ARTICLES

I Can Be a Role Model

CHANNEL 10 EXPLOITS WEB SEX

That question was posed by KGTV Channel 10 reporter Herb Cawthorne on August 16, during a segment of the station's 11:00 p.m. news broadcast, to Nicole, a 23-year-old resident of www.TheRealHouse.com. TheRealHouse is a private home in San Diego containing cameras in every room that feed live audio and video to the Internet, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. For $25 a month, people can join the website and watch what goes on in each room of the house at any given time. A chat room and e-mail are also available for viewers to "talk" to resident, which at the time of this writing consisted of two single males and four single females.

Cawthorne had traveled to TheRealHouse earlier that day to interview residents about this new concept in Internet "entertainment" based on MTV's "The Real World." Late night news anchor Kimberly Hunt opened the segment, titled "Life On-Line," saying, "You can call it the business of living." Said co-anchor Carol LeBeau, "Living in front of 20 cameras, all day, all night, and every move is broadcast on the Internet. " Hunt continued, "10 News reporter Herb Cawthorne is here now with a story on some young San Diegans who are living for a living."

Cawthorne: That's right, Kim and Carol. They're seen in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the pool, in the shower -- and they get a place to live -- and their Internet business stands to make a bundle.

(Cameras cut to Justin, a male resident of TheRealHouse, opening the front door): Hey, welcome to TheRealHouse.com.

Cawthorne (voice-over): Justin lives in a house full of cameras. The pictures of Justin -- living-- go out over the Internet, to a website called TheRealHouse.com. Twenty-five dollars, and you can live your life watching others live there.

Justin: People pay $25 for a lot worse things, so this is not that bad. This is entertainment.

Cawthorne (voice-over): And this is Nicole. She gets a place to stay, rent-free, utilities paid. After a month, some things are still hard to get used to.

(Cameras cut to Nicole, another resident): In terms of getting used to having the cameras 24/7, I'd say that having them in the shower was the hardest thing to get used to.

(Cameras cut to show the shower and the camera hanging above it)

Cawthorne (voice-over): Does it bother you at all, being a good Catholic girl, that some people only log on so that they can see you naked, they can see your private parts?

Nicole: When [viewers] are in the chat room and they're saying oh, you know, "When do you go to bed at night, when do you shower?" that doesn't bother me.

Cawthorne (voice-over): And she says no one will ever see her in bed with a lover.

Nicole: Like [what if] my mom logs on and sees someone in my room?

Cawthorne (voice-over): What part of this deal bothers Selena the most?

(Cameras cut to Selena, another resident): The nudity.

Cawthorne (voice-over): That's the showercam, the bathroom, cameras while she's dressing.

Selena: It's taken me awhile to get used to the showercam."

Cawthorne (voice-over): But she says being able to live on camera, while others live to watch, has its benefits.

Selena: It may seem that I'm vain and I'm, you know, putting my makeup on, or brushing my hair, or curling my hair, or popping my zits, or brushing my teeth. I didn't think I was going to be able to do that comfortably, but when I started doing it, I thought, "You know what? Everyone in the world does this." So I've been able to be more comfortable with myself.

(Cameras cut back to Cawthorne in KGTV's studio): There are four girls and two guys in the house, and each day they spend some time chatting with subscribers, and there are hundreds of those. If you'd like to visit the site, you can find a link on our website at KGTV.com.

After viewing the news segment, I went to KGTV's website where I saw the link to TheRealHouse's website. Clicking the link took me to TheRealHouse.com site, where, on the home page, was a banner advertisement for local radio station KGB FM 101.5, home of the anti-Catholic weekly program Lash Wednesday.

The preview page advertised, "Our SEXY!!! college students have opened their lives to our cameras ... 20 cameras in fact!!! They are everywhere. Yep! Even there. There too. Check them out as they frolic in the pool, or watch them as they just kick back, enjoying a barbecue. Through the aid of our night vision cameras, you can even watch them while they sleep, but you wouldn't do that now would you? At TheRealHouse.com, all of our rooms are hooked up with microphones so not only do you get to see the action, you can hear the action as well. See and hear people as never before."

A search of the website revealed biographies of each of the residents, as well as an on-line roommate application page containing the following caveat: "Currently, the San Diego project has one vacancy. Real Productions, Inc. is looking for a heterosexual couple to live in one of the rooms of TheRealHouse.com. If you and your partner are serious about having your lives put on the net for FREE RENT, please fill out the form below. Good luck...."

