hal tweets ·7:42 AM
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
Top Ten Entries
2009,
17:44 GMT
1: Peeping the Brand: Hanging Out in Vancouver (A Photo Essay)
Posted by: Hal
Last week in Vancouver I hung out with a very fun, very interesting group of friends who are all heavy online social media users. Below are some pictures I took of our two days of filming with them, interspersed with some commentary and links to their various sites. Overall my impression of them is that they are smart and funny, though self absorbed (but perhaps no more self absorbed than I was at that age…or I still am…) What I noticed most of all was their mixture of savvy image building and utter disregard for how what they share online might alter their future. On the one hand, total sharing without filter, on the other hand, very keen awareness of the way they are building their personal brands online and the opportunities that might create for them.
So the guy in the picture below is Adam. We met up with him at his office and he showed his Daytum site, where he chronicles his sex life, eating and spending habits, and more. Online, Adam mostly goes by Skinny Ghost. He spends a lot of time on Tumblr. He told me he doesn’t do Daytum to get attention or expose his life, even though the site is public.
After hanging out with Adam at work, we went to a hot dog stand called Japadog. While the camera crew filmed, we ordered hot dogs with Japanese toppings. Mine, below, was a turkey smokey with sweet Japanese mayonnaise, teriyaki sauce, grilled onions and dried sea weed! It was surprisingly good.
Adam used to date Malloreigh (posing below). Malloreigh is best friends with Lindsay (taking the pictures with the film crew in the background). Malloreigh, among other things, poses nude for the site SuicideGirls.com, a site that mixes pin-up type photos of young women with tattoos and piercings with blogging and some Facebook like features. Malloreigh also uses LiveJournal, has a public blog, and communicates through twitter and facebook too. She told me that when a new social networking site comes to her attention she will immediately try and secure the user name Malloreigh for herself, just in case she might one day start using the site or it gains in popularity. Malloreigh’s been blogging since she was 12. She’s had someone pretend to be her online, and has had several online stalkers. Still, she’s very open and friendly to anyone who contacts her, even the guys who pay for access to her photos through Suicidegirls.
The girl taking the photos above is Lindsay. Lindsay is a bit older and less into basement apartments and grunge then Malloreigh and her friends, but she’s just as into using the web to promote herself and her “brand”. She has a site called LindsaysDiet.com that features thousands of pictures arranged into photo essays of particular days that all invariably end up in a club. She’s been hired by a LA based DJ to travel with him taking pictures, and she is even an attraction every Saturday at Biltmore’s, a reason to show up and make the scene, like the band or the dj. We went with Malloreigh over to Lindsay’s condo, where Lindsay took pictures of Malloreigh posing in various states of undress, photos that may make up the next set on Malloreigh’s Suicide Girl page. While the doc crew did this, I sat in a chair in the corner, sweaty palmed and embarrassed, and tried not to pay too much attention (though I did look up long enough to take the picture above).
Eventually we all ended up biking over to the Astoria, a dive-y bar with live music and a dj. The specialty of the place is a beverage called the Power Shandy – half Smirnoff Ice, half beer, one shot of vodka. What you see above is me buying a round for all my new friends. Delicious!
Here we are getting ready to party. At the insistence of director Sally, I even danced for a few awkward moments. The two “power shandys” I drank helped loosen me up for my turn on the dance floor.
So there you go. No deep thoughts here. Nice kids (I can say that because, well, even if I’m not that old I felt old hanging out in their various basement apartments). They had a lot to teach me about using the various peep technologies I’m experimenting with. While they lectured me on the different protocols, I bombarded them with questions about what they thought the future had in store for them. I wonder how their various attempts to use the details of their to lives to keep themselves permanently in the spotlight will ultimately work out?
2008,
23:45 GMT
2: So It Happened Like This…
Posted by: Hal
Last night I held my “Hal Needs New Friends“ Event at the Rhino Bar on Queen Street, downtown West, Toronto. I invited everyone who reads this blog (normally between 20 and 50 people a day, some new, some returning readers), all the people who are friends with me on Facebook who I have never met (around 600 people), and everyone who follows me on Twitter (20 people) to drop by, take a short quiz on my life, and have a drink on me. So how many people took me up on the offer?
