Wed Apr 22,
2009,
16:31 GMT

Cat Peep

Posted by: Hal
Tags:

Had to get this up there as soon as I heard about it, and props to Nora Young of CBC’s Spark, where I heard about this. Basically, a guy set up an automatic cat door triggered by RFID tags that unlocks for the family’s two cats.

Catdoor A diagram of the cat door. See more pics and commentary here.

The door unlocks, a picture is taken, and a tweet and a picture are automatically sent to the two cats’ 1500 twitter followers. I kid you not. Cat Peep! (Actually planning, one of these days, a longer post on animal peep in general so if you have any more material like this, send it over.)

Catpeep Penny the cat heads in for snacks.

Comments: -16-, Add yours…

Tue Apr 21,
2009,
20:59 GMT

They Want to Watch Me Where I Pee Pee: Surveillance in Hal’s House

Posted by: Hal
Tags:

On Friday the producers of the upcoming documentary based on my upcoming book dropped by along with a surveillance camera expert. They wandered around my house discussing the best places to put surveillance cameras. The plan is for there to be two weeks this summer when the camera streams will be live on the web for all to see. Meanwhile, I’ll be blogging and ruminating about what it’s like to live life in a fish bowl. And you’ll be posting comments about my bed head and absent minded propensity for nose picking when I think nobody else is around.

First Jennicam, then DotComGuy, and then…me? As the Peep Diaries book makes clear, despite my attempts to enter into the Peep world and reveal myself, I never quite managed to do it. Obviously, the documentary is going to take things a step further by, for instance, installing cameras in my house and broadcasting live to the web. Will I like this? I suspect it will be pretty annoying and I won’t like it all. But I think I’ll also like it quite a bit. Oh dear.

Jennicam_01 Halshocked

Anyway, there were a few tense moments, like when we got down to the nitty gritty and producer Jeannette started talking about cameras in the bedroom and bathroom. (You can read her more polite post about all this here.) At which point I had to remind her that W. had already announced that because of her work (she works in mental health) she cannot be actually seen on camera, and we’d have to obscure her face. This, I think, was a factor that Jeannette was hoping to just ignore until it was dropped. W. isn’t going to drop it, of course, so we needed a work-around. How can Hal be on camera 24/7 for two weeks, but not his wife (and his kid, for that matter?).

The answer: Hal moves into the basement. Yes, for two weeks this summer I’ll live in the basement. I’ll move my office down there (I work from home) I’ll sleep down there and there’s even going to be a bathroom cam to capture my doings in the basement bathroom (which already lacks a door anyway, so I’m used to that). And there’s got to be infrared, announced Jeanette. I want to see him while he sleeps!

In the end, Jeannette was happy to just monitor the basement and first floor and leave the upstairs to W. and the kid, especially when she found out how much each camera was going to cost. So everyone’s happy. Except, uh, me.

Anyway, it’s begun.

Comments: -6-, Add yours…

Mon Apr 20,
2009,
18:18 GMT

Susan Boyle’s Got Peep

Posted by: Hal
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So what’s the one thing we know about overnight Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle? What’s the one fact that resonates with all of us? Answer: It’s that she’s NEVER BEEN KISSED. This is the source of our fascination with her. We relate to this, it makes us feel better about ourselves - if she can make it, anyone can make it! The fact that she is homely just makes the story - her story - even better. If she was pretty, she’d be just another performer. The back story of her personal life would be typical and un-exciting. But here’s a person who is plain in every way, a person so plain she’s NEVER BEEN KISSED and yet now the whole world knows her name. That’s what we like about her, and that’s why she is really a great peep (as opposed to pop) culture figure.

Boylethumbsupjpg

Consider this piece in the Washington Post, one of many running all over the world. The piece goes out of its way to keep the myth alive. It paints a nice caricature of a lonely lovely lady – a Hollywood caricature in every possible way – except that it happens to be true. Boyle really is the youngest of nine children, she really is a 47 year-old unemployed, slightly chubby woman who’s never dated and never married and never been kissed, who lives alone with her cat, who, until recently, was the subject of mockery by the village youth.

Who is Susan Boyle and what goes on her mind and how is her insta-fame going to help or hinder her in the coming days and years? On that, the piece gives us nothing. But on the cliche of Susan Boyle, anti-celebrity celebrity for the Peep age, the article is resplendent with quote after quote from the towns people, all too willing to weigh in: “We’re all tired of 23-year-old models trying to sing on TV. Susan is a 47-year-old spinster who, by God, can sing,” Michael Nicolson, 64, the bingo caller at the community center where Boyle volunteers, tells us. “She’s an ordinary, run-of-the-mill lady,” says Joe Stronach, the bowling club office (whatever the hell a bowling club officer is). “She doesn’t have great looks, but God gave her a wonderful voice.” Susan Boyle’s Got PEEP baby! Boy does she ever.

