And now on the Internet -- a manhunt
BERLIN, Aug 13 (AFP) -
You've seen people living in a container in the television show "Big Brother" but get set Monday for another kind of voyeuristic first -- a live manhunt on the Internet.
A group of young, Berlin-based entrepreneurs are launching a bounty chase, with a Dutchman named Roger hiding out for 24 days in Berlin from a 28-year-old hunter named Jack Black, guided by anyone who wants to join in at the website showing the pursuit "www.realityrun.com".
The prize for finding "RealityRunner" Roger is 10,000 dollars, money he gets for himself if he remains unfound, Jens-Oliver Voss, spokesman for the ExtraMile AG start-up company which set up and runs the site, told AFP.
The hunt may be virtual for those following it on the Net but flesh-and-blood in Berlin where both Roger and Jack Black will take digital pictures of what they are doing, which then will be shown on the website after being collected by a woman called "Reality Babe," a 22-year-old professional boxer.
People worldwide can e-mail the hunter with their ideas for tracking Roger down, and if their directions lead to Roger getting caught, they get the money.
The runner will wear a microphone, so that people can hear what he says and with whom he speaks by dialing a number in Berlin.
He will have to perform several tasks a day, such as going to a McDonald's and ordering a specific menu -- precisely four McNuggets for instance -- in order to give the hunter and others a chance to find him.
Roger will also have a psychologist he can call to help him handle the stress.
In the transcript of an interview provided by the organizers, a masked Roger said he was a sports instructor from Amsterdam, "very fast and flexible," an active heterosexual and once imprisoned in Greece for being nude.
Hunter Jack Black is a former paratrooper.
Extra Mile said in a press release: "The whole world can take part in the search by sending the RealityHunter out on a mission, to find the RealityRunner.
"The RealityHunter is an elite combat soldier whose sole mission it is to find the RealityRunner for people who want to find him but don't live in the city where the RealityRun takes place."
"The whole world can hunt him -- either in person in Berlin or via Internet with the RealityHunter," the organizers said.
Voss told AFP Friday that the inspiration for the game came from Stephen King's novel "Running Man," which portrayed a game show in which a man was pursued for a television show, to be killed if he lost.
Profit and fun, not murder however, are the motives in RealityRun, Voss said.
He said the five owners of ExtraMile, four Germans and an American aged in their late 20s and early 30s, got a kick out of their idea and would make money from advertisements on the web site and eventually marketing it. They have spent about 500,000 dollars of their own money so far to set up the site and game.
There are to be reality runs in other cities, probably Vienna, Amsterdam and San Francisco, ahead of a huge final run in New York next year in which the prize money will be 100,000 dollars, with the runners being those who survived the earlier events.
But first, the Berlin run must be a success. Voss said the web site is already receiving 600,000 hits a day since being set up in July.
"There is an unbelievable interest in this game," he said.
The runner gets 5,000 marks (about 2,500 dollars) at the start of the chase.
"He will be set out in a strange city. He will receive no equipment and have no permanent place to live. Except for the small allowance, he will have to bring everything that he needs to survive by himself," the press release said.
A key clue: Voss said Roger's face will be shown bit by bit on the website as the search proceeds.
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