Ahh, ok, I’ve always assumed “breaking” meant to damage, not as to break a trespass line. Makes sense.
Anyway, most people leave the door unlocked from the house-proper that exits into the garage. Since most people have garage door openers, they rely on the garage door to keep out intruders. If the home owner is oblivious, you can count on them to leave their homes from their cars, hit the opener button to close, then drive off before it completely shuts. If you’re lucky and stealthy enough, you can scramble out from hiding to trip the electronic eye with your foot or hand to force the garage door to open back up again.
They’ve driven off… you’re in their garage, you quickly re-close the garage door from the inside, and now you’re in their home without literally breaking anything… except the law.
I can see thrill-seeking punks doing this for benign enough reasons. It’s dangerous, conniving, challenging, and the potential for voyeurism/eavesdropping. Stupid too, but that should be no surprise.
Right, well since most people put a gradient on severity on stealing, I would think stealing 20-40 bucks in food pretty minor as opposed to breaking in to actually burglarize the home in the traditional sense, like stealing the HD TV, jewelry, irreplaceable valuables and sentimental items, etc. Whether fake or not, the intent seems to be relatively more humane than that, but still perverse, in a self-indulging and privacy crossing way.
Do you people thinking this is minor, realize how unsafe you feel for a long time after your house has been broken into. Jack shit in merchandise stolen, your peace of mind gone.
Knowing that people have, and might still be for all you know, living secretly in your house is the stuff of nightmares. It is a potential symptom of a paranoid delusional disorder until you discover it is real and then what do you do?
The coffee maker is what makes me call bullshit on the girls. It’s a CuisinArt Grind and Brew, the same sort of coffee maker that my parents have. They’ve mentioned hearing the noise of coffee being ground in the morning, so the residents of the house use that function of the coffee maker, but apparently routinely leave two mugs worth of coffee-about four cups in my experience-left each day. Whole beans aren’t overly expensive, but they also aren’t cheap enough that its reasonable to believe people would regularly throw out a third of a pot of coffee everyday.
The other option is that they’re making their own coffee after the residents leave. I don’t buy that either. That model has two different parts for the grinding mechanism, three different parts for the filter, a hidden button on the side that gives you access to the filter, a carafe, and a lid to said carafe. It has seven pieces that need to be cleaned and reassembled to make a pot of coffee. The grinding mechanism and the filter parts are not intuitive to get to either. If you’re unfamiliar with the coffee maker, it’s tricky to use. If they were making their own coffee in the morning, I would imagine them mentioning that it’s lucky they already knew how to use the damn thing, or would have taped them find the manual/figuring out how to use it. Seriously, I’m fairly technologically adept, but that model of coffee maker is overly complicated.
So, yeah, there are a couple of things that put off my BS meter, but as soon as I noticed the coffee maker, I realized that this case couldn’t be real.
There’s been 2 times where I felt my BS meter red-line. One was the first time the homeowners woke up in the morning, the dude came down fully clothed before 9am, and put on the tv, then the woman upstairs asked if the coffee was ready and could he get her a cup. He responded, Why don’t you get it yourself?. Just felt really staged and stilted.
Another time was when they were on the roof, day 2, and they forgot they left the projector out. Ugly Chick #2, I think Rene, was clearly bummed, but it didn’t seem all that believable.
That said, most of the time, it seems pretty damn genuine more times than not. And there’s been a couple freaky moments so far. If it is real, the argument could be made that they know they’re on camera, and this changes their candid behavior somewhat. During times where they almost get caught, I have to say, their actions, words and behavior seem pretty damn realistic.
And believe you me, My car’s been robbed several times, and stolen once. It’s an overwhelming sense of violation. I can only imagine it happening to my home/family. God forbid. The point with these creeps is to NOT get caught, and not leave a trace… then disappearing into the night. If this IS real, i feel horrible for the couple when they eventually see it’s their house being raped like this. Huge blowing of the mind and the peace inside it.
I don’t know about that. I don’t have enough of a routine to know how much coffee to make so when I used to make drip I’d make the full pot every time. Half or more of that would go to waste. Part of the reason I stopped making drip.
End of day 1:
One couple who work long hours and at least 3 bedrooms. It seems plausable that they can hide out for a while. I fear the cigarettes will give them away since the smell is insidious to non-smokers. Only BS trigger so far - waiting so long to get food.
