hal tweets ·1:04 PM
Indie comics in 80s LA, a homage featuring Groening, Panter, Hernandez bros…. http://bit.ly/b1FcGM
Youtube
2009,
14:03 GMT
Facebook is more like TV than We Want to Admit
Posted by: Hal
In the Peep book I argue that we are using things like social media and twitter and YouTube as entertainment, first and foremost. It’s a more immersive, interactive form of entertainment, but it’s still entertainment. As such I reject the argument that we’re becoming more social through social media. I also reject the supposition that our latest techno-fueled obsessive past-time is making us smarter or more knowledgeable about the word around us.
Slowly, empirical evidence is emerging to support my argument: Facebook is more like TV than it is like socializing or reading or learning.
Most notably, a recently released study out of Ohio State University that finds that, surprise surprise, college students who use Facebook have lower grades than kids who don’t. Here’s a decent news report on the study that tells you everything you need to know. Basic summary: 65% of Facebook users accessed their account daily, usually checking it several times. Meanwhile, those students who used Facebook had a “significantly” lower grade point average than those who did not use the site.
Why is that? Because this stuff is part of our shift from Pop to Peep culture. It’s still entertainment and distraction, not some newly evolved way to learn, connect and meaningfully interact. People, for better and for worse, social media is the new TV.
Daisy Jones, a college student in the UK, deactivated her account after realizing FaceBook was affecting her grades. According to the Ohio study, 79% of Facebook-using students believed the time they spent on the site had no impact on their work. Pic from the Times Online.
2009,
11:24 GMT
Naked Wizard Tasered: The Case Against Peep TV
Posted by: Hal
You can debate the actions of the police in this video all you want. But what I want you to think about are two things:
1) 250,000 have watched this video on Vimeo in 3 days. Yesterday Huffington Post put it up. Now its on Digg, on LiveNews Australia, and who knows how many blogs (like this one). By the end of the day today, I’m sure more than 1 million people will have watched this video.
2) Keep an eye on the crowd in this video. They are the real story here. They stand around in a semi-circle a respectful distance from the action pointing their camera phones. As the situation escalates, the number of cameras recording the action increases. Is this citizen journalism, an activist public intent on monitoring the scene? Or is this prurient Peep recording – chronicling another person’s confusion and misery because they know other people will find it entertaining?
Two questions:
*If the police had pulled out their night-sticks and started savagely beating this man, would anyone in this crowd of mesmerized photographers have intervened?
*Why will millions of people watch this six minute clip? (Here’s a clue: a very enthusiastic Huffington Post introduced the video this way: Herewith, the best Tasering video since ‘Don’t Tase me bro!’)
Naked Wizard Tased By Reality from Tracy Anderson on Vimeo.
2009,
14:46 GMT
Peep is Recession Proof and Other Confessions from the Ranks of the Unemployed
Posted by: Hal
Peep is not only recession proof, like the movies and beer, it actually benefits from the recession. Here are the reasons why.
1) More time on social networks. We believe, rightly and wrongly and the jury is still out on this, that our social network can help us get a job. So, increasingly, the first thing we do when we get laid off is let everyone on FB, LinkedIn, etc. know ASAP, not to mention sending an array of Tweets and Text Messages to make sure everyone knows we are out there hunting for new employment. A recent article in the Orlando Sentinel starts: “Just minutes after she was laid off from her job earlier this month, Brittany Ward pulled out her cell phone and typed a short message. ‘Needs a job.’ Ward, a 23-year-old account manager at an Altamonte Springs marketing firm, hadn’t even told her family.” There’s a reason we’re sending tweets like there’s no tomorrow – because for a lot of us, there’s no tomorrow.
Here’s the aforementioned Brittany searching for a job via laptop.
