hal tweets ·7:42 AM
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
Peep The Game
2009,
18:18 GMT
Susan Boyle’s Got Peep
Posted by: Hal
So what’s the one thing we know about overnight Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle? What’s the one fact that resonates with all of us? Answer: It’s that she’s NEVER BEEN KISSED. This is the source of our fascination with her. We relate to this, it makes us feel better about ourselves - if she can make it, anyone can make it! The fact that she is homely just makes the story - her story - even better. If she was pretty, she’d be just another performer. The back story of her personal life would be typical and un-exciting. But here’s a person who is plain in every way, a person so plain she’s NEVER BEEN KISSED and yet now the whole world knows her name. That’s what we like about her, and that’s why she is really a great peep (as opposed to pop) culture figure.
Consider this piece in the Washington Post, one of many running all over the world. The piece goes out of its way to keep the myth alive. It paints a nice caricature of a lonely lovely lady – a Hollywood caricature in every possible way – except that it happens to be true. Boyle really is the youngest of nine children, she really is a 47 year-old unemployed, slightly chubby woman who’s never dated and never married and never been kissed, who lives alone with her cat, who, until recently, was the subject of mockery by the village youth.
Who is Susan Boyle and what goes on her mind and how is her insta-fame going to help or hinder her in the coming days and years? On that, the piece gives us nothing. But on the cliche of Susan Boyle, anti-celebrity celebrity for the Peep age, the article is resplendent with quote after quote from the towns people, all too willing to weigh in: “We’re all tired of 23-year-old models trying to sing on TV. Susan is a 47-year-old spinster who, by God, can sing,” Michael Nicolson, 64, the bingo caller at the community center where Boyle volunteers, tells us. “She’s an ordinary, run-of-the-mill lady,” says Joe Stronach, the bowling club office (whatever the hell a bowling club officer is). “She doesn’t have great looks, but God gave her a wonderful voice.” Susan Boyle’s Got PEEP baby! Boy does she ever.
The move from pop culture to peep culture opens the door to all kinds of insta-celebrity random moments. When you are deriving your entertainment from the lives of other ‘ordinary’ people, it doesn’t really matter what their talent necessarily is, what matters is that there’s a peep back story we can all buy into. In the case of the Spinster Songster, it’s not the song and the singing that interests and amuses us, it’s the folksy story, it’s the life that seems tailor made for reality tv and its many peep spin offs. They set her up to be a loser but she proved them wrong. And now the pudgy village spinster with the learning disability is crazy famous. She’s like a movie, only she’s real.
2009,
11:54 GMT
OctoDad Does Bad Deed
Posted by: Hal
An “exclusive” in US Magazine has confirmed that Jon, the dad in reality tv show Jon & Kate Plus 8 (about a couple with 8 kids), had an affair with a school teacher named Deanna. It’s all classic peep – guy elevated to celeb status because he is the subject of a reality series, then finds out what comes along with being a celeb: having all parts of your life be used as entertainment for others, not just the family friendly stuff you think is going to end up on tv. That’s the nature of the peep beast: it keeps going, whether you like it or not. (By the way, today’s theme is reality tv: I’ve got another post coming up this afternoon on the topic.)
So before we end with the obligatory array of Jon and Kate exposed by US Magazine crap that’s all over the web (accompanied of course by thousands of comments – is jon a bad dad? are the couple a sham? did the pressure drive jon to drink and cheat?) let me just say this: poor kids. Eventually they will grow up and have to deal with not just their parents, but with half the world having access to a permanent record of their wacky, weird and not necessarily all that happy childhood. Remind me, when did they sign up for that exactly?
And now the crap:
still from the video featuring dad jon exiting apparent mistress’s house in the AM through back door. what, did they camp out there all night to get this 6 seconds of video? of course they did!
nice spread of peep photos US!
and finally, a sampling of the 94 comments appended to an article that ran yesterday in the Vancouver Sun with the headline: Jon and Kate Plus 8: Kate Gosselin calls husband’s behaviour “irresponsible”
2009,
16:21 GMT
Lawsuits foiled by Facebook Pics
Posted by: Hal
Article in the Globe and Mail and elsewhere via Canadian Press about people who get into legal trouble because of what they post to Facebook. Actually these incidents have been going on for at least the last 3 years so I’m not sure why CP and the G&M decided to run this piece now. I guess people screwing up their own lawsuits is an original twist on what is becoming a familiar story. In the book, I write about a bunch of cases including the story of the poster boy for this phenomenon, Joshua Lipton. Lipton is the Rhode Island college student who seriously injured a woman while driving drunk. His claims of guilt and repentance were cast in doubt when prosecutors showed the judge photos culled from his Facebook page showing him at a Halloween party dressed in an orange jump suit emblazoned with the words “jail bird”.