One.
One person came by the Rhino.
That one person was a very fun, interesting person and it was great to meet her. But, uh, still. One? On my Facebook event page 14 people said they were coming. Two messaged me the day of and said they couldn’t make it. The rest just didn’t show up. 60 people said they were maybe coming. Turns out they meant: Maybe not.
Paula came. Paula took the quiz. Paula got a 5 out of 9 on the quiz. She didn’t know the name of my favourite restaurant, and she couldn’t answer the question: Hal often argues with his __________. She checked “Don’t Know” to the questions “Has Hal ever had a one night stand?” and “Does Hal write about his pet cat Yoda on his blog?” However, she correctly entered waydowntown as one of my favourite movies, correctly named two of my hobbies, she knew I was married, and she knew the name of one of my books.
My prospective new friend works in corporate communications, plays soccer, and likes to try new things and meet new people. She seems like a cool person. She drank a Tom Collins and stayed and talked to me for an hour or so before heading of. Thanks for coming Paula!
So what to make of this? On the computer, I’m a real swinging guy. Almost everyday someone I’ve never met adds me as a Facebook friend or decides to follow me on Twitter or reads this blog. But, apparently, that popularity doesn’t transfer over to real life interactions. I’m a winner online but a loser in real life? It doesn’t make sense.
I’ll think more on this, and would love your input. In the meantime, I’m going to get in touch with all the people who said they were coming or maybe coming and find out what they did that night instead. I’m not mad or anything. I just want to know why you want to be my “friend” online, but not in real life. I mean, one new friend is probably a pretty good result for any evening out. But still…I had a party and one person came. As for everyone else: It’s too bad. I would have loved to have met ya.
Hal Needs New Friend Photo Essay (courtesy of Adam Smith)
I’m waiting for the party start!
So where is everyone?
A potential friend!
Hal and his new pal Paula bond
Hal drinks one last beer: a Young’s Double Chocolate Stout — bittersweet…
Hal heads home.
2009,
16:23 GMT
3: How’s My Blogging?
Posted by: Hal
Hi everyone, how’s my blogging? Sally and the factotums of Choco Box have sent down a communique. They want to do a bit of a customer satisfaction survey. They want to know how you like my blogging so far. They’re particularly interested in any personal details you might be gleaning from my musings. Actually, you have to go way back to the beginning of this blog to find the personal stuff, but that’s about to change as next week I’ll be shifting gears and writing daily about the life and times of Hal. Anyway, if you have anything to say about my blogging, what you’d like to see me do, say, show, reveal, now’s your chance. Here’s the official customer survey as sent down from head office. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say as we head into the hot summer of Hal.
Hi everyone, We want to get Hal some feedback on his blogging so far. Has he been doing a good job of 'sharing'? Of revealing his personal side? What about his Facebook account? Do you feel you know him any better now than you did before? Or does he keep it too professional, too 'managed'? We're looking for your feedback and you don't have to be kind! Just send a comment to this blog and tell us everything that's on your mind. And stay tuned…full documentary production starts next week and we're looking for people to get involved!
2009,
16:40 GMT
4: Is Facebook Gossip, Entertainment or Friendship? Hal discusses on CBC Radio's Q
Posted by: Hal
So this morning I’m going to be on CBC Radio’s art and lifestyle show Q talking about Facebook, in particular responding to a study just released by the Economist.
The study basically shows that the average person has around 120 “friends” on Facebook but that most people only actively follow and comment on the profiles/status updates/pictures/wall posts of say 10-15 of those “friends.”
This is pretty much a validation of what I’ve been arguing in terms of Peep Culture, that we use social networks less as genuine attempts to achieve friendship and more as a combination of entertainment, marketing and gossip (not the gossip that used to keep community cohesive, but the new global cyber gossip that allows us to feel like we have relationships with people we don’t know).
The truth is that although many of us claim that we only add people we know, most of us do not really ‘know’ 120 people in any meaningful way. We’re adding them because the urge to do is irresistible. With the click of a button, we’re entertaining ourselves and marketing ourselves. It’s all very addictive and exciting. (I’m totally guilty of this…the other day someone accused me of being FB friend obsessed….I thought about it for about 4 seconds before realizing that she was totally right…I need help.)
