hal tweets ·7:42 AM
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
Cewebrity
2008,
17:45 GMT
Gawk This: Emily Gould Learns the Art of Peep
Posted by: Hal
Okay it’s a little late and nobody cares anymore, but what the hell. Here’s my take on the whole Emily Gould/NewYork Times/Gawker/blogger “scandal.”
So Emily Gould obviously knew that she was overstepping boundaries of privacy and proprietary when she was blogging about private matters involving other people’s lives without their consent. She was clearly doing it to advance her career and persona, and admits as much in her New York Times essay on her life as a blogger, when she talks about inserting personal asides into Gawker posts as a way to draw attention to her writing and get more hits. This is actually pretty common strategy these days: As a reporter notes in a piece on people blogging their divorces: “For some ex-spouses, revenge is not the point. Writing about divorce can be good for readership.” This theory is affirmed by one Penelope Trunk, the author of the Brazen Careerist blog, who has spent quite a bit of time writing about the demise of her 15 year marriage. “The bloggers who are doing the best are those who are injecting their personal lives,” she notes, presumably meaning that the value of your product – your story as told by you – is enhanced by scandal and tragedy so why hold back?
Let’s put this in context: A Pew American Life/Internet Project reports that 1 in 10 adult Americans has a blog. At the same time, another study by Fernanda Viegas out of M.I.T. interviewed nearly 500 bloggers and found that more than a third of the respondents said they had ‘‘gotten in trouble’‘ for material posted on their blog. Another third said that they knew other bloggers who had gotten into trouble with family and friends. Bloggers who admitted to frequently writing about ‘‘highly personal materials’‘ got into the most trouble most frequently. As one mournful fellow explaining, ‘‘I lost a prospective girlfriend, who found that I’d blogged a brief amount about our date.’‘ Nearly two-thirds of the bloggers Viegas interviewed said that they rarely asked permission before using other people’s real names, though they apparently “became more sensitive to the importance of using pseudonyms after their friends and family objected.”
In the era of the persona-product that at once reaffirms the new ideal of the celebrity while challenging the faltering morality of community, it’s harder and harder to know where to draw the line. Emily Gould is the poster girl for this. A former Gawker editor whose series of blogs – anonymous and not – set off a tit-for-tat article/blog frenzy when a former boyfriend wrote about her writing about him on her blog in the New York Post’s Page Six Magazine. This prompted her to write about him writing about her in the New York Times Magazine. At this point, perhaps sensing how ridiculous and embarrassing all this must seem to the casual observor, Gould then ended the article by announcing that she has learned her lesson. Hence, she now finds herself “doing something unexpected: keeping the personal details of my current life to myself.”
Of course, this has to be taken with a grain of salt since, obviously, by writing the article she is again revealing the personal details of her life, and promoting her blog (which is still going) and making money. Plus, as countless other blogs have pointed out (themselves only too happy to jump on the bandwagon and, like me, keep this story alive), Gould continues to blog on Gawker and elsewhere. All of which is to suggest a more complicated, less flattering truth about lessons learned in the age of the persona-blog-product: what Gould has learned isn’t that she needs to stop using her real life to make money and enhance her profile (even at the expense of others). What she’s learned is that she needs to carefully manage her revelations for maximum profit and exposure. Her cover story in the New York Times Magazine is a great example of her new, cannier, management style.
Finally, New York Observor Media Mob columnist Matt Haber notes in a column that Gawker, supposedly on the recieving end of Gould’s realization that gossip blogging isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, loved the entire ride. “Gawker’s first post officially linked to Ms. Gould’s Times Magazine story received 9,133 views and 170 comments. A follow-up post c
locked in at 8,814 views with 149 comments, while a post announcing comments had closed on NYTimes.com received only 4,150 views and 83 comments. Sadly, another, about the article’s photos, topped out at only 2,556 views and 55 comments. Finally, it seemed, for Gawker, the horse had been kicked to death.”
2008,
0:44 GMT
Max Mosley and UK's anti-Peep law
Posted by: Hal
It’s anti-Peep, not pro-privacy. That’s my take on the news that Max Mosley, Formula One boss who sued the Daily News after they paid a prostitute to hide a camera in her bra while she took part in his bondage and domination orgy, has won a judgment in the case.
Why do I say anti-Peep? Because what the judge essentially says in the ruling is that, to quote the New York Times, “the ‘unconventional’ behavior that tabloid journalists in Britain have regularly chronicled among certain celebrities — adultery, for example, or visiting a prostitute — would have to involve, in the future, some element of criminality, or activity conflicting starkly with the public image fostered by the individuals involved.”
In other words, you can Peep, but only in the public interest. This isn’t a resounding defence of the right to privacy, it’s a reigning in and defining of the right to Peep. The two are not the same thing. One says, paying someone to sneak a camera into a private orgy that breaks no laws is okay so long as you find out, for instance, that it’s a NAZI-themed orgy, which is, presumably news because Mosely is the son of famously fascist parents and a major public figure. But if he’s just doing a regular old spanking orgy, well, then, the public doesn’t need to know about that. So in that case, you should just forget all about the camera you snuck into the orgy. It’s not that you shouldn’t have snuck in the camera, it’s that having failed to record sufficiently smutty and shocking material, you should have deleted the pictures and forgotten all about it.
A strange, twisted bit of law making that says more about the age of Peep culture than it does privacy.
