The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ubiquitous video technology and the Internet have ushered in a œpeep culture that makes us all either—or simultaneously—exhibitionists or voyeurs, according to this eye-opening study. In good participant-observer fashion, Niedzviecki (Hello, I'm Special) dives into our mania for observing and revealing pseudo-secret personal information: he starts a blog, applies to reality television shows, does video surveillance around his house and slips a GPS tracking device into his wife's car. He's content to merely interview, rather than join, the middle-aged couples who post their amateur porn online. He argues instead that peep culture reprises an ancient impulse to bond through the sharing of intimacies, but worries that our digital version of village gossip and primate grooming is a weak and fraudulent foundation for community (out of his 700-odd Facebook friends and blog readers, only one showed up for his offline party). Niedzviecki's smart mixture of reportage and reflection avoids alarmism and hype while capturing the strange power of our urge to see and be seen. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Stephen Reiss We may still be bowling alone, as Harvard professor Robert Putnam famously observed in his 1995 article about the decline of civic organizations. But it's a new form of solitude, in which we upload video of our gutter balls and blog about our lousy scores ad nauseam. We're bowling for a broadcast audience now, some members of which we've invited, many others we haven't. In his new book, "The Peep Diaries," Hal Niedzviecki is worried about that uninvited portion: the companies that try to make money off our likes and dislikes, the government agencies that track what's happening in every alley and intersection, the unnumbered lurkers scrolling for titillation and yucks. Niedzviecki sees danger everywhere: in the proliferation of reality TV and its effect on the poor folks who have their moment of fame and then are left to fend for themselves; in the people who put intimate photographs of themselves online and then are shocked, shocked! when others recognize them and disapprove; in the corporations that dare to use loyalty programs to subject us to targeted advertising. There have been exhibitionists and voyeurs since Noah. But the advances in camera technology and computer networking that allow us to expose ourselves to wider and wider audiences are ubiquitous, and inevitably there are people who misuse them and others who are harmed by them. (Last month, for instance, laptops across the country were briefly preoccupied with video of a naked Erin Andrews, ESPN's sportscaster/cupcake, that was put online by a peeping Tom.) If Niedzviecki had stayed with that premise, he would have written a worthy, if somewhat predictable book. Instead, he's more ambitious and ultimately more disappointing. He posits the rise of something he calls "peep culture," in which "life is lived on constant record because you never know when you're going to want to be able to rewind something, see it again, confront a family member, show it to the police, sell it to the highest bidder, or post it on your blog." Or, more succinctly: "We all have lives worthy of watching. We all have lives worthy of selling." These are the right questions to be asking: What does it mean for society, for human nature, when the camera is always on? Is this going to change the way we relate to each other? Our expectations for daily interaction? When almost everyone tweets every thought, who will need to enter a wooden booth and tell a priest what's going on? The reference to peep shows in the book title is intentional and an unfortunate reflection of the writer's preoccupation with sideshow acts such as a woman who blogs about being a sex slave to her husband and a man who spends a year with a camera mounted on his head. Furthermore, he sees only bogeymen in this new culture. Remarkably, one has to scour this book to find any acknowledgment that there might be good aspects to hyperconnectivity. Politics is being opened up to the masses in an unprecedented fashion, as we saw in the last presidential election. People with rare diseases can now find advice and comfort from others in the same situation around the world. A.J. Liebling's famous observation that "freedom of the press belongs to those that own one" is now obsolete, as anyone with access to a laptop and an Internet service owns her own press. Niedzviecki closes his book with a stunt: He invites all 700 of his Facebook "friends" to join him at a bar in his home town, Toronto. Only one turns up. Somehow this pity party and his reconstruction of why people didn't come are supposed to illuminate how the bonds of community are dissolving and no one wants to bother with face-to-face contact in an age of widely disseminated anonymous confessions. But all they really show is that he is trying to attach old labels to new phenomena. Facebook friends aren't your real friends? D'oh! What we really want to know is whether the nature of real friendship is going to change. It may be too soon to answer that question. But there are Yahoo groups willing to talk about it.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872864995
• ISBN-13: 978-0872864993
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #417,955 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lord Overshare has landed., July 9, 2009

By	Dan E. Nicholas "gotta have a book" (Aptos, California, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Only liars will tell you they do not care to look. But what does it mean to be a looker, a budding or even consummate voyeur, a peeper, one who eyes the intimate matters of others? And does it matter if one's eyes are invited or uninvited? And of course, we're all pretty much now doing far more than looking--which is the point--far more than just asking the old time "show me yours". We're showing ours, too. And first. And often. And we are wondering why. What is happening to us? Such is the quirky question and probing work of Hal Niedzviecki in The Peep Diaries, 2009, City Lights Books, San Francisco.

