hal tweets ·7:42 AM
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
Justin.tv
2008,
18:30 GMT
We're On Our Own: Who To Blame for Online Suicide?
Posted by: Hal
While a judge considers dropping the charges against Lori Drew police will no doubt be looking to lay new charges in a separate case, the suicide of a 19 year old teenager live online. Another tragic incident, another case of people using the Internet to amuse themselves at the expense of someone else who ultimately takes his or her own life.
The particulars in this case basically involve a young man swallowing all kinds of medication until he lapses into a coma. 185 people watch online via streaming service Justin.tv, attracted to his life feed via a posting he leaves on a body building forum. (Incidentally, I have a very interesting interview with Justin in the Peep Diaries done right after he stopped being the main attraction on the site and opened it up to other people who wanted to “lifestream.”) Eventually the police are called. Even as they break down the door and cover the webcam, the peanut gallery online is chatting and arguing whether or not the whole thing is staged. Here are some quotes:
Quote: if you put full screen on you can tell its not a still pic but why isnt his top moving as he breathes
Quote: um guise. . he looks like hes not breathing
Quote: desperate cry for attention….log off his stupid jtv site…. you’re just making this retard act out worse than he would otherwise.
So who to blame this time? Basically this is the dark side of our emerging Peep Culture. If we’re going to make the unmediated watching of other people a big part of our entertainment culture, then we’re going to have things like this happen fairly regularly. Even after the poor guy is gone, he will continue to provide “entertainment value” online. Consider this forum which discusses his death, provides his online suicide note, and links to the video (which has now been removed officially but I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find it pretty quickly).
So are people doing things they wouldn’t otherwise do because they know they are being watched? There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that people are, increasingly, acting in extreme or violent ways in order to create YouTube clips. So there’s reason to suggest that someone might be more inclined to commit suicide because of the potential for their act to become spectacle. In which case, we wonder: What is the responsibility of those watching? There are so many faked videos out there that it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between real or acted. It’s pretty much impossible to put the onus on the watcher, who is always passive, always anonymous, always somewhere else. And I don’t think anybody wants the authorities to come in and start regulating the Internet the way they do television, assigning ratings and basically turning live TV into an utterly bland experience.
So it comes back to the core reality that Peep Culture reinforces: Even in the age of so-called interactive digital culture, even in the age of online community, we’re on our own. We have more freedom than any human beings have ever had before, but with that freedom comes more confusion, more desperation, more watching of others to see what they’re doing.
The scene on Justin.TV as the police arrive too late to save a young man broadcasting his suicide online.
2009,
18:08 GMT
Blogging from CorkAngel’s and Report from Google
Posted by: Hal
We’re in the Easy Bay area with the lifecaster CorkAngel76. You can watch and comment on our doings all day and night by going here. We’re going to talk to Cork aka Sean about what he does and how/why he does it. Sean is also going to take me up in his !!plane!! and he’s hosting a dinner party tonight pacific time you might want to check out.
Yesterday we spent the day at Google headquarters. We did three interviews and I think they went okay, at least the first two did. The day got longer and we got more and more behind schedule. The Google people got more and more antsy. By the time we got to the third interview everyone was tired and tense. I was talking to a Google Search project manager and was having trouble keeping my focus. I asked a few convoluted questions that went nowhere. I kept up a running gag referencing my own supposedly checkered past as represented by Google searches for “Niedzviecki” and “poodle sex.” These weird asides were maybe funny the first time. Maybe.
While it wasn’t a total disaster and some of the conversation was really interesting, I was frustrated and defensive afterwards. Maybe I’m just not cut out for documentary filmmaking. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. I feel weirdly emotional. Going away again so soon after the long book tour trip is tougher than I thought it would be. E has announced she is missing daddy and has taken a picture of me to put on her night-table.
Well, it’s time to stop whining and get right back to it. Being part of this is a privilege, not something to whine about. I’m really looking forward to our day with Sean — a lifecaster, entrepreneur, wine enthusiast, and pilot. I’ve got a million questions for him. We’re stuck in set up mode right now, the length of which is something else I’ve got to start getting used to.
Join us and talk to us throughout the day. Be kind people, I’m feeling fragile.
2009,
17:58 GMT
The Cork Chronicles
Posted by: Hal
All this documentary peeping is playing havoc with my blog peeping. We’ve been working 12 to 15 hour days, getting up early, going to bed late, and I just haven’t been able to sit down to a blog post. And it didn’t help that I accepted a last minute assignment from the Globe and Mail to review Free, the new book by Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson, who wrote The Long Tail. (Review miraculously got done on time…coming out Saturday I believe…)
Anyway, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, then you’ve been getting a little bit of an update on my exploits. (And if you haven’t you should be.) But here, at least, is a longer report on day two.
It was the day after the Google trip, and the plan was to spend the day with CorkAngel76, a lifecaster named Sean who had been broadcasting his life on Justin.tv for the last 8 months. Sean lived in a distant suburb almost an hour from San Francisco.
We met at 7am and headed out. Had a quick breakfast in the area, then pulled into his subdivision, a cluster of identical houses seemingly populated exclusively by hired landscapers.
Inside was Cork, a slightly portly fellow in his early thirties who lives alone with his ongoing audience. As soon as we stepped into his house, all of us we’re immediately conscious of the cameras. We were filming, and being filmed. Very meta!
We toured Cork’s setup and had a chat upstairs in his office. He talked about how he is someone who just goes out there and fulfills his dreams. Lifecasting, apparently, had become one of those dreams, though I’m not sure Cork, in the end, could say exactly why.
One thing was clear though — Cork relished having an audience and had very quickly developed a retinue of dedicated watchers/followers/friends.
The day hurtled along and before we knew it, we were at the nearby local airport. Cork owns 8 businesses, by his count, and one of them is an airplane rental company. Cork has his pilot’s license and director Sally was VERY KEEN to film a scene featuring me and Cork cruising the California skies in a rented Cessna.
The reason Sally wanted us to go up in the plane was to film Cork lifecasting from the skies. There was only one problem: Cork hadn’t actually started lifecasting from the skies yet, due to various technical issues as yet unresolved. (He does lifecast from his BMW convertible, though…which is brand new and gleaming because he apparently gets a new one very 9 months.)
Undaunted, director Sally had a plan! She would rig up the secondary video camera we were using to make the documentary about the making of the documentary to look like a webcam. This turned out to involve wrapping the camera in tape and sticking it to the plane’s dashboard. The angle was off though, so cameraman Mark had to provide his t-shirt to wedge under it. I took pictures with my phone and helpfully pointed out that Cork didn’t actually lifecast from his plane, making the whole scene kind of dubious. Sally shot me a few dirty looks before muttering that, well, by the time the documentary was ready to air, Cork would, indeed, be lifecasting from his plane. (Apparently we are not just film makers, we are also time travelers.)
We were almost ready to go up into the blue skies, when another problem emerged: Cork thought it was just me and him going up, and didn’t realize that the cameraman would also be joining us on the jaunt. He wasn’t sure the plane could take that much weight, since it was fully fueled. Dramatics and debate ensued. After all, there wouldn’t be much point in the whole airplane scene if it wasn’t on camera. Finally, Cork relented and allowed director Sally to climb into the back, because she was the smallest. We took off, circled around, and landed. Total time in the air: six minutes.
We head back to Cork hq for a heart-to-heart. Cork told me some surprising things, including the fact that his mother, who he is close to, doesn’t know he lifecasts and that when she comes over, he leaves the cameras running, turns of the giant screen in the living room that displays his broadcasts and their accompanying ongoing chat, and, basically, tells her nothing. Cork’s attitude is that when people come over to his house, they are subject to his rules. He may or may not tell them about the broadcast, depending on the situation or mood.
The final scene was a dinner party. Cork’s friends were coming over. They turned out to be his neighbors, married fifty-something suburbanites who power walked with Cork every morning. Cork plied them with 70 dollar bottles of wine (he has studied wine in France) and we all had a great time yelling stuff at the chat screen and discussing which of his neighbors, regular guests, had the biggest fan base on CorkVision. Among those watching was Peepwife, who turned out to be none other than my own dear W. Her identity was confirmed when she wrote on the chat: Hi Hal. Don’t drink too much.
2009,
15:06 GMT
Lifecast the Morning After…Hal Runs for Cover and Gets in Trouble
Posted by: Hal
Okay here’s a quick vlog on the lifecasting situation. It looks terrible because it was recording on a terrible webcam that i had to use because my other better webcam somehow stopped working. Going to fix that. Also working on getting the chat to work better in the peepcast. Problems there because the feed is being grabbed from Justin.tv. It’s complicated but further info and instructions are coming so you should be able to chat with me. In the meantime, I’m not going to be on camera that much today. On cam from 1:30 ish to 3 probably, then as of 9:30 tonight I’ll be on basement camera, and I’ll be sleeping down there, maybe even sneak the bottle of scotch down with me so i can toast my first use of the peep can on cam.
2009,
19:06 GMT
Quick Update re: Lifecasting
Posted by: Hal
Hey everyone, I know there’s confusion about logging into the peepcast and commenting. That’s because you have to go to Justin.tv and sign up with them before you can comment. In other words, you need a Justin.tv login name and password to participate in the peepcast chat. Sorry about that, hopefully we’ll simplify that or at least have instructions on the peepcast itself soon.
In the meantime, the main camera – H – is finally up and running.
The full fledged peepcast is now in effect and I’ll be doing my best to keep myself in front of the camera for the next 2 weeks, no matter how crazy it makes me.
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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