hal tweets ·7:42 AM
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
Radio
2008,
17:28 GMT
Reality TV Night
Posted by: Hal
Just finished reality tv night. We watched one episode each of Intervention, The Moment of Truth and A Shot of Love With Tila Tequila. We watched them in that order. Lindsay came over to have dinner with us (I made spaghetti in tomato sauce with shrimp and scallops). Lindsay has just moved here from Montreal to work at the CBC. She’s also working with me on the Peep Culture CBC radio special. More on that as it develops. Anyway, Lindsay hadn’t seen any of these shows before so it was interesting to get her reaction.
The Intervention episode we watched featured a meth addict logger spiraling out of control as he struggled to deal with the death of his mother while his wife and kids looked on. It was pretty boring to start off, lots of interview testimonials about his background and problems. The wife had the best lines, stuff like: “His mind is a prison with many doors” and “Addiction is dragging this family into the grave.” But it doesn’t really pick up until we get right into it, with the logger and his wife fighting and the logger doing lines in his garage workshop and the kiddies crying. Every time logger snorted back another line of speed Lindsay and W would cringe. Eventually the Intervention happens and logger agrees to head off to a clinic for healing. Three months later he’s apparently all better and, as usual, there’s a quasi-happy ending. So why do we all feel so dirty?
The show I was most looking forward to was the one I hadn’t seen yet, the first episode of Moment of Truth, a new Fox venture. It’s eerily similar to a proposed ‘fake’ show I had suggested creating in various proposals for Peep Culture the book and documentary. My show was going to be called Your Deepest Secret and it was going to revolve around people’s willingness to confess secrets. The Fox show has a contestant and three guests – usually life partner, friend and family member. The contestant is asked personal questions and as they amass more money and move up levels, the questions get more and more pointed and personal. So it starts out with “Do you think you’re better looking than most guys your age?” and by level two it’s “Do you have something you don’t want your wife to know about.” The contestants have already been asked all these questions previously while hooked up to a lie detector test, so if they don’t answer the questions truthfully on TV a giant FALSE flashes above them and they lose. On the episode we watched a personal trainer who had already won $10,000 lost it all while his wife looked on when he denied sometimes touching his female clients more than necessary. FALSE!!! Wife cringed but you couldn’t tell if she was more upset about the money or about the revelations including one very amorphous admission that there were things he’d done he didn’t want his wife to know about.
Anyhooo…this show is the purest incarnation of the concept of Peep Culture I’d seen yet. There’s no claim of any kind of public benefit from watching this. It’s just pure peep. We’re just deriving entertainment from the normal everyday stuff of other people’s lives. Intervention at least claims to be showing people that they can and should overcome addiction. But Moment of Truth can’t really claim to be doing anything other than offering us 42 minutes of pure, delicious, squirmy, sleazy, supposed revelation.
For dessert we watched the final episode of A Shot of Love. We all knew she would pick the guy over the girl. Actually Lindsay kinda ruined it by revealing during dinner that her sister, a big fan, had already told her that she picks the guy and he dumps her a few months later. Still it was only the second episode I’d watched and the whole Springer-meets-Bachelor vibe of the show was momentarily compelling. At the end of the show Tila emerged to select the ‘winner’ wearing a frilly black party dress. W kept saying: she looks like a gremlin!
2009,
16:40 GMT
Is Facebook Gossip, Entertainment or Friendship? Hal discusses on CBC Radio's Q
Posted by: Hal
So this morning I’m going to be on CBC Radio’s art and lifestyle show Q talking about Facebook, in particular responding to a study just released by the Economist.
The study basically shows that the average person has around 120 “friends” on Facebook but that most people only actively follow and comment on the profiles/status updates/pictures/wall posts of say 10-15 of those “friends.”
This is pretty much a validation of what I’ve been arguing in terms of Peep Culture, that we use social networks less as genuine attempts to achieve friendship and more as a combination of entertainment, marketing and gossip (not the gossip that used to keep community cohesive, but the new global cyber gossip that allows us to feel like we have relationships with people we don’t know).
The truth is that although many of us claim that we only add people we know, most of us do not really ‘know’ 120 people in any meaningful way. We’re adding them because the urge to do is irresistible. With the click of a button, we’re entertaining ourselves and marketing ourselves. It’s all very addictive and exciting. (I’m totally guilty of this…the other day someone accused me of being FB friend obsessed….I thought about it for about 4 seconds before realizing that she was totally right…I need help.)
So check out the show if you want to hear me discussing this in more detail, it’s on today at 10am est but they also have a podcast.
2009,
20:30 GMT
Failed Facebook Party on Radio Netherlands
Posted by: Hal
A radio essay based on my failed Facebook party is now online and circulating radio stations around the globe courtesy of the very cool Radio Netherlands show The State We’re In. Check out my essay here, and the whole show here.
2009,
20:19 GMT
The Pain and the Pleasure: Hal Tour Video Peep
Posted by: Hal
Okay here’s a cute little video Sally did of parts of my book tour. See me cracking up on the Joey Reynolds late night talk radio show (everyone go to Sally’s blog and demand that she give us another video JUST on that, it’s so bizarre and hysterical).
Also: Hal doesn’t want to talk about Chicago (where the listings in all the papers said the reading would be the NEXT night) and the great reveal in LA. (I won’t spoil it for ya, but what Sally doesn’t show you is her chasing down a horrified Timothy Dalton and knocking a stack of books over in the process. Sally: Can I take my picture with you? Timothy Dalton: Ah no, I’d rather not, actually). Here’s a signed pic of him Sally, to take away the pain…
I’m a stuck up asshole…
Anyway, great video and I suppose I better get used to it…Peep culture baby. My pain is your gain.
2009,
0:23 GMT
Hal and Bill Wasik on Spark
Posted by: Hal
Here’s a discussion I had on Nora Young’s CBC Radio show Spark with Bill Wasik (inventor of the flash mob and author of And Then There’s Is, a good book about viral culture).
The topic is Why do people post regrettable videos online? Like, you know, the kind that can get them arrested and stuff.
Actually the link takes you to the podcast of the whole episode. Enjoy the whole thing, it’s the season premiere!
For some reason I’ve been doing a lot of radio lately…Which is good. I love radio.
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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