hal tweets ·11:28 AM
Ghostbuster zines from the Canzine Hollywood Piracy Zine Challenge are now online! http://t.co/RoAMEQTU
2008,
17:58 GMT
Overshare is New Word of the Year
Posted by: Hal
Hey everyone, I just found out - while having a pitch be turned down by a magazine editor - that "overshare" has been named word of the year by Webster's.
As they write:
overshare (verb): to divulge excessive personal information, as in a blog or broadcast interview, prompting reactions ranging from alarmed discomfort to approval.
Wow! Peep culture now has an offical verb! Below is the video Webster's released on YouTube and elsewhere in an attempt to overshare their selection of overshare as the word of the year.
2008,
17:34 GMT
Collective Intelligence or Individual Stupidness?
Posted by: Hal
Interesting piece in the New York Times about new developments in collective intelligence – ie. the piecing together of all kinds of little details you reveal via what you do online to form a clearer picture of what the crowd is doing when and why. Again, with the piece’s opening example, a group of kids in a MIT dorm who allowed researchers to track their every online move in exchange for state-of-the-art smartphones, we see the emerging pattern: willingness to exchange privacy for a gain in the form of convenience, profit and/or reward.
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2008,
13:52 GMT
Looking for the Lurkers
Posted by: Hal
Hi everyone, a journalist/researcher in New York asked me to post this. If you're a lurker, help her out!
Do you spend a lot of time following blogs and twitters of people you don't know? Do you watch but don't participate? Do you find interest or comfort in people's daily routines? Are you familiar with JenniCAM, Justin.tv, or iJustine? I'm a reporter looking to speak with nonparticipatory, anonymous online users. Email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if this sounds like you.
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2008,
18:30 GMT
We're On Our Own: Who To Blame for Online Suicide?
Posted by: Hal
While a judge considers dropping the charges against Lori Drew police will no doubt be looking to lay new charges in a separate case, the suicide of a 19 year old teenager live online. Another tragic incident, another case of people using the Internet to amuse themselves at the expense of someone else who ultimately takes his or her own life.
The particulars in this case basically involve a young man swallowing all kinds of medication until he lapses into a coma. 185 people watch online via streaming service Justin.tv, attracted to his life feed via a posting he leaves on a body building forum. (Incidentally, I have a very interesting interview with Justin in the Peep Diaries done right after he stopped being the main attraction on the site and opened it up to other people who wanted to “lifestream.”) Eventually the police are called. Even as they break down the door and cover the webcam, the peanut gallery online is chatting and arguing whether or not the whole thing is staged. Here are some quotes:
Quote: if you put full screen on you can tell its not a still pic but why isnt his top moving as he breathes
Quote: um guise. . he looks like hes not breathing
Quote: desperate cry for attention….log off his stupid jtv site…. you’re just making this retard act out worse than he would otherwise.
So who to blame this time? Basically this is the dark side of our emerging Peep Culture. If we’re going to make the unmediated watching of other people a big part of our entertainment culture, then we’re going to have things like this happen fairly regularly. Even after the poor guy is gone, he will continue to provide “entertainment value” online. Consider this forum which discusses his death, provides his online suicide note, and links to the video (which has now been removed officially but I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find it pretty quickly).
So are people doing things they wouldn’t otherwise do because they know they are being watched? There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that people are, increasingly, acting in extreme or violent ways in order to create YouTube clips. So there’s reason to suggest that someone might be more inclined to commit suicide because of the potential for their act to become spectacle. In which case, we wonder: What is the responsibility of those watching? There are so many faked videos out there that it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between real or acted. It’s pretty much impossible to put the onus on the watcher, who is always passive, always anonymous, always somewhere else. And I don’t think anybody wants the authorities to come in and start regulating the Internet the way they do television, assigning ratings and basically turning live TV into an utterly bland experience.
So it comes back to the core reality that Peep Culture reinforces: Even in the age of so-called interactive digital culture, even in the age of online community, we’re on our own. We have more freedom than any human beings have ever had before, but with that freedom comes more confusion, more desperation, more watching of others to see what they’re doing.
The scene on Justin.TV as the police arrive too late to save a young man broadcasting his suicide online.
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2008,
17:28 GMT
Let Lori Go: The Sad, Strange Case of Megan Meier
Posted by: Hal
So the case of Megan Meier, the 13 year old teenager who killed herself after she thought a hot boy on MySpace had dumped her, is now before the courts. On trial for fraud is Lori Drew, the mother of Megan’s schoolmate. Drew is accused of being the mastermind, along with her daughter and an older teen, of a scheme to impersonate a hot boy interested in Megan. Since Drew was the only adult in the room throughout this whole thing, she’s the one on trial.
Drew is charged with, get this, “conspiracy and three counts of accessing a computer without authorization via interstate commerce to obtain information to inflict emotional distress.”
There’s a lot to be disturbed about in this trial. First of all, just the facts on the ground. Meier hung herself after a final message was sent to her via the fake boy’s MySpace account. The message said: “The world would be a better place without you.” But we’ve now found out that Megan responded to that message, writing back: “You’re the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over.”
We can imagine the two girls and one woman giggling at Megan’s pain. Obviously the case is a testament to the dangers of social networking, especially for the emotionally vulnerable teen set. When people hide behind fake profiles they more easily forget that there are real human beings somewhere at the end of all the wires. When people derive entertainment from the travails of another person’s life – their own personal reality tv show – they dehumanize and depersonalize and, again, they forget that there are real people out there somewhere.
At the same time, is Lori Drew a criminal? She is guilty of using incredibly bad judgment, there’s no question of that. But we live in a Peep society. People put fake profiles up all the time. People constantly pretend to be things they are not. People regularly derive their fun by viewing the pain of others. Sanctioning Drew feels right, but at the end of the day probably doesn’t make much sense. In the age of Peep, identities are malleable and just about everything one does online is potentially someone else’s LOL moment. Unless the US government is planning to start arresting every pretender on the Internet, this is a case of punishing a horrific outcome, as opposed to trying to understand the underlying reasons why such a horrible thing occurred in the first place.
On the left: Lori Drew. On the right (in the dress): Megan Meier’s mother.
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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...
Ghostbuster zines from the Canzine Hollywood Piracy Zine Challenge are now online! http://t.co/RoAMEQTU
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