2) Recession blogs! We have the time because we’re unemployed, we think getting our name out there is a good idea that might lead to a job offer (again, jury is out on that one) so we blog. Here are just some of the recession blogs I found. Pink Slips are the New Black, Laid off in NYC, Recently Laid Off, and Fired For Now etc. There’s even a recession cooking blog that has gone viral featuring the recipes of a 90 year old who survived the great depression. (Which, as far as I can tell, looks nothing like our current situation: Recession 09: I’m going to have to cut down on my Starbucks Skinny Mocha Latte until I get a new job. Great Depression: Can anyone spare a cup of coffee and a slice of stale bread? I haven’t eaten in a week.)
Much of this blog material is classic Peep. Here’s a little snippet from a post on Fired For Now about Mom telling her kids she’s been let go: “So when I lost my job, I felt a deep sense of shame in telling them the news. I felt like I had failed them. I wasn’t the parent they could be proud of. No child boasts about a parent who spends their days at home in sweat pants, on the phone and net in between reruns of Law and Order.”
3) Corporate Peep Predators. Yep, when the times are tough, the Peep predators are ready and waiting to take advantage of our misery. Ergo, Newsweek’s My Turn column is running a contest on Twitter: send them your “recession story” on Twitter and you’ll maybe win the right to actually publish an entire column in Newsweek about your misery. In the meantime, “All of the tweets will be streamed on Newsweek.com” for the general amusement of those with two much time on their hands, both in the office and lying around on the couch.
Still on the subject of weird and predatory and Peep-inspired, how about this news story about a coffee shop trying to entice people to keep spending their money on mocha lattes (see mini-rant above) by hiring only comely young ladies to serve the coffee in bikinis?
Meanwhile, the Dallas News reports gangbuster business at a stripper job fair in that hard hit city. Wow. The dead-pan article trumpeting the “jobless to topless” job fair makes it sound like stripping is basically the perfect solution for unemployed women with the appropriate skill set.
Finally, Fox has a new Reality TV show in the works (no word on air date yet) called Someone’s Gotta Go. The show pits employees against each other as small companies seek to down-size and the employees themselves have to decide who should get laid off. Thanks for making people losing their jobs fun Fox…and for proving once and for all that Peep is recession proof.
2009,
17:16 GMT
Dirty Little Secret
Posted by: Hal
Mine, apparently, is that I write about Peep culture but don’t have a smart phone.
2009,
14:08 GMT
Notes from Last Night’s Reading
Posted by: Hal
Among those in attendance at my presentation last night on the third floor of the sprawling Harvard Coop bookstore:
*Three black men of retiree age who spoke with African accents. One of them asked me if any of this stuff was going on in the Muslim countries. Another of them asked if he could watch the presentation again, so I started it again and the three of them sat down in front of my netbook and watched the whole thing again while snacking from stuff they brought with them in plastic containers.
*One fiery youngish academic who noted that while my presentation was very interesting and provocative I was mostly wrong about everything.
*An undergraduate activist girl who was of the opinion that activists were successfully using social networks to galvanize young people for the cause of social justice.
*An older gentleman with, I think, white hair in a pony-tail who came up to the podium afterwards, thanked me, and gave me three bananas and a small bag of all dressed bagel chips.
*A middle aged fellow who suggested that we were looking at a total shift in what it means to be social.
*A woman in her fifties who looked away whenever the screen showed something particularly upsetting like the naked wizard being tazered, a woman being spanked, or a woman revealing her abdomen days after gastric bypass surgery. She later spoke elegantly and thoughtfully about how much this whole phenomenon disturbed her.
*A Boston Facebook friend I’d never met before. He declined my offer to buy him a beer after the presentation.
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...
Indie comics in 80s LA, a homage featuring Groening, Panter, Hernandez bros…. http://bit.ly/b1FcGM
Issue 47 (spring) is now completely ‘unlocked’ on the NEW Broken Pencil website. Web TV, Liz Worth on punk TO & more http://bit.ly/bXvQuP
Tag Cloud
Archive Months
July, 2010
June, 2010
April, 2010
March, 2010
February, 2010
January, 2010