The Peep Diaries

Interesting post in the Utne Reader Science and Technology blog. It starts talking about apes spying on each other having sex and moves on through Facebook’s Beacon debacle, “the attention economy”, the new book by Daniel Solove about reputation, and finally discussion about how all this is leading to less and less in terms of expectation when it comes to privacy.

Scanning my last bunch of blog posts you might think I have sex on my mind this month…And, truth be told, I did just have an interesting conversation with a swinger who likes to post pics of his wife having sex with other men online…But that’s another story. Right now, I just wanted to throw up a quick link to breaking news out of Detroit. Seems the mayor their has now been indicted for lying under oath about the affair he had with his now former chief of staff.

That’s the story for some but more interesting is the fact that the Detroit newspaper that broke the story got their hands on text messages between th mayor and his chief of staff dating back to 2002. Where did they get those messages from? The whole thing is unraveling a lot like the Spitzer thing did, with allegations that public money is being abused to pursue a private agenda. Then again, if it was public money being used to pursue an obsession with toy trains, we wouldn’t be seeing these headlines everywhere.

Peep culture strikes again, sex sells, and I can’t stop blogging about this stuff. Is there a relationship? Naaaaw….

Ellot Spitzer, now former Governor of New York, didn’t think anybody needed to know about his propensity for high priced call girls. He was wrong because 1) he was violating laws he’d sworn to uphold and 2) he was costing the taxpayers money while sating his desires.

The now sworn-in new Governor of New York, David A. Paterson, apparently feels like people do need to know about his extramarital affairs. On his first day of the job he held a news conference and announced that he’d had several affairs “including one”, as the New York Times reports, “with a state employee.”

The fact that Paterson felt compelled to get up in front of the world and, with his wife at his side, discuss the intimate details of their rocky relationship, indicates the extent to which a culture of Peep has taken hold of our society. Paterson had to get up there and peep himself because he was worrried, as he said at the news conference, that he would be “blackmailed” and that if the stories were to come out New Yorkers would lose faith in him.

But the real issue is that in the age of Peep media would be all over this “story”, eager to turn intimate into entertainment. As the New York Times reports: “Just after the swearing-in, while Mr. Paterson’s supporters were still celebrating, the new administration was plunged into its first crisis, as a Daily News columnist inquired about a past affair and Mr. Paterson and his mostly untested advisers debated how to handle the matter.” The Daily News wanting to know — and inevitably finding out — is what Paterson knew would happen if he didn’t circumvent the process by peeping himself. In this way, Paterson and his wife can control the flow of information and prevent people coming forward claiming to have been the new Governor’s one-time mistress or whatever. Naturally the couple declined to provide a laundry list of the people they’ve slept with and now the story is over. It would be difficult for even the most purient media outlet to justify further digging.

Spitzer can really only blame one person. But any reprecussions that come Governor Paterson’s way because of his remarkable news conference are not so much the result of his past actions but the result of a society that is all too ready to turn the need to know into the want to know.

okay, i’m spending the day doing data entry. i’ve got hundreds of articles that relate in some way to peep culture. they all need to get sorted and entered so i can get on with the thinking and writing. in a way, this is a way of thinking and writing. anyway, here’s my favourite article so far. It’s about a fruit and vegetable processing plant that keeps its produce under surveillance. It suggests just how extensive monitoring is — they even provide their customers with video updates! Overkill or saving lives and time?

So a long gap between my first post and the next two posts. That’s because the launch date for the blog got put off until Sally (director of the peep culture documentary) got back from Paris. You see, the doc people want to film the launch of the blog. So everyone’s coming over today to capture this exciting moment. I spent the morning cleaning my office. You can see the floor now. It’s nice. I’ll take a picture.
Anyway, I’m feeling a bit anxious about the whole thing. I’ve never blogged or really had much about my personal life out there. As a writer I like to re-read and re-think everything I put out there. I’ll need to get over that. Plus, of course, the whole idea of developing an audience of people interested in peeping my life. I can honestly say that I have no idea what that will feel like. So we’ll see.