The move from pop culture to peep culture opens the door to all kinds of insta-celebrity random moments. When you are deriving your entertainment from the lives of other ‘ordinary’ people, it doesn’t really matter what their talent necessarily is, what matters is that there’s a peep back story we can all buy into. In the case of the Spinster Songster, it’s not the song and the singing that interests and amuses us, it’s the folksy story, it’s the life that seems tailor made for reality tv and its many peep spin offs. They set her up to be a loser but she proved them wrong. And now the pudgy village spinster with the learning disability is crazy famous. She’s like a movie, only she’s real.

Comments: -8-, Add yours…

Thu Apr 16,
2009,
15:39 GMT

Fast Food HiJinx in Peepville

Posted by: Hal
Tags:

It’s time for fast food Peep people. All the rage this week is a video featuring of a Domino’s Pizza employee sticking cheese in his nose before putting it on a sandwich. Then he farts on some salami and wipes his naked butt with a dish-cloth before using it to wash some dishes. All the while his coworker films and laughs hysterically. YouTube has deleted the videos, but this site here has a bunch that, last time I checked, were working just fine.

Look when I was 16 and worked at the Burger King in Montgomery Mall in Montgomery County, Rockville, Maryland, me and my friend did some pretty nasty stuff to the food. I drooled on some burgers, included a nose nugget in a guy’s chicken sandwich, and so on. I’m not proud of it, well, okay, I’m a little proud of the take-out burger I made for a woman who wanted extra ketchup and pickles — I gave her only ketchup and pickles, triple wrapped so the two inch layer of ketchup wouldn’t ooze out. (Alright, I’m not proud of it anymore, and I am officially apologizing for that action which probably ruined an anonymous stranger’s night.) Anyway, I also know for a fact that my friends working at the Popeye’s a few minutes down the road did even worse stuff including pouring de-greaser into the grease frier to see what would happen and then cooking chicken in it.

Mcdonalds want peep with that?

So fast food workers doing gross things isn’t new. There’s a reason I never eat fast food ever. (Also it tastes like crap.) What is new, of course, is the urge to peep. It’s funnier if someone’s filming it. It’s funnier if you are imagining it being watched by millions on YouTube. You. Little old you, lowly Domino’s pizza kitchen worker, turning your life into mass entertainment.

We didn’t have the cameras when we were teens. If we did we probably would have taken the videos too. Or maybe not. The two in the Domino’s video don’t seem very bright. But can we really blame them? It’s peep. It’s irresistible.

Anyway, I’m not content with bringing you just the latest news. What else is out there in Peepville with a fast food theme? I asked myself. Oh boy. I found a Peep story so unbelievable even I was floored. It goes back to 2004 when a man called a Kentucky McDonald’s and said he was a police officer. He then described a particular young teenage female employee and claimed she was a thief. He then convinced several different employees (as well as one employee’s then fiancee) to strip search and torture this girl. They kept her confined for 3 hours and eventually the poor girl was sexually assaulted. The entire scenario was captured on surveillance cameras. The police station where the guy was claiming to be calling from was 15 minutes away.

Naturally, something as incredibly stupid and titillating as this was going to get out: after the man impersonating the cop, the man who did the sexual assault and the woman who originally took the call and spear-headed the confinement and strip search were all arrested, ABC PrimeTime Live used the surveillance footage and tearful interviews with the teenage girl and the McDonald’s employees to peep this incident for all it was worth.

But it’s not over yet! Next up: the ABC segment goes to YouTube where it has, to date, been viewed by 1,042,604 people. Here it is. Go ahead watch it. I did.

Next up: the uncensored surveillance tape featuring the abused girl being forced to do nude jumping jacks makes it out to various sicko peep sites. (I’m not linking to it, but it’s out there. If you want to see it, you’re on your own.)

From these two stories we can conclude the following: In the age of Peep, if there is video, it will be seen sooner or later, and whatever stupid, humiliating, horrible things happen, they will never ever go away.

As for fast food workers, well, I think it’s safe to say that they aren’t always the brightest lights. I should know. I used to be one of them.

