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2008,
17:28 GMT
Let Lori Go: The Sad, Strange Case of Megan Meier
Posted by: Hal
So the case of Megan Meier, the 13 year old teenager who killed herself after she thought a hot boy on MySpace had dumped her, is now before the courts. On trial for fraud is Lori Drew, the mother of Megan’s schoolmate. Drew is accused of being the mastermind, along with her daughter and an older teen, of a scheme to impersonate a hot boy interested in Megan. Since Drew was the only adult in the room throughout this whole thing, she’s the one on trial.
Drew is charged with, get this, “conspiracy and three counts of accessing a computer without authorization via interstate commerce to obtain information to inflict emotional distress.”
There’s a lot to be disturbed about in this trial. First of all, just the facts on the ground. Meier hung herself after a final message was sent to her via the fake boy’s MySpace account. The message said: “The world would be a better place without you.” But we’ve now found out that Megan responded to that message, writing back: “You’re the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over.”
We can imagine the two girls and one woman giggling at Megan’s pain. Obviously the case is a testament to the dangers of social networking, especially for the emotionally vulnerable teen set. When people hide behind fake profiles they more easily forget that there are real human beings somewhere at the end of all the wires. When people derive entertainment from the travails of another person’s life – their own personal reality tv show – they dehumanize and depersonalize and, again, they forget that there are real people out there somewhere.
At the same time, is Lori Drew a criminal? She is guilty of using incredibly bad judgment, there’s no question of that. But we live in a Peep society. People put fake profiles up all the time. People constantly pretend to be things they are not. People regularly derive their fun by viewing the pain of others. Sanctioning Drew feels right, but at the end of the day probably doesn’t make much sense. In the age of Peep, identities are malleable and just about everything one does online is potentially someone else’s LOL moment. Unless the US government is planning to start arresting every pretender on the Internet, this is a case of punishing a horrific outcome, as opposed to trying to understand the underlying reasons why such a horrible thing occurred in the first place.
On the left: Lori Drew. On the right (in the dress): Megan Meier’s mother.
2009,
23:21 GMT
25 Random Things AboutHal
Posted by: Hal
1) I have a giant barbecue in my backyard. It’s like the Humvee of barbecues. I really like to barbecue.
2) Several times in my life I’ve considered giving up writing to pursue some kind of cooking career. This was long before hipsters started making their own ricotta.
3) I’ve never actually made a ‘zine. I feel weirdly guilty about that. I’ve had a lot of ideas for ‘zines. For instance, Mommy Trader, which would look exactly like Auto Trader only it would be based on the buying, selling and trading of Mommies.
4) Another idea I recently had - a series of videos called The Wonder Authors that would be a spoof of the kids show The Wonder Pets (in which 3 pre-school age pets rescue other animals, see http://www.nickjr.com/home/wond_about.jhtml). In my spoof, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and one other rotating cast member (Timothy Findley back from the dead, Barbara Gowdy, Michael Winter etc.) would rescue other Canadian Authors from jeopardy. Like the show, all the dialogue would be in song - Atwood: “A writer, a Canadian writer’s in trouble!” Ondaatje: “We have to help him!” Michael Winter: “How can we help him?” Atwood: “A letter, we’ll write a letter!” Ondaatje: “A strongly worded letter!” Winter: “To get him a grant!” Atwood: “But who can write it?” “Ondaatje: “I’m much too busy!” Winter: “And so am I!” If you’ve ever seen the Wonder Pets you will hopefully think this is funny. If you’ve never seen the Wonder Pets you will have no idea what I’m talking about. If you want to make this video with me, I’m ready and willing. My wife has already volunteered to make the author puppets.
5) I met my wife in my second year of university. Before getting married we broke up 4 or maybe 5 times over a period of six or seven years. She just couldn’t shake me.
6) I play hockey 2 or 3 times a week. On my hockey team I am known for my move ‘The Octopus’, a kind of catch and release manoeuvre in which I briefly impede an opposing player’s progress, then let him go before the referee notices and gives me a penalty.
7) Here are my current stats, lifetime, with my hockey team: GP: 536 G: 108 A: 211 Pts: 319 PIM: 282 GWG: 13 GTG 5 PPG 8 SHG: 2 Ejections: 2
8) In terms of sports, I also enjoy basketball, kayaking, canoeing, hiking, cross country skiing, ultimate Frisbee, Frisbee golf (if you can call that a sport) and ball hockey. I never jog, work out, swim laps, or do any solitary exercise that I can avoid. I like group sports, perhaps because I spend most of days alone. Some of the sports above I have done very few times, and a few of them I have only done drunk.
9) I sometimes think to myself: I should have more friends. Why don’t I have more friends? But I’m not entirely sure how many friends a person should have. For all I know I already have more friends than is normal and/or necessary.
10) When my wife gets home from work I sometimes recount the day’s events at my (home) office. This generally involves the exploits of me and several of my co-workers, make-believe animals who share my office: “Teddy Bear was reprimanded by Boss Pig today.” “Puppy Dog and me had lunch at the Indian buffet down the street. All you can eat. That dog can really eat.”
11) I’m actually pretty lazy. I’d be happy just writing for two hours everyday and spending the rest of the time puttering around in my garden.
