Blogger fishes for voyeurs, but he’s not getting many bites

There are lots of ways to spy on those among us who are heavily socially-networked. Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn profiles. Twitter feeds. YouTube accounts. And on and on. We should be worried, right? OMG. Someone’s going to find out my favorite movies! And know that I went to a Mets game on Friday night.

I throw all this information into the ether assuming that very few people actually care. Besides my mom. And a few bored friends.

But one man, a “writer/thinker who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada” desperately wants people to care about his disparate online data. Hal Niedzviecki has created a big, ole project around it called The Peep Diaries, with a book out this week.

He wants you to peep! Follow his Twitter feed! Watch a documentary about him! Read his blog! The website associated with the book and the project indicates there will one day be a Peep cam, though it doesn’t seem to be active yet:

Stuff you can do on the site:

* Watch the live PeepCast. See Hal go about his life! Tap into the Hal home surveillance footage. Tell Hal what to do!
* Like to watch or be watched? Share your Peep experiences.
* Become a top Peeper & earn an appearance in the Peep Doc!
* Read Hal’s book! Watch as it gets ripped apart by the critics!
* Track the travails of the Peep Documentary producers. Will Hal quit? How far can they – and you – push him?
* Think you’ve got enough Hal? Not even close: Follow Hal on: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and so so so much more!

Um, does it count as peeping if the person is completely aware of and encouraging it? It seems to take the fun out of it for prospective peepers. Especially when the subject is the unexciting guy in the photo to your right. He’s a Canadian. With a wife. And a daughter. My desire to peep is about as strong as my desire to spend 24 hours in a windowless room listening to the Song That Never Ends on an infinite loop.

The simple act of exposing our lives to people doesn’t mean they will actually care to look.

I am not the only one unexcited by the prospect of Hal peeping. He’s only got 387 followers on Twitter. He’s following more people than are following him (430) — a give away of not being a “Twitter person of importance.” (Am I a Twitter snob? Why yes. Yes, I am.)

He’s doing a little better elsewhere. Though his Facebook profile is private — ironic, right? — it appears that he has over 2,000 friends there. Though I suspect he may have initiated most of those friendships, rather than being friended by the majority of them.

The Peep Project promises to tell us  “How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors.” Maybe they’ll end up retitling it, “How We Wish People Wanted to Watch Us, But How We Found Out They’re Not Actually All That Interested.”

I’ll tune back in when the project’s farther along — at the moment, they’ve got a placeholder in the contact page — but I won’t be peeping in the meanwhile. I hope they’ll recruit a hot, single, exciting Hal for Peep Project 2.