homelessness - The Art of the Prank

December 19, 2025

Ethical Vacancy

What happens when AI’s lack of conscience converges with people with no conscience?

“The ‘AI Homeless Man Prank’ reveals a crisis in AI education,” by External Contributor, Digital Information World, December 14, 2025.

The new TikTok trend “AI Homeless Man Prank” has sparked a wave of outrage and police responses in the United States and beyond.

The prank involves using AI image generators to create realistic photos depicting fake homeless people appearing to be at someone’s door or inside their home. Learning to distinguish between truth and falsehood is not the only challenge society faces in the AI era. We must also reflect on the human consequences of what we create.

As professors of educational technology at Laval University and education and innovation at Concordia University, we study how to strengthen human agency — the ability to consciously understand, question and transform environments shaped by artificial intelligence and synthetic media — to counter disinformation. Read the whole article here.

April 21, 2012December 15, 2023

Muppets Revenge

At 11:00 a.m., April 23, 2012, artist Joey Skaggs will lead a band of outraged costumed muppets down to the Goldman Sachs offices at 200 West Street in NYC. Skaggs will be peddling his Mobile Homeless Homes prototype — a low cost alternative living space for the millions of upside-down, underwater or foreclosed homeowners who have lost their houses due to the banking crisis that caused the real estate collapse.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Outraged Homeless Muppets to Converge on Goldman Sachs

“Homelessness is a great American tragedy. Our financial system and government have let us down and we, together, must take a stand to change the way the system works. With over 11 million homes underwater and millions in foreclosure, people are frightened, distressed and angry,” says Joey Skaggs.

Although not a cure, Mobile Homeless Homes (MHH) offers a temporary solution — low cost alternative living spaces for the millions of upside-down, underwater or foreclosed homeowners who have lost their houses due to the banking crisis that caused the real estate collapse. The MHH centerpiece is a camouflage, stealth, mobile home made from a series of connected plastic garbage cans, propelled by a tricycle, that will be undetectable by authorities. It blends into any urban environment. Continue reading “Muppets Revenge”

April 21, 2012December 15, 2023

Announcing Mobile Homeless Homes

From Joey Skaggs:

Mobile Homeless Homes

March 13, 2012December 15, 2023

Homeless Hotspot Publicity Stunt Melts Down at SXSW

‘Homeless Hotspot’ stunt draws ire at SXSW
The Garden Island
March 13, 2012

Austin, Texas (AP) “” A marketing stunt that paid homeless people to carry Wi-Fi signals during the South By Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas, is drawing widespread criticism.

BBH Labs, a unit of the global marketing agency BBH, gave 14 people from a homeless shelter mobile Wi-Fi devices and T-shirts that announced “I am a 4G Hotspot.”

BBH New York chairwoman Emma Cookson says the company paid them a minimum of $50 a day. She called the experiment a modernized version of homeless selling street newspapers.

But many have called the program exploitive. Wired.com wrote that it “sounds like something out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia.”

ReadWriteWeb called it a “blunt display of unselfconscious gall.”

The experiment was meant to begin last Friday but rain delayed its implementation until Sunday. It stopped Monday.

image: cbc.ca