12) Me and this guy I met at my kid’s daycare just went in together on a package of three kinds of mushroom cultures. We’re going to implant them in rotting tree trunks and leave them lying around our respective yards.
13) While the meat cooks on the barbecue I like to wander around my tiny backyard garden pulling weeds and securing errant cucumber vines to the chain link fence. Last summer, all my cucumber plants turned brown and died for no apparent reason. Also last summer, the hardy kiwi vine I planted about seven years ago first yielded fruit - grape sized kiwis with a smooth exterior.
14) My neighbour - the other neighbour, not the nice one - threatened to kill me some years back.
15) Currently, I get the feeling that my brother isn’t talking to me.
16) About the only thing I haven’t contemplated writing is a play. I do not want to ever write a play. Writing a play feels too much like writing about writing, which I also do not ever want to do.
17) I like and demand order and cleanliness but I am, myself, a bit of a slob. You can barely see the floor in my small office and everything is covered in a thin veil of dust.
18) There is very rarely a day when I do not contemplate my death. I imagine my funeral - what songs should be played, who might attend - and think that when my time comes it will be a relief for everyone, particularly me. I often tell my wife: “When I go I don’t want a funeral. Just bury me in the backyard next to the kiwi vine.” She just pats me on the back: “Okay big boy. Whatever you say.”
19) I usually tear up at weddings, funerals and even Bar Mitzvahs. It’s something about the ceremony, because right before and right after I’m back to thinking about what will hopefully turn out to be an open bar.
20) At my Bar Mitzvah I surreptitiously drank three glasses of white wine and was sent to the basement to sleep it off.
21) At my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah I drank so many gin and tonics that my mother stationed herself at the open bar to ward me off, like hanging a string of garlic bulbs over a doorway to forestall a vampire.
22) My only remaining grandparent is Zadie Abraham, who lives in a home in Montreal. He’s 97. We were never very close, but I still feel like I should call him. The truth is, I almost never call him.
23) I tend to think: I should do this. Then I think, why should I do this? I won’t do this unless I really want to do this. I won’t do this just because it is expected of me. In this way, I play out my daily battle with myself over such issues as social propriety, hypocrisy, morality, community, and “the public good” versus “individual interest”.
24) My favourite play to see performed is Waiting for Godot.
25) I have more back hair than most human males have on their chests. Sometimes, when I’m lying on the couch, my 3 year-old daughter will approach me, pull up my shirt and start to gently comb my back hair with the brush that came with one of her dolls. The feel of the plastic bristles on my back hair is weirdly soothing.
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!
2009,
14:08 GMT
Notes from Last Night’s Reading
Posted by: Hal
Among those in attendance at my presentation last night on the third floor of the sprawling Harvard Coop bookstore:
*Three black men of retiree age who spoke with African accents. One of them asked me if any of this stuff was going on in the Muslim countries. Another of them asked if he could watch the presentation again, so I started it again and the three of them sat down in front of my netbook and watched the whole thing again while snacking from stuff they brought with them in plastic containers.
*One fiery youngish academic who noted that while my presentation was very interesting and provocative I was mostly wrong about everything.
*An undergraduate activist girl who was of the opinion that activists were successfully using social networks to galvanize young people for the cause of social justice.
*An older gentleman with, I think, white hair in a pony-tail who came up to the podium afterwards, thanked me, and gave me three bananas and a small bag of all dressed bagel chips.
*A middle aged fellow who suggested that we were looking at a total shift in what it means to be social.
*A woman in her fifties who looked away whenever the screen showed something particularly upsetting like the naked wizard being tazered, a woman being spanked, or a woman revealing her abdomen days after gastric bypass surgery. She later spoke elegantly and thoughtfully about how much this whole phenomenon disturbed her.
*A Boston Facebook friend I’d never met before. He declined my offer to buy him a beer after the presentation.
2009,
16:51 GMT
Studies on Twitter and Facebook Usage Support Peep
Posted by: Hal
Okay, so first off a Neilsen study has concluded that total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83% from 2008 to 2009. Facebook and Twitter are, not surprisingly, the big time-suckers in all this. Facebook time increased 700% percent, from 1.7 billion minutes to 13.9 billion minutes. (This is in the US only.) Meanwhile, Twitter experienced growth of, get this, 3712%. See the chart below for the whole breakdown.
In the Peep Diaries I argue that we’re replacing other entertainment options with peep entertainment options like social networks. These numbers certainly support that contention.
There’s also a new study that just came out of Harvard. This study looked at 30,000 Twitter users in May 2009. It concluded that the typical Twitter user doesn’t actually do much tweeting. Over half the Twitter users tweet “less than once very 74 days.” (see chart below) There are a small number of twitter users, 10%, who dominate the tweetverse: “the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets.”
So what does all this mean? Well my take on it has always been that we like to watch, that we are, in fact, conditioned to watch by our popular culture, which is dominated by television and movies. I’d argue that the default position we take in regards to mass media phenomenon is always to watch. Over time, we learn to also contribute, but first we have to “break the seal” and get comfortable with the notion. On Facebook, we’ve broken the seal and become very comfortable, probably too comfortable, with sharing everything and anything. We’re only starting to get comfortable on Twitter, so it’ll be interesting to see how things play out.
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...
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