So check out the show if you want to hear me discussing this in more detail, it’s on today at 10am est but they also have a podcast.
2008,
14:46 GMT
5: WebCam in the Car
Posted by: Hal
Great piece in the Washington Post today about a pilot project that looks at how installing webcams in the cars of teenage drivers might reduce accidents and unsafe behaviour. Of course, what's fascinating is what else it might do -- condition young people to accept that they should be watched all the time every time lest they hurt themselves or someone else.
2008,
20:08 GMT
6: First Mean Comment. Stats Update. A Few Notes on my Life.
Posted by: Hal
“What exactly are you attempting to achieve here, Hal?” writes Mark McCawley. “Where’s the personal risk? Or is this going to become another very large coffee table book?”
Okay so that’s not exactly scathing but it’s mean, at least. It’s my first mean comment! It’s a dig at my writing career (though a strange one, since the only book I’ve published that could be remotely construed as a coffee book was the Original Canadian City Dweller’s Almanac – available on Amazon.ca starting used at .25 cents) and a dig at my blog. All neatly done in three concise sentences.
Well, look, he’s got a point. So far, not much risk happening on this blog. I’m not exactly opening myself up to you, my readership. I want to get more personal, but every time I try I cringe inside and pull back. But this blog is just beginning. There’s plenty of time for me to work up to it and spill my guts. I will reveal! Just give me time.
Anyway, according to Andreas who presides over all things peephal.com my stats are slowly growing. His last report said that I’ve got about 30 more daily visitors than I did last time he checked. But in total only 12 people have visited the site 15-25 times. He figures that I’ve got roughly 9 regular readers. Welcome back once more my loyal 9! If I’ve disappointed you, I apologize. But I’m doing my best here.
So I was going to write about my weekend but, honestly, not much happened. My hockey team was in the finals for our division but we lost. It was a fun game. That’s about it. Next week my parents are coming in for Passover. That should provide more fodder, I’m sure.
In the meantime, I did a CBC interview today that will air Wed. morning between 10 and 11am on CBC Radio 1’s Sounds Like Canada. I’m discussing the extremely important topic of “my favourite pop culture saying from when I was a kid” or something like that. My choice was Mr. T’s: “I Pity the Fool”. If you want to hear me waxing nostalgic over the A Team, be sure and tune in. I actually thought I sounded like a bit of a doofus, despite my genuine love for ‘T’. Still I managed to work in my 2nd favourite Mr. T tagline – “I ain’t gettin’ on no plane, Hannibal” while I was at it. Truth is I always leave radio interviews feeling like I was terrible. Especially when I’m trying to be funny. Well, listen in and let me know what you think. Be mean if necessary.
2009,
20:39 GMT
7: Come Peep the Peep Diaries: Tour Dates
Posted by: Hal
Okay, at long last here is the complete information about the Peep Diaries tour. Please come to these events and bring your friends! And if you live in or near one of these cities and are interested in having me do a lunchtime talk at your company, or a visit with your book club or something else like that, let me know and we’ll work it out. (And if you want to invite me to your city to talk Peep, click here.)
Toronto: Tue, May 19. The Gladstone Hotel, 256 Queen St West. 7:30 pm in association with This Is Not a Reading Series/Pages Books.
Boston/Cambridge: Tue, May 26. Harvard Coop Bookstore, 1400 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge. 7:00 pm.
Boston area: Wed, May 27. Back Pages Books, 289 Moody Street, Waltham, MA. 7:30pm
New York City: Thu, May 28. McNally Jackson Bookstore, 52 Prince Street. 7:30 pm.
New York City: Fri, May 29. Hal at Book Expo America. City Lights Booth, 655 W 34th St (Jacob K Javits Convention Center). 2–4pm.
Chicago: Thu, June 4. Quimby’s Books, 1854 West North Avenue Chicago. 7pm.
Los Angeles: Friday, June 5. Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood. 7pm.
San Francisco: Monday, June 8. Booksmith, 1644 Haight Street. 7:30 pm.
San Francisco: Tuesday, June 9. Technorati Headquarters, 665 3rd Street, Suite 207. 12:30pm. Note: This free, open to the public event will feature a talk by Hal and a q+a session specifically for web 2.0 entrepreneurs interested in exploring the moral/social issues raised by the rise of social media, search engines and more. Held and sponsored by live search engine site Technorati.
