The Peep Diaries

Why Peep Trumps Privacy

2010-08-19T11:51:04Z

Hey everyone, here’s a short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why, despite all the warnings about privacy online, we just can’t bring ourselves to care nearly as much as we should.

A taste: “Oh but haven’t recent polls demonstrated that we are more concerned than ever about our privacy online? Sure they have. But they have also shown that our concern doesn’t actually translate into action. We may tell pollsters we are concerned about our privacy, but we don’t actually do much about it. Surprisingly few of us can actually be bothered to adjust the privacy settings available to us. (A Pew Research Study put the number of us who change Facebook privacy settings in the 25 percent to 44 percent range, which is to say that not even half of us are motivated to protect our most intimate details by taking five minutes to click a few buttons.)”

Read in full:

Death on Facebook

2010-07-21T14:20:46Z

Here’s an article in the New York Times about how Facebook is struggling to deal with the pages of deceased. They used to delete them. Now family or friends can request to have the page turned into a memorial, frozen in time save for the comments that those who have already been accepted as ‘friends’ can continue to post.

The assumption from Facebook (not questioned by the Times) is that this problem can be solved through technology – we just need better algorithms more capable of determining when someone has died so that their page can be then locked down with all necessary sensitivity.

But our widespread embrace of Peep Culture suggests that we might want something else: new ways to continue living on through social media after our deaths. Why should the dead not be allowed to have any new ‘friends’ (when, after all, those friends are entirely virtual and illusory anyway?). Why can’t the dead decline to attend events, leave comments on other people’s pages, etc. etc. Why shouldn’t the dead continue to discuss their own wants and needs?

Perhaps in the future we will pay people to continue to maintain our various profiles and blogs after we are gone? (In the Jewish tradition, it is not uncommon to hire a Yeshiva student to say the required daily prayers Jewish law requires be said for the dead.) I know, I know, this is getting pretty weird. Nonetheless, the dead have more in common than the living when it comes to their online presence. The dead are disembodied, the dead are virtual, the dead exist only in the bits and bytes of our imaginations. And the dead, like our Facebook profiles, live on forever, long after we are gone.

Peep Diaries in the London Review of Books

2010-06-20T00:32:42Z

The Peep Diaries is described as a “bracingly informal book” in a 5 book essay/review that appeared in the recent issue of the London Review of Books. Check out the whole piece here. The other books discussed are

The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook by Ben Mezrich
The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future by Craig Watkins
Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America by Julia Angwin
The Tyranny of Email: The Four Thousand Year Journey to your Inbox by John Freeman

Debating Reality TV on TV Ontario

2010-06-18T20:48:59Z

Last week I was on a long panel discussion about the impact of Reality TV on culture and society. A lot of interesting points were made. You can watch the whole thing here.

My Reaction to Reaction Videos Article in Washington Post

2010-04-20T18:08:14Z

Actually the headline should read: My reaction to the Reaction Videos article in the Washington Post that quotes my reaction to Reaction Videos. Got that?

Well, it doesn’t really matter. Check out the article, the piece does a nice job with the whole reaction video phenomenon. My take on it gets mocked (see the end of the piece), but I probably deserve it.

Las Vegas TV Explores Surveillance Society with Hal

2010-03-24T15:17:27Z

LasVegasNow.com recently did a special segment on Living in the Surveillance Society. I comment throughout. You can read the article and watch the two 4 minute videos here. It’s well done and their conclusion is important, if slightly vague – “Users sacrifice privacy, getting the power of the Internet in return.” What I wonder is if “users” even see giving up privacy as a “sacrifice”? And what, exactly, do they (we) get in return?

Peep Doc - Shooting (Faking) Again

2010-03-16T15:06:25Z

Hey everyone, we’re down in my basement all day today shooting what’s called “pick-up” shots for Peep Me – the Peep Culture documentary. Basically we’re going back and “recreating” or you might even say “faking” shots we now realize we need, but didn’t get the first time around. We’ve just spent the last hour trying to recreate the look below, which is a frame from the movie shot in the summer.

Once we get it just right (though my hair is a bit shorter, can’t do much about that) I’m mostly going to be pretending to be seeing things on my computer that I’ve already seen. We need more shots of me reacting to things to use as connecting scenes in the doc. I’ve written about the fake/real of the process of the doc shoot before, like the time they made me take out the trash about 10 times. At least it was garbage day!

Peep in the News: Location Sharing and “Super-Sized” Mom

2010-03-16T12:58:04Z

From the New York Times: an article on the rise of online location sharing. The new thing is Foursquare, which lets you check-in at a location and share with “friends”. That’s opposed to the Google Lattitude model which just constantly broadcasts your location once you’ve enabled the service on your smart phone. This phenomenon is, of course, an offshoot of Peep – these services are sold as lifestyle enhancers, basically a value added component to your social networking online persona. (Look for Facebook and Twitter to introduce location based services soon…) Yelp, for instance, is using it to give more validity to certain reviews – if you’ve “checked in” and proven you were there, your review is apparently going to have more credibility. In other words, pay more attention to this particular person: they’re really real and they’ve proved it.

