Like the rest of you, the new year has brought many new time wasting activities that have kept me away from the keyboard. There have been very few techno things lately that I’ve had desire to blog about and with everyone else in the world blogging their collective asses off, I haven’t the time to try and compete.
That being said, I came across this article on Wired News in my morning ritual of coffee and RSS feeds.
“Somehow, some viewer relayed a call through Justin’s phone number to the San Francisco 911 and reported a stabbing.” Welcome to daily happenings of Justin.tv, the latest experiment in reality TV on the web. Visitors to the site see a small, low-resolution audio/video feed coming from a camera mounted on star Kan’s head
Ha! That’s a good pr… wait, WHAT? Did I just read that someone has mounted a camera to their head and is streaming it for the world to see? I quickly run over to justin.tv to find out. Sure enough, I see a live feed of Justin sleeping in the fetal position at 6:30 am PST. This is nothing new really… it’s been attempted before by many porn sites. But this is the first time I know of someone strapping a camera to their head and taking it with them everywhere.
History: Based out of San Fran, 4 friends decided that they could make some money by streaming one guys life 24/7. And it looks like it’s working. Justin Kan has only been live for 4 days and 9 hours (although they have been testing for a couple months) and has already managed sponsorship. No stats on how many people are watching Justin, but at one time this morning I counted at least 100 people in the 1st chat room. People watching have access to all that is Justin… dates, parties, bathroom visits, sex (if some girl is willing to have her face/body plastered all over the internets), etc. You can see his schedule for the day, read his blog, call him and even go back through archives at different meetings, etc.
So this begs the question: will “we” watch and why? Is this the same as reading US Weekly or any other media that attempts to bring us into the lives of other, albeit celebrities, people . But Justin isn’t really a celeb… so what’s the appeal? It brings up memories of the movie The Truman Show. Truman unknowingly had the attention of the whole world and thus the appeal of someone being genuine. But Justin knows he’s on so where’s the appeal? Could it be like a mullet or a car wreck? It shouldn’t be that interesting but you just can’t stop watching it. I don’t know what it is, but I’m finding it hard not to watch.
UPDATE: i never thought about txting him. since his phone number is posted on the site, you can txt him and INTERACT with what you’re watching.