Washington, DC/Rockville, MD: Thursday, June 11. Barnes & Noble Rockville, 12089 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. 7:30 pm.
Buffalo: Thursday, June 18. Sugar City, 19 Wadsworth St. 7 pm. In association with the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair, Talking Leaves Bookstore, and the Just Buffalo Literary Center.
Event Description
Join award winning cultural observer Hal Niedzviecki as he takes you on a multimedia tour of our new world: Peepville.
In Peepville, Hal will show you such notable features as streets lined with surveillance cameras, day cares equipped with webcams, and citizens eagerly tracking themselves and each other via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and shared GPS.
Behind all those cameras, cell phones and profiles are real people. It’s time to meet your neighbors, the peeps of Peepville! Some of them are inexplicably revealing the intimate details of their (sex) lives online. Others have become the new enforcers of (digital) morality – digicam vigilantes who stalk everyone from bad drivers to prostitutes. Some of us just want to sit back and relax and watch other people go about their lives dying, disliking their jobs, and trying out for reality tv.
Then there’s our super-special citizens! Hal will introduce to you such Peepville luminaries as the digicam vigilante behind John.tv, the masterminds of Twitter, a Star Wars obsessed sex slave housewife blogger, and so much more! Don’t miss Hal’s guided tour down the infamous Peep Walk of Fame! Here you’ll meet the stars of Peepville: personas like Star Wars Kid, Dog Shit Girl, Washingtonienne, Dancing Cadet, and David After the Dentist. <?xml:namespace prefix =”” o />
But what’s Hal’s stake in this? The more Hal talks about Peepville, the more it becomes clear that he’s just another lonely, confused citizen looking for friendship, attention, community, and respect. Will Hal find what he’s looking for? When Hal invites his 700 Facebook friends to a party and only one shows up, it’s a wake-up call. Can Hal escape Peepville? Does he even want to?
oh dear, they’re all going to be watching me…
2009,
15:09 GMT
8: What the Hell Am I Doing? Hal Breaks Out Into a Panicked Sweat
Posted by: Hal
Friday’s shoot started at around 10 am. We were utilizing the new space age basement office for the first time. It’s dark and gloomy, with strings of lights behind the book shelves offering what I think is supposed to be a kind of futuristic glow. I haven’t seen it on camera, so I don’t really have a sense of how it turned out, but the crew seems happy with the vibe.
So first off, Sally (director) and Jeanette (producer), sat me down at my desk and produced a 15 page contract. With the cameras rolling, they took me rapidly through all kinds of legal language which basically amounted to the following: You agree to reveal yourself, to subject yourself to whatever we come up with, and you further agree that you are doing this willingly and that you will probably cause yourself embarrassment and this embarrassment will probably have a negative effect on your career and personal life and when that happens you can’t sue us, because you have only yourself to blame.
Hey, wait a minute, I protested feebly. Just sign it, snapped Jeanette. I signed it.
The whole scene — which was more about dramatics for the documentary then about any actual legal proceeding — made me oddly, suddenly anxious. I mean, really, it wasn’t anything I didn’t already know, but it put it very starkly. What the hell was I doing? Was I pretty much just signing up to make myself look ridiculous? When I pitched this project, it was all about extending our collective understanding of the shift from pop to peep. I wasn’t planning on embarrassing myself by and ruining my life. As the reading of the surprise legal document progressed, I actually broke into a sweat. No doubt you will see me on the small screen anxiously wiping my upper lip.
I’ve been working with these filmmakers for more than a year. I trust them, and I know they have the same intention I do – to make a substantive, important contribution to understanding the dramatic social shift we’re in. At the same time, as the documentary shifts into high gear it’s become apparent to me that we are entering a new more adversarial relationship. They believe that to make the doc succeed, I must expose and ideally embarrass myself. How else could I possibly truly participate in peep? I’m willing to expose and even embarrass myself — I’ve been doing it all my life, why stop now? — but I don’t think that’s what the doc should hinge on. Then again, there is an aspect of peep which has to do with being pushed by someone else to do things you wouldn’t otherwise do. Peep is all about WILLINGLY revealing yourself for perceived gains — attention, community, rewards. But what often ends up happening is that your willingness to share is coopted by other people who use your desires to share for their own agendas.