Now let’s check in with Donna Simpson. An article on her (which is itself Peep since it has no other redeeming factor beyond providing us with entertainment based on someone else’s everyday life) documents the quest of this already very obese woman to reach 1,000 pounds. She’s already in the Guiness World Record books as “the world’s fattest mother.” My favourite peep detail: she finances her $750 a week grocery bill by eating fast food online in front of men with a plus-sized woman fetish.

Comes complete with nice Peep pic of mom using scooter to shop with her kid!

Mommy Bloggers Go to Corporate Boot Camp

2010-03-13T19:50:49Z

This piece in the New York Times talks about how mommy blogging is being infiltrated by corporate giveaways, ads, and sponsorships. Though it doesn’t get into the whole issue of using your kid’s life to develop your brand, it does have some eye popping stats about how many women are writing and reading mommy blogs.

Two Articles in Colombian Media

2010-02-27T15:14:45Z

Two links to articles in Columbian magazine Semana which quote my ideas about Peep Culture.

Here’s an article on the rise of online-spying-as-entertainment:

original article here. as translated by google here.

And here’s an article about surveillance, crime prevention and what happens when shocking surveillance footage becomes entertainment:

original article here. as translated by google here.

Peep My ‘Pplication

2010-02-26T13:41:21Z

Tufts University wins the award for realizing that not only is the college admission process grinding and nerve-wracking, it’s also highly entertaining for the rest of us! So Tufts has done the right thing, giving their applicants the opportunity to include a one minute posted-to-YouTube video with their application, as documented in this New York Times article.

Now thousands can watch these wannabe admitted students do whatever they think they need to do to get noticed. Before we get to the videos, which I will helpfully embed below of course, let’s think about a few things.

First, Tufts screwed up: why give YouTube this juicy material? If they’d set it up so the kids were posting to the Tufts website, they’d be drawing hundreds of thousands of eyeballs to their site and reaping the rewards, not Google.

Second, it’s a great precedent for anything that where one side holds all the power (think reality tv): make them do a video (a Peep Pplication) and tell them it only counts if they post it publically on the ‘Net. You get attention, they get laughed at, we’re entertained and the appropriate commercial messages are displayed a the appropriate intervals.

This is essentially an ancillary business model that could be applied to cash strapped schools, publishing houses with better reputations than bottom lines, blue chip talent agents who want to make money on the side…heck, even charities can employ this technique: make the needy beg online for their handout in the name of keeping us amused, and generating cash flow for those lucky enough to have shown how very desperately they need the help. (Wait a minute, they’re already doing this!)

Peep in the News: ChatRoulette

2010-02-23T18:41:51Z

Everything I think I’ve hit the ultimate peep phenomenon, the one thing that totally conveys everything there is to convey about Peep Culture, something new comes up.

In this case, it’s ChatRoulette, a site that is spawning all kinds of articles, blog posts and states of excitement. On ChatRoulette you are connected to a random human being somewhere, anywhere, with a webcam. You stare at each other. You chat or, more likely, someone hits next.

Here’s a good piece that basically describes the experience.

Obviously ChatRoulette is pure Peep – you watch, interact, take what you can out of someone else’s life (while giving what you can of yours) and then you change the channel before you get bored or sucked in. This isn’t the future of the ‘net it’s the future of pop culture – more immediate, more interactive, more compelling, more fun, more disturbing, than anything they could ever green light in some corporate board room. And, like all things Peep, this particular entertainment phenomenon raises far more questions – moral, social, existential – than most of us want to deal with in the course of trying to have some fun without leaving the house.

Here are some screen-shots from a BuzzFeed page that feature a ton of ChatRoulette images.

Hal live today on Wisconsin Public Radio

2010-02-19T14:38:29Z

Hey everyone, I’ll be discussing Peep Culture and taking calls on Wisconsin Public Radio today at 11 am est. Listen in online at http://www.wpr.org/

Deathmatch Semi-Final is Neck in Neck in Final Stretch

2010-02-19T14:32:33Z

Wow, with just the weekend to go for voting, it’s Abel’s story of drugs and an angry man-bear at 51% and Dupcak’s tale of drugs, sex and performance art at 49%. What a round! North America’s no-holds-barred short story contest continues! Go read the stories and vote right now at the Broken Pencil Indie Writers Deathmatch!

The Indie Writers Deathmatch is Now On

2010-01-21T21:02:50Z

Broken Pencil Magazine’s Indie Writers Deathmatch is in full swing with two stories in heated competition with each other. This is the innovative online writing competition fight to the finish brought to you by Broken Pencil: the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts! Check it here out right now! I’m the moderator for the first round!

http://www.brokenpencil.com/deathmatch/