Levels of what was once unthinkable in terms of intimacy, knowing and being known have become common fare these days. Privacy, keeping and telling secrets and to whom--the author explores what all this might mean and why the planet has shifted more than just a little in the last decade.

Peep was birthed by more than technology and this pop culture phenomenon is telling something big about our souls. Peep certainly could not have happened without the various gadgets that surround us and ride daily in our purses and pockets. Churches and governments and marriages and classrooms and courtrooms and confessionals are still reeling from the siren song of Peep. We're all trying to catch up. The author sheds some light on the darkness that intrigues us here.

Niedzviecki takes us with him on a two year hike into the wilderness of peeping and this new dictionary word "overshare". His journey launches from his home base in Toronto where he has been working to pull back the lid on what may well be a sea change of pop culture that has gone definitely global in the last decade.

Peep. It's become a noun that stands all on its own, from reading the email of strangers on bulletin board posts 15 years ago, to stripper blogs and YouTube posts of babies first bath, to every cell phone with a camera--cameras cheap and everywhere, the size of a pencil lead, digital instamatics that do full on video replete with afternoon uploads of gotcha clips that can bring down a police force, a marriage or even a nation.

But what does it all mean? Is it a good or an evil thing? Will it go away anytime soon? What does it say about the human condition, our future, our past? Niedzviecki is a bright young thirty something who still can't make up his mind if he wants to tell all or hold back. His query is about this core passion shared by humans, this knowing and being known, he says. This is the grand center of who we are as persons, though the book talks far more about being the individual rather than the person. And theology gets mentioned little. God--the Grand Peeper--is left out pretty much.

The author explores reality TV, the meaning of "real", becoming a Peep Product, the power of gossip and the allure of Peep, watching detectives watching neighbors, busting through uploaded video your next door fellow stealing your morning paper; and why the author's invitation to 700 online "friends" to his Facebook Party yielded but one lone reveler.

The Peep Diaries is not a perfect work and it gets sluggish three quarters of the way through, yet Niedzviecki concludes with a bang and with surprise praise for the apophatic, the grand unknowing. He ends a bit shocked to find himself holding dear the right and the power to choose not to know.

Ever argued with your spouse about friends? Ever longed for more connectedness (or been annoyed by it) at church or work or in the bedroom or in prayer? Read this book. It's a good ride on the rail of self discovery that may produce some answers for you. Or at least a laundry basket of fun new questions.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Okay Book About an Interesting Subject, July 4, 2009

By	Kevin Currie-Knight "Education Grad Student" (Newark, Delaware) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I picked up this book with much anticipation. As I contribute to two blogs and post on-line book reviews, I am a part of, as the author terms it, peep culture. Hal Niedzviecki's Peep Diaries examines the different parts of peep culture - blogs, reality television, youtube video-making - and the people behind it to find out what the intrigue is and why so many people are so eager.

Towards this end, Niedzviecki interviews many players in peep culture: bloggers, reality tv stars and producers, youtube "filmmakers," and creators of surveillance technology available to the public. He even decided to get in on the action himself by starting a blog about his personal life and buying a device that allows his consenting wife to be tracked GPS style. To his surprise, he found blogging quite addicting and keeping tabs on his wife throughout the day surprisingly stressful.

About half of the book recounts his interviews with those involved in peep culture, and half is reflection on peep culture. The reflective part is not nearly as interesting, as Niedzviecki's points and ruminations are often quite stale. We've all heard the diagnosis before that the desire to blog, star in reality shows and the like is one part narcissism and one part desire-to-connect-in-an-increasingly-isolated-existence. It may be true, but the fact is that we don't really need another book telling us this (and tell us he does, repeatedly, as if it gets more original each time we hear it.)

