Vanish. Finding Evan Ratliff
Author Evan Ratliff Is on the Lam. Locate Him and Win $5,000.
Wired magazine is running one of the coolest promotions that I have seen in a while right now. As of August 15th, Author Evan Ratliff has voluntarily gone missing off the grid. He will be gone for 30 days, and you can win $5,000 cold hard cash if you spot him and snap a picture of him. To me this is great because it ties in a recent article that Ratliff wrote about the subject of disappearing, titled "Gone forever. What does it take to really disappear?". I recommend reading this full article, it's very fascinating.
Starting August 15, I will try to stay hidden for 30 days. Not even my closest friends or my editors will know where I am. I’ll remain in the US and will be online regularly. I will continue to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and I’ll make cell phone calls. I’ll generally stay in the kind of social environment I like to live in (no hiding in a cabin in Montana), and I’ll keep track of my pursuers, searching constantly for news about myself.
For more information about the contest, check out this page. For daily updates and clues as to Ratliff's location, you can visit this page. I don't think I will be participating in the search, however I have been following the vanish page daily for updates as I find this sort of thing fascinating.
Similar to the recent J.J. Abrams edited issue of Wired where there was a hidden meta puzzle embedded into the magazine, Wired keeps giving me more reasons to love them.
- Tagged in: blogging, wired, culture, vanish, interactive, twitter, social media
- Category: General
