A virtual strip search may sound like an activity only your avatar would partake in, but that’s what critics of the full-body scanners in airports are calling them. As more people encountered the machines, which create images of a nearnaked body, there were complaints that the scanners were indecent and threatened privacy.

Really? These days, when most people have a lens pointed on themselves and each other, everyone should be used to all the watching . Big Brother says it has a reason to watch: fighting terrorism and ensuring safety. But for others, it’s not so clear. Fame, curiosity, power, boredom? It doesn’t seem to really matter. And that, perhaps, makes ordinary voyeurs scarier than Big Brother.

There is always a cellphone camera ready. A new Barbie doll even comes equipped with a video camera and screen on her back.

And a photography professor at New York University just implanted a camera in the back of his head that will take photographs every minute for a year for an art project.

Because prices are declining, cameras are no longer out of reach for the average person. And more homeowners, outraged by neighbors’ misdeeds that harm personal property, are buying surveillance kits to catch them in the act, The Times reported.

Steve Miller of Florida purchased a $400 video surveillance kit to record his neighbor tossing dog excrement onto his lawn.

The offender was given a citation, but because he didn’t apologize, Mr. Miller told The Times that he had a little fun and posted a video of the neighbor on YouTube, drawing more than 4,000 views.

In India, people have no problem turning in their fellow citizens for traffic violations. When the Delhi Traffic Police started a Facebook page last summer, residents - in Orwellian fashion - became digital informants, posting photos of drivers breaking traffic laws, The Times wrote. This ability to publicly humiliate wrongdoers “taps into a very basic primal part of who we are as human beings,” Gaurav Mishra, the chief executive of a social business consultancy, told The Times.

Others are content with random fame.

When Allen S. Rout of Florida posted photos of his 5-month-old son on his Web site, they took on a life of their own. He found a smiling picture of Stephen surrounded by Japanese writing: “Don’t call me baby! Call me Mr. Baby!” Other images showed Stephen’s face pasted onto Kurt Cobain’s head, carved into Mount Rushmore and tattooed onto David Beckham’s torso, reported The Times.

Somehow, Stephen’s face had ended up in Japanese visual culture, even showing up on TV game shows.

The photos had become “an Internet meme: an idea, image, catchphrase or video that goes viral, mutating amateur remixes into unexpected forms,” wrote The Times. Why? No real reason.

Sometimes the results of online postings are tragic. In September, a Rutgers University student, Tyler Clementi, committed suicide after his roommate used a camera in their dormitory room to stream an intimate encounter of Mr. Clementi’s on the Internet.

In a constant stream of photographs and videos, where we are the creators, consumers and consumed, people are watching, just because.

Jay Risner of Michigan, who installed surveillance cameras at his home, told The Times: “I’m not sure now whether to worry more about my neighbors or strangers.”


ANITA PATIL