hal tweets ·1:04 PM
Indie comics in 80s LA, a homage featuring Groening, Panter, Hernandez bros…. http://bit.ly/b1FcGM
2008,
19:29 GMT
Peep Update: Steven Rambam is Gonna Give Me a Digital Colonoscopy
Posted by: Hal
Okay, all this week I’ve been having conversations with Private Detective Steven Rambam. He runs the Pallorium detective agency. He’s truculent and honest and probably a little bit crazy which makes him perfect to be part of the whole Peep project. He does lectures on the death of privacy and specializes in digital detection. Oh and did I mention that he’s also hunted Nazis and been arrested by the FBI? (they dropped the charges).
He agreed to investigate me and report back what he discovers. He says he will find out everything there is to know about me including pictures of my friends and tape recordings of them talking about my most embarrassing moments. Should be sweet! Naturally all his recordings and files will go up on peephal.com once as it develops. Stay tuned my friends….
The plan right now is to have him unveil the results of the investigation at the HOPE (hackers on planet earth) conference in New York in July with me on stage in front of a live audience who has gathered to hear Steven talk about the death of privacy. Naturally we need to get the whole thing on tape for the doc and book. I have to talk to the producers about this and hopefully it will work.
Okay, so I’m excited. I mean Steven actually promised to give me a “digital colophony.” It’s just what I’ve always wanted.
Listen to an interview with Steven here. (It’s the 2nd half of the show.)
2008,
19:57 GMT
Justin.TV: Am I Wasting My Life Or Are You?
Posted by: Hal
Okay, so I just fell into a major hole and spent a couple of hours viewing videos on Justin.tv. I was looking for interesting clips to potentially use in the peep documentary and interesting people to interview. But I have to say I'm pretty disappointed with what I saw. The original concept was that people were supposed to have their own channels for lifecasting - you could get the apparatus from Justin and his crew and go out there and broadcast your life for all to see. We would see what you saw from your perspective. But it's become something more of a video blogging site, a cross between a Facebook and a youtube. The camera is mostly static and pointing at the person as opposed to pointing outward at what the person is looking at.
I'm sure that others have noted this better and much earlier than me. But hey, too be honest I don't really care what business model Justin follows. I was disappointed because there wasn't a lot of material on there that was of use to me. Mostly it was people being silly in front of their webcams. Some of it was live but most of it was "highlights" like someone burping loudly. The two clips I liked best were both ones in which young women were having somewhat confrontational phone conversations with males.
This one here features one of the better known lifecasters, Sarah Meyers, arguing with a stalker. This one shows a young woman arguing with a soon to be former boyfriend. Both are kind of entertaining in that weird, creepy, why-am-watching-this way, the boyfriend break up one probably more so than the Sarah Meyers stalker one.
I'm tired, it's the end of the day and I don't really have any great pronouncement on any of this right now except that I was disappointed by Justin.tv. Furthermore, 956 people watched a girl fight with her boyfriend and I am one of them.
Watch live video from Sarah Meyers on Justin.tv
Watch live video from C@ndYc3 Bro0k3 on Justin.tv
2008,
19:04 GMT
Sex on My Mind or On Everyone's Mind?
Posted by: Hal
Scanning my last bunch of blog posts you might think I have sex on my mind this month…And, truth be told, I did just have an interesting conversation with a swinger who likes to post pics of his wife having sex with other men online…But that’s another story. Right now, I just wanted to throw up a quick link to breaking news out of Detroit. Seems the mayor their has now been indicted for lying under oath about the affair he had with his now former chief of staff.
That’s the story for some but more interesting is the fact that the Detroit newspaper that broke the story got their hands on text messages between th mayor and his chief of staff dating back to 2002. Where did they get those messages from? The whole thing is unraveling a lot like the Spitzer thing did, with allegations that public money is being abused to pursue a private agenda. Then again, if it was public money being used to pursue an obsession with toy trains, we wouldn’t be seeing these headlines everywhere.
Peep culture strikes again, sex sells, and I can’t stop blogging about this stuff. Is there a relationship? Naaaaw….
2008,
22:15 GMT
Doc Update: Hal Joins Amateur Porn Site RedClouds
Posted by: Hal
Okay so last week I met with the producers of the Peep documentary and we went through an initial sketch of the “script” which is more like a broad strokes idea of what we think will happen when I am put in certain situations and when I talk to certain people. I left feeling good about the project, it’s nice to have a road map to work on, something to follow while you’re trying to get to a destination.
That said, there was a lot of work still to be done on the sketch. Not the least of which is getting in touch with various people we’d like to be part of the doc. So today I spent a bunch of time doing research and also tracking down people we want to speak with.
Among other things I did today: joined RedClouds, a massive amateur porn compendium. It cost me $27.99 but I am now a full fledged member for the year. Do you think the producers will reimburse me? We’ll see. I joined in order to have access to their chat areas so that I could ask if any of the people who are putting their pics up might like to meet up with me and talk about why they pose nude online and how it fits into their lives. I posted in one chat area – Sexuality – and have so far gotten one response.
Naturally I’d be a pretty sad researcher if I didn’t also look around. So I randomly clicked on various pics. Most were women, many in the 40 plus range, some posing nude, some actually engaged in sex acts. A lot of them didn’t show their faces, but some did. I didn’t get all that excited if you must know. The effect was more like being at a nudist colony or nude beach. Very quickly, you stop thinking — s/he’s naked! — every time someone walks by.
At the same time, it’s clear that the million plus members of RedClouds do get excited, particularly when they post pics of themselves. A lot of the pictures come with invitations like – “first time poster, can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks.” I got the sense that it was the response that was more important than actually putting up the photos. Like if no one rates the pics or attaches a few lewd comments, it never really happened.
2008,
16:20 GMT
Peeping Your Death
Posted by: Hal
Article in Toronto’s Globe and Mail today on a blogger and BBC columnist who chronicled their own demises from illness. “Blogging the process of dying is becoming a small yet poignant fixture on the Internet landscape.” The piece doesn’t give us any sense of why people might want to blog or otherwise make public their deaths, which is too bad.
But peeping death (our own and others) is an interesting piece in the peep puzzle. If we peep ourselves and others in order to be less alone, then it makes sense: what could be lonelier than death?
Of course peep culture has always had an interest in death: the 1978 Faces of Death cult film/montage of death scenes of humans and animals (some real but most fake) has spawned something like six official spin-offs and any number of unofficial imitators.
On the artistic side, there are documentaries like Silverlake Life: the View from Here a video diary of the death by AIDS of Tom Joslin. Here’s a description of the final moments of Joslin’s life as depicted on the video and described by John McGrath in his book Loving Big Brother: “Massi [Joslin’s partner] focuses the camera on each of Joslin’s eyes in turn. One, the lid covered in lesions, is barely visible; the other is clear: ‘that eye he can see in the camera with’. Massi then asks Joslin how he feels and Joslin mutters in a breathy voice, barely intelligible, with Massi attempting to translate: ‘he feels pretty bad, but wants his friends to feel good.’ The video is showing a frame of Joslin’s face, it cuts suddenly to the face again, a slightly different angle. There is a howl then Massi’s voice: ‘This is the first of July and Tommy’s just died.’ Joslin’s clear eye still stares towards the camera.”
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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