His favorite targets include the homeless, Asian shop owners, security guards, and cabbies. With an unwavering stare and nerves of steel, he aims his video camera at them, seemingly intent on eliciting anger, confusion, and anything else his unwilling subjects care to muster.

Known only as Surveillance Camera Man, this provocateur’s YouTube videos have become viral, controversial hits, most yielding over 100,000 views. He’s uploaded five compilations since October 2012, each following a simple template: SCM, as we’ll call him, walks up to a stranger, usually in a public space, and silently trains his lens on them.

When the subjects wonder why they’re being filmed, his response is almost always the same: “Just taking a video.” (SCM’s face is never seen.) Each compilation runs 4 to 6 minutes and contains several clips of SCM annoying people in various locations.

The clips appear to be shot with a tiny camera or cell phone, adding to the target’s initial confusion about what’s happening.

“It’s not easy to sum up the recipe of a viral video,” says Brad Kim, managing editor of Seattle’s Know Your Meme (part of the Cheezburger family of websites). He cites the “repetition of a single motif, brevity in length, elements of drama, and surprise. And with the case of Surveillance Camera Man in particular, voyeurism and timeliness.”

With Edward Snowden and the NSA surveillance scandal as a backdrop, SCM’s videos might arguably be making a political/artistic point. […]