On Justin.tv and Internet voyeurism

I’m kind of surprised to see such a huge following behind Justin.tv, where this guy wears a camera on his head 24/7 that streams video to the Web. Supposedly he’ll wear the camera until the day he dies, but I expect either a) He’ll develop such a creepy following that he’ll be forced to end the project early, or b) Fans of site will come to realize that the only thing more boring than going about their daily routine is watching someone else go about their daily routine. Haven’t we seen this bubble come and go already?

Besides Hollywood’s various interpretations of the trend like The Truman Show (1998) and Edtv (1999), there was a site called We Live in Public all the way back in 2000 (official site via the Internet Archive), an experimental art project that outfitted dot-com entrepreneur Josh Harris’ loft with dozens of webcams, including one in the toilet (ew). The project ultimately ended after Harris’ at-the-time girlfriend, Tanya Corrin, inevitably left him, and Harris suffered mental illness as a result of being in the public eye continuously for six months. Corrin summed up how the project impacted her life:

“Life under surveillance was making me jumpy. I started looking for hidden cameras in public places and friends’ apartments. I bought Mace and stopped answering the door. I began spending a lot of time outside the house, focusing on yoga and friends while maintaining the press schedule Josh had set up.”

While the idea of broadcasting your life on the Internet might seem far-fetched, many of us are essentially already taking part in the phenomenon with social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook. I think we’ll start seeing more and more of this as social networking becomes more pervasive, and more of our lives are shared (voluntarily, even) with the world.

April 12, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized