hal tweets ·7:42 AM
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
Lifecasting
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,
16:31 GMT
Cat Peep
Posted by: Hal
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.
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.)
Penny the cat heads in for snacks.
2009,
14:14 GMT
Yesterday’s Shoot - The Bathroom Cam, Carl and Me
Posted by: Hal
So yesterday the entire film crew came over, plus a few extra hands to work on making my basement look space age. We spent the morning setting things up and then filming me watching reality tv while director Sally lobbed questions on me. Then we had a serious on camera chat about what the hell I thought I was up to. I was much more relaxed and focussed then I’d been in the previous shoots, done before book tour. There’s nothing more stressful for a writer then the days right before their book is coming out. Now that the book is out and finding readers, I’m more relaxed and can focus on the documentary. So for the record, the reality tv clips we watched were from Moment of Truth, Cops, a Canadian show about women with money problems, and a British show called You Are What You Eat. That last show was particularly hilarious — it depicted a family of massive boozers who subsist almost entirely on take-always. Unlike wimpy North American reality tv, the “holistic nutritionist” brought in to counsel them wasted no time. You people are disgusting, she told them over and over again.
During lunch I squabbled with producer Jeannette about the schedule (I have to fly to Washington DC to do a night of storytelling I’m really excited about – unfortunately it’s in the middle of our trip to LA to go to reality tv boot camp [which I’m also really excited about], more on both of these subjects later on). Then it was back to my place, where a fellow named Carl arrived to install the surveillance cameras. Unfortunately, once again, I couldn’t help noticing that the surveillance cameras, which will be going live to broadcast the interior of my house to the web in about 10 days time, were not actually being installed. Carl turned out to be a handyman Jeanette had used around her house. He did drill some holes and install some camera bases, but it wasn’t quite the same as having someone come from Surveillance Cam Inc., especially when Carl started hamming it up and trying to “act” all official.
Nevertheless, we moved through the living room into the kitchen and decided where we should put the cameras. We had them hooked up to a monitor so I could actually see how much of each room they’d catch. I got pretty excited when we moved into the kitchen — I’m planning on having a daily cooking with Hal hour! Other plans I cooked up while the doc crew captured Carl pretending to install the cameras: story time with Hal (Hal tells stories from his checkered past), sing along with Hal song time (Hal plays guitar and makes a racket), and last but not least — chat time with special guest Orie (Hal’s brother calls and berates him for a minimum of ten minutes daily). Awesome! Why am I getting excited about this? My inner peep is emerging – scary.
My excitement dampened when we moved into the basement bathroom. The newly dubbed Can-Cam was being positioned by Carl and I suggested that maybe we should go for a kind of waist-up only vibe. Sally immediately chimed in — “But that’s what this is all about isn’t it? Challenging yourself to go further then you want, moving out of your comfort zone!” I didn’t want to be seen wimping out on the first day, so I assented to have the camera positioned in a way that would show everything to everyone. I mean, what the hell, right? Or wrong? I don’t know how I feel about it, really. Partly it’s just kind of stupid – does anybody really want to see me going to the bathroom? Well, I guess we’re going to find out.
Gotta run, today’s shoot is just about to get going. More soon.
2009,
18:30 GMT
My First Ever Video Blog
Posted by: Hal
Ladies and Gentlemen! Presenting my first ever video blog! (It’s a little somber, I think, and it has a long story behind it…but here it is…)
2009,
15:09 GMT
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.
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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