hal tweets ·7:42 AM
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
Lifestreaming
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,
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,
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,
16:54 GMT
A Moment of Crushing Claustrophobia at Cork’s House
Posted by: Hal
This is Vlog #2. It’s pretty horrible. For some reason I can’t manage to talk outside of a monotone. The experience is genuine, but I really need to get animated, perk up or something. What does everyone think?
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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