I’ve watched it all the way through, without reading ahead here or on the Snopes boards beforehand, and I’m completely unconvinced. There were several things that made my BS meter peg, and I think the guys at Snopes (who’ve had longer than us) have pretty much nailed them all.
The first and most obvious one to me was the under-the-dining-table hiding place. That’s just plain silly. And the rooftop hideout, with a neighbour’s window in plain view? And the hastily-shoved-under-the-fridge pickle-jar glass that somehow no-one noticed? And the contrast between the “cover my back while I have a shower” attitude and them getting the paints and drinks out? And never mind the smell of cigarette smoke on the sofa, what about the smell of all that booze? Etc, etc.
Having said that, though, it worked tremendously well for me as a piece of fiction, and the faux realism was good enough for me to suspend disbelief and compulsively enjoy the whole thing from beginning to end for what it was.
Maybe I should rent The Blair Witch Project and see what that was about.
Huh. It’s not only touches like this video … but even the snooping one, that makes it really seem real. I agree, there are BS flags… but those can be written off as circumstantial. It’s fascinating, regardless.
Just finished Day 2 and I’m definately getting that “Blair Witch” feeling (but more realistic). It’s probably the home of one of the girls and they took time out on their summer vacation to make this mockumentary.
More BS-meter alarms:
I definately would miss a couple cups of coffee out of the pot over a couple of days.
The couple works some strange-ass hours.
I would be half sprawled in the open if I slept under that table
No one noticed paper plates and cups in the trash?
Can’t say i’ve ever heard of phrogging but i am somewhat familiar with an activity that is real called urban exploration . Urban Explorers most likely wouldn’t in any way want to be associated with “phroggers” (if they exist) but there is a large network of people that do “gain access” to off limits places for the sake of exploring and taking pictures. One place that might be somewhat relevant to this thread is Steve Jobs’ old house in Woodside, CA. His house has been abandoned for a while but a few people have found a way in and taken some really cool pictures. They didn’t get in to live his life for a few days, but you can definitely get a unique perspective on his lifestyle by having gone in or by seeing some of the pictures.
Well, I, personally have encountered one case of what might be called “accidental phrogging”. We own both halves of a duplex, but only live in one half. The other half is used as storage/extra space for when the in-laws come to visit, etc. It’s semi-furnished.
One morning, I went to the other side of the house to get some stuff I had stored over there, and there was a person sound asleep on the sofa. I couldn’t tell the gender of the person, all I could see was a head. I assumed my oldest daughter had told a friend they could crash there for the night or something. When my daughter got up, I asked her about it, and she said “No, I didn’t let anyone sleep there”. I consulted with my hubby, and we figured out that this was a person who was not supposed to be there. We called the police. When the police arrived, the person was still sound asleep. The police woke him up (turned out to be a guy). Well, he had been drunk/stoned the previous night, and said his friend “so and so” told him he could crash in his living room any time. But he had the wrong house. Heh.
I don’t know quite how he got in, but the lock wasn’t broken or jimmied. It could be that whoever closed the door last prior to the squatter’s entry hadn’t latched it tightly or something.
Anyway, we decided it was an honest mistake, the guy seemed genuinely confused and apologetic. We didn’t press charges or anything.
Yeah, but that’s quite different. You’re refering to a situation where the miscreants use someone’s house while the owners are not there. I have no trouble believing that that happens all the time. The thing about this phrogging is that they’re living in the house while the owners are coming and going and sleeping and living.
So far, both here and on Snopes, there are lots of reasons brought up as to why this is unlikely to be true, but no one has yet found the smoking gun that proves it, one way or the other.
For me, the BS meter went off big time when the girl was explaining about the green bracelets. Let’s assume that this is true, and that there is some secret society of phroggers out there who recognize their fellows by the green bracelet. How stupid would that girl have to be to spill that big secret on a video that she has to know will end up on youtube? It would, from then on, make the green bracelets useless at best and potentially dangerous at worst. There are plenty of people (kids) out there who would watch that and think that phrogging is cool and decide to wear a green bracelet to show their coolness. To me, announcing that on the video just smacks of fakery, and an attempt to start a fake trend of kids wearing green bracelets.