After I signed the document, they pretended to introduce me to thepeepdiaries.com for the first time. They then asked to see my Facebook page and proceeded to berate me for never commenting on anyone else’s posts or answering any of my facebook messages. That bit of theater was actually pretty funny. And probably true. You’ll notice, by the way, that I’m going to be doing a lot more responding to comments on this blog. I’ll be starting with the comments responding to my post about how my blogging is going…
So we’ll see how things play out. I’m writing this at the airport. The whole crew is off to San Francisco and Vancouver to shoot scenes with a lifecaster, a group of suicide girl twitter partiers, plus google and more. I’ll keep you posted, of course. I’m feeling far more anxious about this whole project now than I’d ever imagined I would. Maybe that’s a good thing.
2009,
15:58 GMT
9: Peep Night at the Toronto Festival of Authors
Posted by: Hal
Hey everyone, Peep Night at the International Festival of Authors is quickly coming up. It’s tomorrow night. Get complete info and buy your tickets here. It’s going to be awesome. It includes some talk by me, the band FoxFire jamming to weird YouTube vids, a round table discussion about how peep is changing writing and our attitude to writers (with Lauren Kirshner, Dani Couture and Jennifer Cowan), an audience participation moment with photographer Dean Baldwin, plus video testimonials by Yann Martel, Larry Gaudet, Karen Connelly, and more!
Check out the Peep Show official IFOA trailer.
Hope to see ya there!
Hal.
2009,
12:59 GMT
10: Hockey: Washington Capitals fake Twitter Accounts and Hal Gets Into Shape
Posted by: Hal
So another hockey season is creeping up. Hockey is my sport. I’m not every good, admittedly, but that doesn’t stop me from lacing up the skates every chance I get. My beer league team’s first game is Sunday night. Unfortunately for me, a summer of travel and then a long vacation featuring a lot of haggis and scotch has left me in terrible shape. Ah well, all I can do is hit the ice and try to work it off.
I’m also a bit of a fanatic when it comes to following my favourite team The Washington Capitals. (I picked up the Caps bug when I lived in suburban DC as a kid.)
So here’s an article that brings peep culture and the Capitals together at last! It’s a piece in the Washington Post about fake twitter accounts aimed at Caps players. What’s particularly funny about the whole thing, or particularly sad, depending on your perspective, is that the fake accounts feature players the casual hockey fan would be hard-pressed to identify, guys like Jeff Schultz and Brooks Laich. You’d expect fake Ovechkin accounts, but Caps prospect Karl Alzner? Even I wouldn’t sign up to follow that. For the record, Ovechkin has his own Twitter account with some 20,000 followers, though as of January 09 he hasn’t posted, saying he’s “taking a break from all this.” Not too worry, though, there are plenty of fake Russian super-star hockey players ready to step into the mix: A quick search reveals, in total, 8 “Ovechkin” accounts, ranging from 5 to 5000 followers. A few of them are hard to distinguish from the real thing.
There is a serious element to all of this: while everybody enjoys celebrity impersonation on Twitter done as obvious parody, the fact is that it’s getting harder and harder to separate the real from the fake. Is peep culture folding back into itself? Have we reached the point where real life is getting boring again? I don’t think so: we will always privilege so-called “reality” over “fictionalized” content. Sticking with DC, on the all news radio last night I heard, for instance, that Obama called Kanye West a “jackass” for his embarrassing outburst at the MTV awards. This is news not because it matters, but because it’s real. (The comments were made off the record before an interview…surely by now the President should know that nothing’s off the record anymore.)
Well, let’s leave the last word to Washington Capital’s prospect Karl Alzner, who says in the Post article: “The weird thing is people talk about my girlfriend, my dog, weird stuff. They have too much time on their hands. It’s not right.”
The real Ovechkin Twitter page above.
A fake Ovechkin Twitter page below.
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...
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
New content on the Broken Pencil website! Short fiction: Shack the Clam Girl + How to Make Your Own Game Cabinet http://bit.ly/b6CHLP
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