My favorite part of the book was the chapters toward the end dealing with issues of privacy raised by peep culture. It is one thing to willingly consent to give up privacy and be watched. It is another thing when the same technology allows people to invade the privacy of those who did not consent. Blogs make gossip easier. Put increased availability of cameras and surveillance technology and youtube together and you get the potential for privacy violation. (Yes, the law can punish the transgressors, but who cares; everyone already saw the video before it was taken down.) As Niedzviecki often reminds us, new technology is not necessarily a bad thing, but it often leads to periods of adjustment where we stumble to acclimate ourselves to "new ways" of doing things.

Overall, this is a moderately good book about an interesting subject. Niedzviecki is a good writer and interviewer, but his philosophic ruminations are a bit stale and tiresome. (And the author had a tendency to make the same or similar points over and over.)

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Starting Point In Understanding Peep Culture, August 4, 2009

By	Norman Goldman "Editor of Bookpleasures.com" (Montreal) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Author: Hal Niedzviecki
ISBN: 978-0-87286-499-3
Publisher: City Lights Books

If you are one of those people aged nine to ninety who are addicted to reality TV or Internet social networking and have no idea why you are attracted to it, you may want to pick up a copy of Hal Niedzviecki's The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning To Love Watching Ourselves And Our Neighbors.

Niedzviecki is a Canadian novelist and cultural critic who has published several works of fiction and social commentary. On his blog, he describes himself as writer/thinker and up until now he says he always considered himself a private person. Nonetheless, he is fascinated by people who gladly open themselves up to the whole world knowing full well that they will be watched. They are willing to share, or to use a new word that was added to Webster's New World Dictionary and Thesaurus, "overshare" some very intimate details about themselves. Do they really understand what they are doing?

Why are these people participating in Peep culture such as reality TV, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, blogs, chat rooms, amateur porn sites, and virally spread digital movies of people?

According to Niedzviecki, Peep culture is our twisted answer to the problem of dehumanizing of humanity. As he states, "When we present ourselves to be watched and commented on, we are, ironically enough, attempting to reclaim our individuality on our own terms. It is not an attempt to show how special or exceptional we are, but rather how ordinary and normal we are, and that we are deserving of human interaction." The ingredients that play a vital role are the virtuous search for connection and shared meaning and the desire for attention and recognition. Over the course of seven chapters, Niedzviecki fleshes out these findings and explores the various aspects of this phenomenon. He certainly shares some stimulating discoveries with his readers.

The opening chapter gives us a broad overview of Peep culture with the caveat that Peep culture is not only restricted to reality television, although it may be the most obvious and one, we most associate it with. As pointed out, people enjoy having relationships and watching other people. If you step back and think about it, it is very easy to observe the life of someone else either online or on a TV reality show. You are not required to go anywhere or as Niedzviecki states: "Call it surveillance with benefits." However, as we all realize, it can be very addictive and this is particularly prevalent with blogging where once you start, it is very difficult to stop. Don't we get a kick out of people paying attention to us? As mentioned, there is something seductive about integrating our person seamlessly into our product and becoming our own media property. Some of us even go so far as imagining that this is the first step to something bigger and perhaps even lucrative. Perhaps, we will even become a celebrity.

Niedzviecki next delves into the rise of Peep TV or reality television, where he discusses some interesting findings. Did you know that some of the people who had their houses renovated pursuant to these makeover shows were having difficulty in maintaining the homes that have been built for them? Did you know that most of these reality shows are scripted, and once you are chosen, you have very little say as to how you will be portrayed? The next stop on our journey is an analysis of revealing secrets, which are a deliberate creation of systems revolving almost entirely around the dissemination of personal information such as Twitter. Why do we Twitter? From here Niedzviecki explores the world of surveillance, which is not only restricted to the government watching us but also private individuals and companies watching us. Is this a good thing? What about our privacy, which is given considerable ink in the chapter entitled, Escape from the Castle: Privacy in the Age of Peep. The book ends with the future of Peep and general conclusions.

Readers desiring a critical approach coupled with a thoroughly researched survey of the world of Peep will find The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning To Love Watching Ourselves And Our Neighbors an ideal starting point in understanding this fascinating phenomenon. Niedzviecki has done a great job in examining Peep culture in all its breadth and complexity, although I did find at times, he was repetitive. And as he states in his concluding remarks, Peep is all about contradictions, which is why it's so hard to come to firm conclusions about this phenomenon."

Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor Bookpleasures