Now I feel kind of guilty for poking fun at all those people who referred to Facebook’s news updates as a “stalker feed.” Hal Niedzviecki’s book, “The Peep Diaries,” is an exploratiion into what he terms “Peep” culture. In Niedzviecki’s view, modern pop culture has been co-opted and transformed into one that is concerned with the minutiae of everyone else – a nation of Peeping Toms.

Citing examples ranging from reality TV to Facebook to London’s CCTV surveillance system, Niedzviecki assembles a compelling portrait of our narcissistic impulses. He argues that modern society, like apes and primitive humans, desire a sense of community that, unfortunately, no longer exists. Rather than interacting with our neighbors and hosting block parties, we instead receive our interactions vicariously through Facebook statuses and tweets.

We are now simultaneously concerned with learning the smallest things about everyone else, while at the same time broadcasting our smallest movements. We create a microcosm of celebrity – after all, what is fame but having some number of people care about what you do?

If you’re at all interested in where our culture is at this point, this is the book for you. Constructed primarily around interviews with people who are embracing Peep culture (including couples who post erotic images online and the guy behind Justin.tv) and narratives about personal encounters with it, the book serves as a fairly quick primer on modern society.

A work like this seems especially poignant in the wake of the public effusion of grief following the death of the King of Pop, so I surfed over to Niedzviecki’s Web site to gauge his reaction. In his only post on the subject, one day after Michael Jackson’s death, Niedzviecki posited Jackson will be remembered equally for his outlandish persona and his music. Niedzviecki also thinks that Jackson’s life influenced the way media covers celebrities in general, pointing to Susan Boyle, Britney Spears and OJ Simpson as recipients of the “Jackson treatment.” Regardless of whether I agree with his points (and he clearly underestimated our willingness to overlook Jackson’s craziness), the very act of my going to his blog reinforces a lot of the points he makes in his book. Rather than discuss it with my friends, neighbors or family (as I might have done before the Internet), I instead seek out the opinions of a stranger.

I know his thoughts, but he is completely unaware of mine – or that I even exist. I get the satisfaction of connecting with someone else, but I don’t have to go through the legwork of actually engaging in a quid pro quo discussion, or even being forced to acknowledge his ideas longer than I want to – a simple click of the mouse dissolves the relationship.

His Web site also features information about an upcoming documentary based around Niedzviecki’s idea to leap from the “ivory tower” down into the culture of Peep. This brings up any number of alarming questions. What is his motivation? Is he doing it strictly for “research” (the book is out now, mind you), and will he include other Peep exhibitionists?

Regardless of his reasons, the documentary seems to be straddling a fine line. After all, a good percentage of people interviewed by Niedzviecki for the book claimed to be doing it for “a sense of community” – while the reader naturally assumes they’re doing it for the celebrity, however minute an amount they receive. Perhaps the author has succumbed to the same impulses – or maybe he’s just trying to find community where previously he had none. After all, who would know better than him?