Peeping Hal

Lately it seems that the eas­i­est — and maybe only — way for a young author to land a book deal is via their “cul­tur­ally rel­e­vant” blog. (Anecdotal evi­dence: Christian Lander and Joe Mande.)

Hal Niedzvieki, edi­tor of Broken Pencil mag­a­zine, took a slightly less nuanced approach with The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors.

He appar­ently cre­ated pro­files on every social net­work that he could find, stripped for his video blog, sold his secrets on Craigslist, hired a pri­vate detec­tive to inves­ti­gate him, and spyed on his neigh­bors — all in prepa­ra­tion to write an analy­sis of con­tem­po­rary, technologically-enabled voyeurism. 

But Niedzvieki isn’t just talk­ing the new media talk. Starting on June 16, the author will be star­ring in a month-long, non­stop video web­cast filmed in his home (which, since you’re won­der­ing, does include the bath­room). The footage will be avail­able for view­ing on his web­site, and it will also be the sub­ject of a CBC doc­u­men­tary that aims to involve view­ers by allow­ing them to edit the raw footage online, à la RIP: A Remix Manifesto.

Because this web­cast is touted as “com­pletely inter­ac­tive” (Hal’s view­ers are encour­aged to ask him ques­tions, post their com­ments, and egg him on) it’s hard to say what will be more inter­est­ing: the web­cast itself, or the audience’s response. 

Disturbingly, a press release for the site invited extreme behav­ior, stat­ing, “If [the film­mak­ers] can find peo­ple who can really give Hal hell and keep push­ing him, they’d like to put them in the film.”

These are inter­est­ing times. Thanks, Facebook.