Comments: -7-, Add yours…

Wed Apr 15,
2009,
20:42 GMT

Further Discussion of Last Post: Facebook = TV 2.0

Posted by: Hal
Tags:

A pretty interesting and healthy discussion broke out on my Facebook page yesterday, responding to my last blog post. I thought I’d reproduce it here and respond while I was at it. (My comments are new, added here, they didn’t appear in the original discussion.) And, hey, let’s keep this discussion going! I’m reprinting the comments in order, and using the initials of the commentators here, hopefully they’ll comment on the blog and identify themselves in full if they so wish. So here goes:

TD: I’m with you on many elements of your ‘peep’ thesis as presented thus far in other posts/forums, but “it’s still entertainment and distraction, not some newly evolved way to learn, connect and meaningfully interact” comes off as broad and gratuitous, a bit of overstatement for effect. For some types of use, you’re correct, but for others I’ve seen too much evidence to the contrary to agree completely. My ability to respond with the above, within the same medium, in context, inside an hour also does not remind me of television.

[Hal says: it’s a bit broad, true, and of course there are many exceptions but overall I’m sticking to my guns here: peep culture is replacing pop culture which means we’re deriving entertainment from watching other people’s lives, and FB is a big part of that. Does that mean that’s all we’re doing on FB and other peep sites? No. But it’s a big part of it and we have to acknowledge that. And interactive tv is already happening with more just around the corner as TV and Peep inevitably complete their merger.]

MS: The correlation between lower grades in TV-watching students and Facebook-ing students does not necessarily imply that the same factors can be attributed to the causality models. For example, both models most likely identify “distraction” as a factor that contributes to the effect of lower grades. But what are the other factors unique to the between Facebook and lower grades? I would suspect that they differ and that it would be quite interesting to analyze them on a deeper level. I think that a major divergence between TV and Facebook is the presentation of a narrative within a formally defined beginning and ending (even so-called “reality” shows are presented as such). Facebook is a never ending “narrative” that is not framed within any context. In addition, as TD points out, TV is passive (TV viewer) whereas Facebook is active (Facebook user). Therefore, the comparative influence of each medium on the grades of students’ must take these factors into account.

[agreed there’s plenty more to study. we’re still trying to figure out the effects of television watching on kids, let alone the rest of it. love your point, MS, about the fact that FB and peep are never ending, unlike tv which at least has nominal breakaway points. ergo: peep is more addictive and fascinating and obsessive!]

MM: Whether passive or active, one thing the two mediums have in common is the mass communication of meaningless drivel: on that point, Hal, you are spot on in your analysis.

[thanks MM. but I’m not sure it’s drivel, or always drivel: it’s people – all of us – using the techniques presented to us, ironically alienating mass media type techniques, to try and announce the fact that we exist, have opinions and feelings, aren’t just statistics and net worths.]

TD: That could be said of the Internet as a whole (vs. a specific comment on social networking behavior). In fact, is the bulk of Facebook use even “mass communication”?

[it is…it’s one person communicating to many. how many? depends on # of friends etc. and, yes, it can be said and has been said and will continue to be said that the bulk of the content on the Internet is drivel…]

RS: absolutely! maybe worse ...cause when ‘working’ on computer you can Facebook without even noticing (like now!) but I’d never go up and turn on the tv.

[so very true…social networking and peep break down barriers which, again, is why it’s all so addictive: you are twittering and you maybe aren’t even sure if you’re twittering for work or for yourself or both at the same time…]

MM: TD, I think Hal’s thesis is that both mediums are more about “mass entertainment” and “mass amusement” rather than “mass communication”.

TD: As I’ve said, I agree in part (if by “both mediums” you still mean social media in particular). But is “mass” anything (e.g., audiences) a prerequisite for ‘peep’ to function? Hal? I swear I see it play out on a much smaller scale all the time, just as I also see social network interactions that I can’t dismiss as detached/pointless amusement.

[i think that, yes, peep functions only on an ‘mass’ scale which is not too say that every blog post and twitter gets a mass audience, but that anything anywhere has the potential to become mass entertainment on a massive scale. the prerequisite for something to be part of peep culture is, in my mind, that potential. and, again, it’s not at pointless, and, as with television, there’s more to it than just entertainment, but no matter what happens, those other elements are always a by-product of entertainment]

MM: I still think Hal’s thesis is spot on. Think about it: ppl on FB surfing each other’s status statements like they used to change channels with their remote control, seeking (i.e. peeping) whatever entertains or amuses? Moreover, the social contact between FB friends (unless based offline in the first place, or an anachronism, at best) hardly ever rises above that of superficial. How much more akin to TV can a medium get anyway?

[I’m with mm here]

TD: That’s just not my experience with the medium. YMMV.

[thanks everyone, great conversation, let’s keep it going!]

Comments: -21-, Add yours…

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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...