2009,
17:24 GMT
Peeping Farrah Fawcett’s Death
Posted by: Hal
9 million viewers tuned in to watch Farrah Fawcett dying of cancer, which makes Farrah, according to some commentators, our Jade Goody.
Goody, you probably recall, was the British Reality TV star best known (until her resurgence courtesy of cancer) for racist comments spewed on Big Brother All Stars UK.
Goody, like Farrah, went with the televised death route. (Said Goody: “I’ve lived my whole adult life talking about my life. The only difference is that I’m talking about my death now. It’s OK.”) General reaction to the decision of Goody and Farrah to televise their dying has been knee-jerk: it’s courageous and brave. (“‘Farrah’s Story’ a tale of inner strength,” said MSNBC.) Plus they do it to raise awareness of “insert type of cancer here”.
This, of course, is nonsense. If Fawcett wanted to raise awareness of the rare form of cancer that will soon take her life, there are a lot better ways to do it than make a reality tv movie-of-the-week described by the New York Times as “awful because it was an exploitative portrait of a celebrity’s fight with cancer.”
The Times critique continues: “... NBC took Ms. Fawcett’s candid video diary and allowed it to be packaged as a generic VH1 ‘Behind the Music’ biography — maudlin music, gauzy slow-motion film, and pseudo-revealing interviews with friends, coworkers, doctors and hairdressers reminiscing about a former star.”
I’m fascinated by the way Peep Culture is changing our approach to death. (This deserves much longer consideration…I’d like to find a venue interested in a longer piece on this.) In Peep, death, once consigned to the shadows, it’s now the last frontier of spot light entertainment. If somebody’s slow lingering death can be packaged into mainstream corporate entertainment, then, let’s face it, anything can be packaged and turned into televised product. Plus the dying have a marketing advantage: no matter how good or bad it is, people will tune in because they know it’s the grand finale.
This isn’t Farrah Fawcett’s first foray into Reality TV. Nor was Jade Goody’s 3 part mini-series long goodbye some neophyte attempt to break into the business and fulfill a final dream. In fact, Goody publically stated her desire to milk every last drop of her fame to earn as much money as possible for her family before she died. (It’s like Walt in Breaking Bad – anything is permissible if you’re dying and doing it for your family.)
In the end, these are seasoned veterans of the small screen who can’t, won’t or don’t want to let go of the limelight.
“She deserves a different, less exploitative television tribute,” the New York Times said of Farrah’s special. I’m not sure she does.
2009,
14:13 GMT
Is Surveillance Worth the Social Cost? Article in the National Post
Posted by: Hal
Here’s a really interesting and well written article, complete with a healthy dose of snark and skepticism. The piece is called Are We All Big Brother Now? and, written by one of newspaper’s news reporters, a guy who spends plenty of time on the crime beat, it has a refreshing no nonsense look at the ideas I espouse in my book.
Here are two paragraphs from the piece:
As such, the flawed footage was typical of how CCTV plays out in major crimes, as a crucial but incomplete piece of the puzzle. But the other factors, especially the frantic speculation about the case on dedicated Facebook sites, also typify an emerging culture of democratized digital surveillance, in which security and entertainment have blurred into voyeurism, usually with the narcissistic consent of the surveilled.
This “Peep Culture,” according to Toronto author Hal Niedzviecki, is what happens when pop culture’s mass audience gains the tools to display themselves online as celebrities, with their private lives on enthusiastic display. But with time, it spreads beyond the time-passing frivolity of social networking into the most deadly serious corners of the culture.”
I liked the way this piece approached, without any sentimentality, the question of whether or not surveillance and self surveillance are worth the price that we ultimately have to pay as individuals and a society.
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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