The Peep Diaries

Okay, this is one of the weirder ones: Max Mosley, head of Grand Prix and son of Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Fascist party in the 1930s, gets caught having a sadomasochistic orgy involving NAZI regalia. Apparently, he was set up. Writes the New York Times: “The Sunday Times of London reported in last weekend’s editions that Mosley was the target of a setup involving a van with a hidden video camera parked outside the Chelsea basement flat where the sex session took place, and that a miniature camera was concealed in one of the women’s bras.”

I mean it’s hard to have sympathy for this guy. Here’s a description of the video that the Sunday Times of London posted then later removed: “two of the women wore black-and-white striped robes in the style of prisoners’ uniforms. The video showed Mosley counting in German – ‘Eins! Zwei! Drei! Vier! Funf!’ – as he used a leather strap to lash one of the women. ‘She needs more of ze punishment!’ he cried in German-accented English.”

But who really needs more of the punishment here? The video proves Mosley has weird fantasies and the money to act them out. But as he quite rightly says to the press: “As it is, the scandal paper obtained by illegal means pictures of something I did in private, which, although unacceptable to some people, was harmless and completely legal.”

He’s got a point. Does the public have a right or need to know what this guy does with his spare time? Irrelevant question. Peep culture trumps privacy every time.

“MySpace is the anti-Christ for children” says the dad of a 16 year-old after finding out his Florida cheerleader daughter was savagely beaten by a group of teens. The teens initiated and recorded the beating so that they could then post it to YouTube and MySpace, though later on they thought the better of it, which didn’t help much since at least one of them still had a recording when she was arrested.

This is the dark side of peep culture – people who do bad things primarily because they want to record them. And while the video was never posted and YouTube would have taken it down immediately had it been uploaded, there are tons of video sharing sites that would have been delighted to upload the entire lengthy beating (which left the girl unconscious).

They may get their opportunity yet as for some reason clips were released by the police handling the case. For now, you can watch a clip on various news sites like auk’s Sky News. There’s no particular reason to upload the clip onto a news site other than the fact that it will attract eyeballs. It’s not as if watching this girl get repeatedly punched will enlighten us as to the nature of violence in general or how this specific incident came about.

So what does all this prove? 1) that peep trumps any other consideration, and 2) that if you clicked or are about to click on the link above you are no better than the rest of.

Okay so there's lots going on in peep-land but first an announcement. As of Monday, this blog is going to get personal. Anyone who's been reading these posts knows that I've mostly been concentrating on outside links, interviews, research and other aspects of the peep phenomenon. But part of the point of this blog is to see what it's like to peep my own life. I haven't really done that yet. I haven't even managed to post promised pics from our Florida trip and an update about E's lost shoes. So no more! It's time to get personal. I'm clearly going to have to force myself to blog about my day to day life, so here's my plan: every second post has to be about my quotidian existence. I'm making a rule and sticking to it.

So what inspired this momentous decision? Well I did an interview yesterday with a young woman named Emmalene who hails from Hamilton, Ontario. She's a video blogger on YouTube (a status I'm hoping to work up to). Anyway, she's a funny eccentric who doesn't seem at all phased by negative comments, giving her opinion on evolution vs. intelligent design ("that's just my opinion...I'm not not sure what to think"), or posting videos of her singing songs that she barely knows the words to.

She talked to me about lonelines and community and how YouTube has become a major element in her life. And I realized talking to her that I'll never understand what it's like to have total strangers cheering you or telling you how much you suck until I actually give people a reason to make an emotional connection with me by sharing more of my life. So that's the plan. But not today. Not yet. Next post for sure. Probably Monday.

Okay, so I just fell into a major hole and spent a couple of hours viewing videos on Justin.tv. I was looking for interesting clips to potentially use in the peep documentary and interesting people to interview. But I have to say I'm pretty disappointed with what I saw. The original concept was that people were supposed to have their own channels for lifecasting - you could get the apparatus from Justin and his crew and go out there and broadcast your life for all to see. We would see what you saw from your perspective. But it's become something more of a video blogging site, a cross between a Facebook and a youtube. The camera is mostly static and pointing at the person as opposed to pointing outward at what the person is looking at.

I'm sure that others have noted this better and much earlier than me. But hey, too be honest I don't really care what business model Justin follows. I was disappointed because there wasn't a lot of material on there that was of use to me. Mostly it was people being silly in front of their webcams. Some of it was live but most of it was "highlights" like someone burping loudly. The two clips I liked best were both ones in which young women were having somewhat confrontational phone conversations with males.

This one here features one of the better known lifecasters, Sarah Meyers, arguing with a stalker. This one shows a young woman arguing with a soon to be former boyfriend. Both are kind of entertaining in that weird, creepy, why-am-watching-this way, the boyfriend break up one probably more so than the Sarah Meyers stalker one.

I'm tired, it's the end of the day and I don't really have any great pronouncement on any of this right now except that I was disappointed by Justin.tv. Furthermore, 956 people watched a girl fight with her boyfriend and I am one of them.

Spent quite a bit of time today in meeting with the peep movie producers and interactive producer. We talked about the idea of making the peep culture website function entirely as a game. Users would get points based on how much they peep themselves and me. I think it’s a great idea and could end up being pretty addictive. You’d get points, for instance, if you contributed to a section in which you’re invited to peep yourself in 100 words or less. Not only would contributing earn you points but you would then have access to everyone else’s posts and be able to vote on their peep-ness. And of course the more votes your post gets the more points you get. Anyway, I’m pretty excited about this as a concept. It’ll be a way to get people thinking in different ways about the whole phenomenon of peep and it’ll also just be a really cool, interesting site.