Two days later I spoke to Herb Cawthorne to ask why KGTV had chosen to cover this story. When asked what first brought this story to his attention, he said, "It was brought to my attention by one of our producers in a meeting to plan the show, and we decided to do it because we thought that young people attempting to earn living expenses while in school, or recently out of school, was an interesting topic of what's going on in the community and a reflection of what is happening on the Internet that's being generated here locally. We've covered a lot of things about the Internet."

He added, "Because we covered it doesn't mean we endorse it." When I pointed out that having a link from KGTV's website to TheRealHouse's website made it appear as though the station endorsed it, Cawthorne agreed, but said, "We decided to reject the link the next day. It was roundly condemned within our own work site."

When I asked why he had not mentioned that TheRealHouse website is voyeuristic, Cawthorne said, "I'm not going to tell people it's voyeuristic. It's obviously voyeuristic, but I'm not going to say that that's wrong." I asked him if he knew that TheRealHouse was currently advertising for new roommates in the form of a heterosexual couple. He said he did not know that; however, "I did know that there is a couple in the house, and I didn't know it until the end [of my interview], so for me to say anything about it [during the news segment] wouldn't have been the right thing to do."

Last, I asked Cawthorne why he had mentioned Nicole's Catholicism during the interview. How had he found out she was Catholic? "She told me she was Catholic. It came up because I said, 'Would you ever bring a guy into your room?' and she said 'No, because I'm Catholic and my morals would not be right to do that.' I don't have any feelings toward any people who worship a certain way. She had mentioned it, and I was trying to really just ask her, 'Don't you have a problem with people seeing you naked?'"

I asked Cawthorne how I could reach Nicole, TheRealHouse Catholic resident, for an interview. He said that one of the male residents, a KGB FM employee named Abramowitz, was living there for a week as part of the radio station's promotion of TheRealHouse and that if I called KGB, someone there could probably put me in contact with her. I called KGB and spoke to program director Todd Little, who left a message for Nicole to call me.

Nicole returned my call later that evening. She is a May graduate of SDSU, now working for a local extras casting company. We talked about her background, her Catholicity, and her reasons for joining TheRealHouse. "I'm very much into my faith," she said. "I was born and raised in the Catholic Church in Connecticut and used to teach catechism in the second grade. I went through a period where I stopped going to church [following her parents' divorce while she was in high school.] I've lived [in San Diego] for three years, and I go to church every Sunday. My faith is really important to me. I lost my dad two years ago and ever since he passed away, I've really seen it grow. I find that as an outlet to be closer to him."

Nicole said that in addition to attending Mass, primarily at St. Vincent de Paul parish in Mission Hills, she also attends services with Christian friends. When asked if she understood the differences between Protestant and Catholic beliefs, she said, "I don't really understand the differences. I'm trying to talk to people about it. The main differences I see are in the way the services are, they seem to be more laid back where Catholic services are more structured." She was surprised to learn that Catholics believe that the consecrated bread and wine are transubstantiated into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ.

Nicole said that the two weeks prior to my phone call had been a flurry of local publicity, including an interview the previous week on KGB's Dave, Shelly and Chainsaw program. "I wasn't comfortable because they talked about masturbation. They were talking about how I'm like the girl next door and Dave's going to like let me watch Playboy all the time. They know what type of person I am, after interviewing me, and now they know what not to say."

Our conversation turned to the main reason for my phone call, to ask her the same question Herb Cawthorne had asked: "What's a nice Catholic girl like you doing living in TheRealHouse.com?" She explained that she had first learned of TheRealHouse from a flyer posted at SDSU. She applied, went through an extensive interview process, and was eventually selected to be a resident.

What about the cameras? "I've become immune to the cameras. When I first moved here the camera was directly on the toilet, and I told them I wouldn't live here, so they moved it. When I moved into the house I didn't know about the showercams. They [the resident screeners] did ask me; they said, 'People are going to see you naked.' Yes, people do see me naked, but I look at it as like, it's such a small part of my day. I get up in the morning and I shower -- people can't see anything because of the steam but they might change that later [to make bathers more visible to the cameras.] In terms of changing, that doesn't bother me. I guess I live in my own world.

"I think people can grow from watching me living in this house," she said. "I can be a role model. This whole thing is the trend of the future ... more houses like this, perhaps like a Newman house with a worship service on the Internet. I didn't know who I was going to be living with; I got put into this house with seven people and I didn't know who they were going to be. I don't want to be closed-minded and I do question myself at times, that this is going against everything I believe in. I think I can shed some light. I feel like I'm a great influence on people who live in the house. My spirituality has grown tremendously."