Mosley after court, surrounded by reporters.
The original Daily News front page.
2009,
11:52 GMT
Courtney Loves Double Peep
Posted by: Hal
Here’s an example of one of my favorite (new) media phenomena: the Double Peep. In the Double Peep, someone—usually a celebrity—peeps him or her self by revealing far too much about their thought process through some online format. Then the mainstream media takes over and does the rest: relentlessly promoting an overshare barely anyone noticed until it takes on a life of its own.
Here are the details as culled from an article in the Independent which managed to twist this mindless tidbit of celebrity gossip into a very serious sounding 700 word piece titled: “Love’s online spat sparks first Twitter libel suit”.
Basically, Courtney Love has been obsessively tweeting (is there any other kind of tweeting?) on the subject of the character of her former fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir. The Austin, Texas designer (now the recipient of millions of dollars of free publicity as countless media outlets run this news story accompanied by a pic of Love in one of the dresses she designed…see below..) has launched a lawsuit for, among other things, accusing her of being a “nasty, lying, hosebag thief.” Nice tweet Courtney!
Apparently all this has to do with a $4000 bill for clothes received Love never paid, which caused the designer to…ah…stop sending her clothes.
Hey I wish I could parlay a dispute over four grand into a multimillion dollar publicity campaign - I mean lawsuit, sorry - that will probably benefit both these women far more than hurt them.
Double Peep strikes again. This isn’t the first time, and it definitely won’t be the last, that somebody entertains us by offering an unfiltered portal into their thought process (however addled) and, in the process, offers the media a ready-made story peeping the peep. Consider the lawsuit is a bonus for everyone involved.
2009,
14:14 GMT
Peep Art: Rhianna painting (with bruises)
Posted by: Hal
Since I’m on a celebrity kick here this week (see yesterday’s Courtney Love Double Peep) here’s today’s entry, Peep Art. Yes, peep is the new sex and as everyone knows peep (sex) sells. Enter Los Angeles artist Sham Ibrahim who has given us a Warhol knock-off portraying pop star Rhiannon’s police evidence photo (also conveniently leaked to the press). Taken after her boyfriend, fellow pop star Chris Brown, beat her up, the photo and subsequent painting show Rhiannon all bruised and bloodied.
But, hey, don’t look for social commentary here. Says the artist, who goes by his first name: “I thought the bruises in the police photo were interesting shapes to draw. And it was cool to color them pink and blue. Those are two of my favorite colors. There is no message to any of my art. It’s meant to look cool hanging on your wall and that’s it! I’m not into deep meanings.”
I’ll bet you aren’t. But you are into peep and you know, just like your not-buddy Courtney Love (see below) that anything that has to do with the private lives of celebrities will get you instant attention. In this case, when Sham’s painting was put up on celebrity gossip and ephemera site World of Wonder (you can buy it here for $100 and hang a faux Warhol beaten pop star in your living room) it was noticed by E!Online, then Yahoo News, and then thankfully made it into my daily Globe and Mail. The result: crappy Peep Art goes global!
I googled our man Sham and discovered that – exciting — there’s a Courtney Love connection to all this! In 2007, Sham wrote a piteous blog post on World of Wonder. In it, he follows Courtney Love around after one of her concerts and is apparently shattered when Courtney rejects him: “I jumped out of the cab and said, ‘Hey, Courtney!’ I was about to tell her that her show rocked and ask for one simple picture. That’ s it. Before I could do that, she said, ‘Why is this ugly guy following me?’ and sauntered into the hotel.”
2009,
23:43 GMT
Idiotic Double Peep News of the Day: Mindless Puffery About Bristol Palin’s Ex Boyfriend
Posted by: Hal
I was going to do a high minded post today and claim that all week I’d be looking at different incarnations of Peep Art. But, well, how about we do that next week? In the meantime, how about some idiotic double Peep action? Remember we defined the double Peep here as the phenomenon by which the original Peep gets peeped by the media.
Good example on the Huffington Post today. And it comes with a poll! So here’s the title: “Levi Johnston’s Sister Mercede Tattoos His Name On Her Wrist…What Would You Do? (POLL, VIDEO)” The “piece” basically says that Levi Johnston (who you might remember as the dude who knocked up Sarah Palin’s daughter and got grandfatherly props from John McCain before being inevitably dumped by Sarah Palin’s daughter…and how do we know all this? Because we live in a Peep Culture!) so anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Johnston, according to Huffington which has the video to prove it, was on the Tyra Banks show with his sister (who we care about because?) when the sister revealed she has her brother’s name tattooed on his wrist (which we care about because?).
Now observe how Huffington tries to take this meaningless bit of double Peep puffery and make it matter to us — they further extend the peep by turning it into a poll. Is Levi’s sister weird? YOU decide!
In this way, peep extends its pull and allure. Everything, ultimately, is all about how you feel and react. This isn’t about the Johnstons (who we care about because?): It’s about you! Part of why Peep culture is so enticing generally is exactly because of the way the it always seems to come back around to ways we can interject ourselves into the story by, yes, allowing ourselves to be Peeped. It’s all so scary and addictive.
So I’m going to run my own poll: Is a poll asking if Levi’s sister is weird weird? YOU decide!
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
Tag Cloud
Archive Months
August, 2010
July, 2010
June, 2010
April, 2010
March, 2010
February, 2010