Surpised that this hasn’t been asked here yet, but I searched and got no results.
The new ABC show iCaught is apparently going to do a piece next week on phrogging. Supposedly, this is a somewhat new activity where a person (or persons) sneak into someone’s house and live there for a few days, without the owner’s knowledge or consent.
Everything seems to point back to a series of videos featuring two girls phrogging for five days. The first couple of days are on youtube, and the rest are on some other site that’s linked to from the last youtube video.
There are various reasons to think that that particular piece is faked, and it’s pretty well discussed in a thread on snopes.
Still, there’s no smoking gun or concrete proof either way, so I thought I’d ask here: Does anyone have a definitive answer as to whether phrogging in general, and the girls’ “Living with Strangers” videos are real?
Well, according to the girls in the videos, they want to “live in luxury” but don’t want to work. So they mooch off of others, using their air-conditioned houses, eating their food, and just being lazy at someone else’s expense.
Just from a feasibility standpoint i can’t see it being real. With squatting its usually an abandoned/under construction building. With this its an in-use home… how are you supposed to know when/who is leaving and coming back? You could maybe get one house for 2-3 days but thats it.
You know, as horrifying as it seems, I can kinda see the thrill of attempting to get away with this. Especially if it were a rather large, luxurious home. I can imagine a lot of “guest rooms” and other places you could hide. The basement even. Then, when the residents leave for a while, or go to sleep for the night, you can sneak around, watch tv, eat their food, etc. Always living on that edge of getting caught. If you did, I can only imagine most people would be in such shock to turn on the light and see you and your cronies chilling out in one of their rooms, that you could just make a loud noise to startle them and BOLT for the door… and just keep running.
Besides trespassing and petty theft, I wonder what else the state/government can slap you with criminally?
At the end of a month, one of my neighbors moved out. He was asked to leave by the management, because he didn’t get along well with some of the other neighbors.
He must have passed his key around, because some lady and her teen son moved in for a couple dasys, and trashed the place. (Busted out a window, vandalised the cabinets and interior doors in their general angst, I guess.) I just assumed that these two were going to be my new neighbors, and tried to ignore them like I ignore everyone else.
Turns out that they were squatters… they didnt get caught as far as I know.
I would recommend against trying it in North Carolina, where the old rule of thumb that if someone is in your house and you kill them the law won’t prosecute on the assumption that you believed you were in jeopardy is taken to the next level. One recent shooting involved someone trying to break into a car parked in the driveway and the homeowner wasn’t prosecuted.
Breaking and entering and/or burglary come to mind. Burglary is a felony in nearly every jurisdiction, IIRC. That, and you might just get yourself shot. If I found somebody lurking around after breaking into my house, they would definitely be doing a lot of waiting on the floor at gunpoint until the police arrived.
Frankly, though, I have my doubts if any of this is real. I just have a hard time believing that anybody could fail to notice the presence of a couple extra people in their home.
Also, could it be considered B&E, since they’re not Breaking anything. Certainly Entering/trespassing. And Burglary? Perhaps… but mostly they’re there for shelter, with no intention of violence or stealing. Except consumables, but in the YouTube videos they’re talked of replacing anything the homeowner’s might notice missing.
But, all that said, it might just be a farce. But it can be done. And usually if it can, there’ll be someone around to exploit that.
Wow, we just had a long drawn out case around here where a homeowner (in a crummy part of town) was getting his car broken into for like the third time. He shot (and I believe killed) the guy and he is now in jail for it.
Well, my carry piece is always loaded. It’s locked in a safe when it’s not on my person, which is seldom.
(Incidentally, it seems to me that Bond would have been royally screwed if Dryden had just been in the habit of carrying. Quite an oversight for a 00-hopeful, eh?)
Unless the homeowner was stupid enough to leave their doors and windows unlocked, I don’t know how anyone could enter a residence without dealing with the locks somehow.
Additionally, I read somewhere that typically the criteria for felony burglary is B&E with intent to commit a crime. Obviously this could be different depending on the jurisdiction, but if this is the case, it seems to me that breaking into someone’s home with the intent to steal their food and live their without their knowledge or consent would be pretty clear-cut burglary.
So, they want to stay in people’s homes to get by without working, but they believe they should replace anything the homeowner’s might notice is missing. I would notice if there were 2 fewer bottles of water in my fridge, let alone if there was very much missing. This seems to make is sound extremely fake - “Well, we’ll break and enter, and chill in people’s houses while they are gone, but taking something they may notice is missing, that is a bit to far.”
I’ve known this to happen from time to time, but the intent wasn’t quite so benign. In the cases that come to mind the (usually upscale) house was used as a drug & debauchery den for a few days. Homeowners come home from vacation or summer/winter home to a trashed house: condoms, paraphenalia, general abuse, etc. Quite shocking evidently.
You’re mistaken in your belief that breaking and entering involves the destruction of property.
Per a sitting judge I met in Orange County, NC, one who breaks and enters is “breaking an imaginary line in the middle of the entrance doorway to a building”.
No, I’ve never been charged with B&E.
I’d imagine that would still be considered stealing. You take something that isn’t yours without consent. Doesn’t really matter if you end up leaving something comparable. And therefore, it’s burglary.
I doubt this will really result in a rash of people actually doing this. The risk/benefit is vanishingly small. I can see idiots talking up big plans, but I don’t see them following through.
