hal tweets ·1:04 PM
Indie comics in 80s LA, a homage featuring Groening, Panter, Hernandez bros…. http://bit.ly/b1FcGM
2008,
13:52 GMT
Looking for the Lurkers
Posted by: Hal
Hi everyone, a journalist/researcher in New York asked me to post this. If you're a lurker, help her out!
Do you spend a lot of time following blogs and twitters of people you don't know? Do you watch but don't participate? Do you find interest or comfort in people's daily routines? Are you familiar with JenniCAM, Justin.tv, or iJustine? I'm a reporter looking to speak with nonparticipatory, anonymous online users. Email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if this sounds like you.
2008,
18:30 GMT
We're On Our Own: Who To Blame for Online Suicide?
Posted by: Hal
While a judge considers dropping the charges against Lori Drew police will no doubt be looking to lay new charges in a separate case, the suicide of a 19 year old teenager live online. Another tragic incident, another case of people using the Internet to amuse themselves at the expense of someone else who ultimately takes his or her own life.
The particulars in this case basically involve a young man swallowing all kinds of medication until he lapses into a coma. 185 people watch online via streaming service Justin.tv, attracted to his life feed via a posting he leaves on a body building forum. (Incidentally, I have a very interesting interview with Justin in the Peep Diaries done right after he stopped being the main attraction on the site and opened it up to other people who wanted to “lifestream.”) Eventually the police are called. Even as they break down the door and cover the webcam, the peanut gallery online is chatting and arguing whether or not the whole thing is staged. Here are some quotes:
Quote: if you put full screen on you can tell its not a still pic but why isnt his top moving as he breathes
Quote: um guise. . he looks like hes not breathing
Quote: desperate cry for attention….log off his stupid jtv site…. you’re just making this retard act out worse than he would otherwise.
So who to blame this time? Basically this is the dark side of our emerging Peep Culture. If we’re going to make the unmediated watching of other people a big part of our entertainment culture, then we’re going to have things like this happen fairly regularly. Even after the poor guy is gone, he will continue to provide “entertainment value” online. Consider this forum which discusses his death, provides his online suicide note, and links to the video (which has now been removed officially but I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find it pretty quickly).
So are people doing things they wouldn’t otherwise do because they know they are being watched? There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that people are, increasingly, acting in extreme or violent ways in order to create YouTube clips. So there’s reason to suggest that someone might be more inclined to commit suicide because of the potential for their act to become spectacle. In which case, we wonder: What is the responsibility of those watching? There are so many faked videos out there that it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between real or acted. It’s pretty much impossible to put the onus on the watcher, who is always passive, always anonymous, always somewhere else. And I don’t think anybody wants the authorities to come in and start regulating the Internet the way they do television, assigning ratings and basically turning live TV into an utterly bland experience.
So it comes back to the core reality that Peep Culture reinforces: Even in the age of so-called interactive digital culture, even in the age of online community, we’re on our own. We have more freedom than any human beings have ever had before, but with that freedom comes more confusion, more desperation, more watching of others to see what they’re doing.
The scene on Justin.TV as the police arrive too late to save a young man broadcasting his suicide online.
2008,
17:28 GMT
Let Lori Go: The Sad, Strange Case of Megan Meier
Posted by: Hal
So the case of Megan Meier, the 13 year old teenager who killed herself after she thought a hot boy on MySpace had dumped her, is now before the courts. On trial for fraud is Lori Drew, the mother of Megan’s schoolmate. Drew is accused of being the mastermind, along with her daughter and an older teen, of a scheme to impersonate a hot boy interested in Megan. Since Drew was the only adult in the room throughout this whole thing, she’s the one on trial.
Drew is charged with, get this, “conspiracy and three counts of accessing a computer without authorization via interstate commerce to obtain information to inflict emotional distress.”
There’s a lot to be disturbed about in this trial. First of all, just the facts on the ground. Meier hung herself after a final message was sent to her via the fake boy’s MySpace account. The message said: “The world would be a better place without you.” But we’ve now found out that Megan responded to that message, writing back: “You’re the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over.”
We can imagine the two girls and one woman giggling at Megan’s pain. Obviously the case is a testament to the dangers of social networking, especially for the emotionally vulnerable teen set. When people hide behind fake profiles they more easily forget that there are real human beings somewhere at the end of all the wires. When people derive entertainment from the travails of another person’s life – their own personal reality tv show – they dehumanize and depersonalize and, again, they forget that there are real people out there somewhere.
At the same time, is Lori Drew a criminal? She is guilty of using incredibly bad judgment, there’s no question of that. But we live in a Peep society. People put fake profiles up all the time. People constantly pretend to be things they are not. People regularly derive their fun by viewing the pain of others. Sanctioning Drew feels right, but at the end of the day probably doesn’t make much sense. In the age of Peep, identities are malleable and just about everything one does online is potentially someone else’s LOL moment. Unless the US government is planning to start arresting every pretender on the Internet, this is a case of punishing a horrific outcome, as opposed to trying to understand the underlying reasons why such a horrible thing occurred in the first place.
On the left: Lori Drew. On the right (in the dress): Megan Meier’s mother.
2008,
18:24 GMT
Bits and Pieces: Hal's Upcoming Weekend, More on Facebook Advertising, playlist for Hal's 10
Posted by: Hal
End of the week bits and pieces…..
1) I’ve been really tired lately. And hungry. I think I’m getting ready to hibernate. W. is going to be away this weekend. It’s just me and the kid. I hope she takes long naps…
2) Michael, reader of the blog, sent me an article in response to my musings about Facebook ads. The article talks about Facebook’s approach to advertising and why they’re using these small low paying ads instead of massive blockbuster advertising.
