Peep Culture
Hal Niedzviecki, author of The Peep Diaries, lately spoke at the Winnipeg Writers' Festival about how we've moved from Pop culture to Peep culture. In other words, how society has gone from watching celebrities, artists and performers (with talent) to watching ourselves, our neighbors or total strangers (who typically lack talent) in search of entertainment, attention, or connection.
Peep culture contains reality Tv, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, chatrooms, iPhones and the entire range of social media, GPS-enabled gadgets and other forms of constant surveillance technologies.
In this new era of Peep, privacy has come to be a commodity and persons are willing to trade the specifics of their private lives for community, money or potential fame.
Peeping into the "actual lives" of other individuals, or digitally documenting our personal, is acclimatizing us to want, will need and desire surveillance. In our constant urge to answer "What are you undertaking now?" persons seeking for connection are quite often locating addiction. How lots of hours a day are devoured by an incessant need to weblog, tweet, or upload that video from your cell telephone?
And when does the want to share turn into "oversharing" (i.e., divulging far too much private information)? I have no interest in watching a middle-aged housewife getting spanked by her "Master," hearing lonely teenagers sing in the bathroom, or seeing everyone drunk out-of-his-thoughts and behaving badly.
The awesome paradox of Peep is that the all-consuming want to connect regularly disconnects us from genuine and meaningful interaction, from cultivating true friendships and from nurturing our personal humanity.
Is our virtual world more valuable than the actual planet?
In The Peep Diaries, Hal Niedzviecki recounts his own encounter with social networking, when he invited his 700 Facebook friends, 30 Twitter followers and readers of his blog, to a party at his local bar. Only one particular individual showed up she stayed for an hour, and then left Hal drinking alone.
As Hal says, virtual friendship is friendship with low (or no) expectations. "It's a lot easier to take element in community from in front of a screen. It is significantly tougher to make an emotional connection and then live up to a different person's expectations, hopes, and desires. Social media creates distance, even as they fill in the gaps."
As we eagerly monitor the rising numbers of our Facebook buddies, Twitter followers or LinkedIn connections, we have to have to make the distinction in between genuine and pseudo-connection, between virtual and actual networking. In your vast social network, how lots of of these pals and followers will conduct business enterprise with you, come to your Christmas party or bring you homemade soup when you happen to be sick?
I will consistently favor face-time to Facebook would considerably rather network more than spilled martinis than the Internet, and would in no way trade my Genuine Life for a Second Life. (C'mon, how satisfying can sex with an avatar be?)
Technology, including the components of Peep, delivers important ways to speak to each and every other, promote small business and do very good stuff - but people, let's preserve it True.
