hal tweets ·7:42 AM
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
Sexting
2008,
16:33 GMT
Dinner with Amateur Exhibitionists!
Posted by: Hal
Tonight I’m having dinner with 15 or so amateur exhibitionists all of whom regularly post pictures of themselves naked and/or having sex on the websites Voyeurweb and RedClouds. [in case you haven’t figured it out yet, these are both explicit sex sites so be cool with that if you click on the links.] Voyeurweb is one of the longest running and probably the most visited amateur sex site online. Anyway Igor, the founder and owner of these sites, who I met up with last night, has organized a gathering in Toronto for my benefit. So I’m going to go meet everyone and, uh, see what happens….It’ll be really interesting to talk to the couple and get a better sense of not only why they chose to peep themselves in this way, but how they interact with each other — is a common interest in online nude exhibitionism enough to create friendship and community? More early next week!
2008,
16:31 GMT
Dinner with Igor Update
Posted by: Hal
Okay, so here’s my report on dinner with Igor, purveyor of the RedClouds and VoyeurWeb amateur sex exhibitionist websites. The dinner happened in Toronto last weekend. Igor invited five couples – one from Toronto, one from Buffalo, two from Michigan and one from Windsor. Some of the couples posed mainly for the soft porn VoyeurWeb, but the couples from Michigan were into the more explicit and hardcore action on RedClouds. Those are the wild ones, Igor told me in his impish German accent. We had a semi-private room in an Italian restaurant which, as it turns out, was a good thing.
First off we had drinks and got to know each other. The couples were all older than me. I was probably the youngest person in the room, everyone else was in their Fifties. They were suburban empty-nesters with time to kill. They all had decent jobs and most of them had adult or near adult age kids. None of them were ‘out’ about their hobby to their families and friends and communities.
We sat at a single long table. I sat near the Michigan couples (best friends since they met each other online) and next to the Windsor couple. Igor – who has the air and appearance of an amateur sex Alfred E. Neuman – held court down at the other end of the table. The mood was jovial. We talked about how often the women are recognized going about their daily lives and what that feels like. Apparently, it happens occasionally, just enough to make it an event. It feels good, when it happens, though it can be a bit weird if the guy doing the recognizing gets a bit too excited. We talked about RedClouds parties at which the attendees wear different color wristbands so that the camera toting hordes know who they are allowed to photograph and post online and who doesn’t want to be publically identified.
Wine flowed freely and the jokes got increasingly ribald. At the same time, there was just a bit of awkwardness to the proceedings. The women on VoyeurWeb were quieter, insisting that they only posed because their husbands wanted them to. They wanted me to know that they did other things too – they golfed, worked, volunteered. Their men talked about camera lenses and photography courses. In contrast, The Michigan couples had pretty much engulfed themselves in the lifestyle. They no longer spent much time with their other friends. They traveled to parties and group holidays. It was clear that those who embraced the more social element had a totally different take on it than those who just privately snapped pictures and posted them. The posters were more into the voting and the comments. The socialites were more into the discussion boards and the gatherings.
Still, some commonalities: the women liked the attention and the men liked the adventure and sense of transgression. With the main courses cleared and new bottles of wine opened, body parts began to be flashed. The Windsor husband pretended to drop something under the table. He crawled around under there with his camera. When he emerged, the camera was passed around so we could see his up-skirt, no panties conquest. Everyone oohhed and ahhed about the picture. I looked over at the woman whose genitalia had just been photographed. She was, surprisingly, one of the more reserved VoyeurWeb posers. She was flushed, a little shocked at her behavior maybe. I wondered what was going on in her head. Everyone else kept looking at the picture, an object of fascination, a kind of totem around which to order their collective presence at the night’s festivities.
2008,
18:21 GMT
Kids Do Amateur Porn, Sex Offend Themselves
Posted by: Hal
So I’ve been meaning to write a post on this for a while: in the new world of Peep, teenagers are being arrested and charged with child pornography for taking pictures or videos of themselves and sending them to friends via cell phone and email. The poster child for this is a 15 year old girl in Ohio who was arrested for “sending nude photos of herself to other minors and was facing felony criminal charges for illegally using a minor in nudity-oriented material and for possession of criminal tools.” The teen could have been forced to register as a sexual offender annually for ten years. After public outcry, charges were dropped due to an undisclosed agreement with her family. In another incident in Michigan police did a drug-like raid and confiscated dozens of cell phones that all contained pictures of a 14 year old girl’s face and genitals (she, of course, willingly sent the pictures to a friend who passed them on to a friend who etc. etc.) Then in Florida a 16 year old and a 17 year old were arrested for basically taking pictures of themselves having sex with each other and sending the pictures only to each other via email.
Now if we’re going to criminalize peep sex, we’ll end up arresting a lot of people. An online poll reported on by Salon found that 20 percent of teens and 33 percent of young adults age 20 to 26 have sent or posted online nude or semi-nude photos or videos of themselves. Wow. Better build a new special jail to house all those hormone addled teens and their webcams.
But where do all these people, young and otherwise (as some of my previous blog posts have suggested) get the idea to take and exchange racy photos? As we shift ever more permanently from pop culture to Peep culture we also compete for time and attention with each other – who will look at me, who will pay attention to my life? Meanwhile, everything from Paris Hilton sex videos to Lindsay Lohan no-panties limo exit shots, tells us that the one sure fire way we have to ensure we’ll draw a lot of eyeballs is to throw sex into the mix. And yet, in many cases, what society continually demonstrates as a legitimate strategy to gain attention is considered illegal and immoral.
This is one of the more fascinating elements of Peep culture. It’s the emerging new normal of self exposure rubbing up against old school morality. Nowhere is this more evident and absurd than in cases where teenagers are charged with making child pornography of themselves.
Here’s Lindsay Lohan with some guy. A few minutes online and I found about 10 sites devoted to celebrity “upskirt” photos.
2009,
13:28 GMT
Hal in Playboy
Posted by: Hal
…okay not the centerfold.
It’s my piece Peep Culture: 7 Things You Should Know About Our New World Order. It’s in the February issue which is on stands now. So get out there and by you some Playboy. The article isn’t available online but here’s a look at the contents page of the issue which you can buy online (digital or print editions) here.
Also I scanned in the opening spread so you can get a sense of what it looks like. Check it out and let me know what you think.
2009,
12:48 GMT
The Other Porn Addiction: Why are ordinary women exposing themselves online?
Posted by: Hal
Check out my article in the Walrus, The Other Porn Addiction. It’s about women who expose themselves online. It explores their motivations and the possible reprecussions of their ‘hobby’. It starts off with a scene from the Red Clouds dinner party some of you might remember me writing about in this blog last year. Anyway, let me know what you think.
Oh and there’s also an interview with me about the article, also up on the Walrus site, done by the very smart Toronto writer Stacey May Fowles. So check that out too.
Above: Illustration by Virginia Johnson.
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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