From the piece:
“Mr. Rose argued that Facebook isn’t so much about explaining products as showing people which of their friends endorse them. He pointed to a campaign by Procter & Gamble that allowed Facebook users to give each other Tide vintage T-shirts (actually tiny pictures of a t-shirt).
“Tide wants to create a positive affiliation with their brand in your mind,” Mr. Rose said. “Are they more likely to do that with an ad that says ‘Hey, we’re better”? Or are you more likely to have a positive feeling if one of your friends sends you a virtual gift that is a Tide vintage T-shirt?”
Again, it’s this whole question of using people’s lifestyle inclinations as a way in. Of course that can backfire: do people who wear vintage Tide t-shirts really have an affiliation with Procter and Gamble products?
Anyway, so far the FB ads for Indie Writers DeathMatch that I’m running have had an average of about 26,000 impressions a day, with about 36 actual click throughs to the FB page for the contest. I’ve capped the amount we want to pay at $10 a day and plan to run the ad for 10 days. So in the end it’ll cost $100 for 360 click throughs. Now since it costs $20 to enter the contest (you get a subscription too) at the end of the day I only need 5 of those 360 to actually enter the contest to make it worth it. The question, of course, is whether or not we’ll get those five people through this.
3) Back to my weekend. In addition to W. being away leaving me as sole parental unit in charge – watch out kid, there’s a new sheriff in town – I’m going to be on a panel at a conference on Sunday. The conference is called Culture Congress and the panel I’m going to be on is Technology of Contact. 11:45 – 1:15 at the Lakeside Terrace, Harbourfront Centre, downtown Toronto. also on the panel are: Jacob Zimmer, Michel Lefebvre, and Peter Flemming. It’s free if anyone wants to check it or the other events out.
4) Finally, I’ve created a CD mix of Canadian tunes to send to my 1000th Facebook friend, the free thinking, home schooling blues playing Texan Marie Angell. There are 13 songs on it. Here’s the lineup: 1) “When She Appeared” – Aaron Booth 2) The Commute – The “Barmitzvah Brothers 3) Slow Recovery – Beans 4) In Her Dream – Bob Wiseman 5) Almost Crimes (live version) – Broken Social Scene 6) Pamphleteer – The Weakerthans 7) In State – Kathleen Edwards 8) I Will Not Sing a Hateful Song – Constantines 9) Almost Summer – Jason Collett 10) I’m a Mountain – Sarah Harmer 11) 38 Years Old – The Tragically Hip 12) Blackheart – Cuff The Duke 13) The Dead Flag Blues (all 16:28 of it) – godspeed you! black emperor. I’m excited for Marie to experience this cross Canada panorama of weirdness!
2008,
15:19 GMT
Facebook Obsession and Indie Writers Deathmatch
Posted by: Hal
Okay it’s time to admit that I’m currently obsessed with Facebook. I’m spending way too much time on good old FB. What am I doing on there? Nothing of consequence whatsoever. Adding then deleting applications. Looking at random people’s pictures. Answering my FB messages. (A young woman today sent me a message through FB saying that she just wrote a 2 hour exam based on my article about my failed FB party.) I’m also chatting using that annoying pop up chat thing. I’ll chat with anyone! I’m a chat slut! It’s got to stop, but will it?
In order to justify my obsession with FB, I decided to try out their advertising feature so I could pretend I was doing business. I created an ad for Broken Pencil Magazine’s short story contest Indie Writers Deathmatch. It was actually quite interesting. You can target by age, country, education and interests. The ad is currently aimed at Canadians ages 16-45 who indicate writing and creative writing as interests or hobbies on their profile. I created the ad last night and so far today there’s been 12,029 impressions, and 11 clicks. I’ve spent $3.77 of BP’s money for those 11 clicks, an average of 31 cents a click. (I’ve capped it at $10 a day.)
As a advertiser, I like how targeted I can get. And as a consumer I think it’s also valuable – you’re a creative writer, so you get an ad for a creative writing contest. At the same time, there are drawbacks both practical and philisophical. On the practical side, clicking the ad takes you to the Facebook group. You then have to go from there to the actual contest page in order to find out all the details and enter your short story. So that’s one extra step which is a drawback (unlike, say, a Google Ad which would take you directly to the page you want people to go to). I have no way of knowing, ultimately, how many people actually go from the FB group to the Broken Pencil Death Match page.
More abstractly, this kind of advertising simply enhances what we already know but often chose to ignore: that the stuff we put up there to tell our FB friends about our lives can be used by just about anyone as marketing fodder. Even your social decisions – for instance if you say you are “attending” the Deathmatch – could be incorporated into the ad. (The ad is designed to have a headline above it that says “Hal Niedzviecki is attending the Indie Deathmatch”.) So all this integrates your social life into commercial life and makes me slightly queasy, slightly fascinated, and, as someone who’s trying to reach a very particular cohort of potential creative writers, slightly fascinated. If anything else comes to mind about this, I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, I really need to write a blog post about something other than FB. Get out of the house. Do something with my life.
Hal.
ps – and do consider entering the Deathmatch. It’s a really fun contest and a great opportunity for an emerging writer. I’ll be one of the initial judges to see what stories go on to get voted on. If you’re not a short story writer, please pass the link on to someone who is!
The Bloggist
Hey, I’m Hal Niedzviecki. I’m a writer/thinker who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my wife and daughter. Up till now I’ve always considered myself a private person. But at the same time I’m fascinated by people who effortlessly open themselves up to the whole world. So I’ve… more...
Indie comics in 80s LA, a homage featuring Groening, Panter, Hernandez bros…. http://bit.ly/b1FcGM
Issue 47 (spring) is now completely ‘unlocked’ on the NEW Broken Pencil website. Web TV, Liz Worth on punk TO & more http://bit.ly/bXvQuP
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