hal tweets ·4:05 PM
i have been mentoring aneela in her writing. read her important article on honour killing, just pub’ed in macleans http://bit.ly/ctjm5g
2008,
18:36 GMT
Portrait of a Blogger on the Darkside
Posted by: Hal
Not really. In fact Padme, the primary author of the blog Journey to the Darkside is sweet as can be. Even over the phone with her I thought she was going to offer me milk and cookies. And blog posts with titles like Victoria Anniversary Night and Happy 7th Birthday Skywalker! don’t exactly come across as dangerous.
But innocuous fare about trips and birthday parties quickly gives way to posts like “The First Time I Sucked Two Cocks in One Night” and “Darth Vader is My Daddy”. What gives? I ended up on the phone with the very kind Padme (not, obviously, her real name) and found out the following:
Padme’s husband is also her master. He makes all the decisions and regularly spanks or whips her with a riding crop. This is part of Padme’s life and she blogs about it almost as matter of factly as she blogs about recovering from surgery and celebrating her wedding anniversary. One suspects, though, that it is the details of her sex life that have caused the site to get over a million-and-a-half visits since its inception three years ago.
Part of Padme wants to get exposed. In her emails to me she refers to the blog as private even though she knows as well as I do that the blog is a public document open to all. When I ask her about this she says: “It’s a public blog and there’s always a risk with that. I have heard stories of other bloggers being found out by their families, but we’ve been pretty lucky, so far no one has come across it. I’ve been kind of worried from the beginning about that. You almost half expect that someone will come up to you and say ‘I know who you are.’ “
Well Padme doesn’t just half expect it, I get the feeling she half wants it to happen. After all, this blog is very detailed and anyone who knows this couple even casually would probably be able to put two and two together.
So why take the risk? It’s pretty clear that Padme has come to rely heavily on the blog as a source of community, friendship, creativity and attention. As she tells me: “I don’t drive, I don’t work, I’m a stay-at-home mom and I’m alone all day. It’s been a great way to connect to people.”
Somehow, Padme is able to ignore the fact that she knows very little about the 3000 people a day who read her blog. She talks to me about overcoming embarrassment and writing as if it was just Master who would be reading. When I ask her if she thinks it’s odd that thousands of strangers know more about her life than neighbours, friends and family she seems momentarily flustered. Finally she tells me that, at the end of the day, the pros outweigh the cons and she simply “tries not to think about the lurkers.”
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.
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...
i have been mentoring aneela in her writing. read her important article on honour killing, just pub’ed in macleans http://bit.ly/ctjm5g
New updates on the Broken Pencil site: Dani Couture profile, Melanie Miller story, zine and poetry revs and more. http://bit.ly/cHweBh
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