entertainment by societal position alone. One of the highest ethical principles is of human dignity, and this project strips that away from these vulnerable people.

marcamillion3• 15 years ago

It can seem that way on the surface, but remember that the person receiving the money can also donate it to charity - if they so desire.

Not all the interviews will be of homeless people - but many will.

The intent really wasn't demeaning - in the sense that homeless people are going to be taken advantage of, for 'your' entertainmment. More, I am really interested in the stories of homeless people - for instance, look at what happened with the homeless guy with the golden radio voice - and rather than just interviewing them, why not compensate them (fairly, as someone else pointed out, $60/hr isn't a bad wage) for their time.

Disclaimer: I am not doing the interviews, however the guy doing it is a friend of mine, so I am kinda close to the project.

liedra6• 15 years ago

I'm sure the intent wasn't to be demeaning, but surely you can just go down and talk to people, if you're interested in this sort of thing? Do you have to video them and publish them to the world?

My recommendation would be to interview them, but then anonymise and write them up as a series of blog entries rather than have a series of published videos.

Video interviews with the homeless for $1USD/minute

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