What will you do when the camera turns off?
Justine Ezarik, ijustine September 22nd, 2007
I was thinking about Justine’s last interview on TG Daily and wondering about one of the obvious statements she made. The idea of a life without iJustine may frighten some of us and over the past 2 months that I have been tuning in, I don’t know what I would do with the free moments in my day that would have been dedicated to her either. I am also a realist and know that “all good things must come to an end”. Eventually Justine will turn off the camera for good…well, almost.
I mean, I think that Justine has become as attached to her fans as we are to her. Crazy as that may sound, you can see it in her face and in her expressions when she goes into the chat and sees some of the regular people. Before Justine puts away the trusty Logitech Quickcam for good I think there will be a slow pullback from the constant streams. This will serve two purposes. 1. Her fans will still get their daily fix of Justine, even though it is inconsistent and 2. Justine will get her daily fix of her fans that hang on her every keystroke. I was beginning to think of this a while back when some parts of the day were filled with only a picture of the JTV monkey. After reading the last article though I was wondering if this may be the case.
The thought of something happening to Justine because of the lifecast has crossed my mind as well. We have all been in the chat with creepy people that say the strangest things and push the limit until one of the mods drops the banhammer on them. Creeps online are one thing, but creeps IRL is a completely different story. The idea of an extended lifecast of any nature opens up many doors to ‘bad’ things happening. Really, you’re just rolling the dice on a daily basis and it would be irresponsible to not worry about your safety when everything you do is streamed live over the internet from the places you frequent to the place you call home.
I have been in the chat and seen how resourceful some of the fans are when they try to discover where Justine is located. From listening to broadcasts at the airport to get her flight number all the way to reading street signs and doing a quick search in Google to get a location. I am a perfect example. I met Justine because of my junior detective skills in San Francisco. I like to think of myself as a decent person, but I knew that walking up to Justine while she was eating lunch was going to be more awkward for her than it was to me.
I’ve seen it a dozen times online with Justine. People walking up to give her their numbers or get a quick conversation in. All harmless so far, but you do have to wonder. Not everyone in the world is decent. I’ve been in some dark places and met some bad people. It’s a shame that fans get fanatical but that’s the way it is sometimes. If I could put together a lifecasting security manual I would but you can never be too careful and the only way to be 100% safe is not to be live, but that defeats the purpose doesn’t it?
Justine cannot do this forever. Eventually she will move on to bigger and better things. Hard to imagine what could be better than having 2000 people checking in on you everyday, but it’s true (That’s a joke Justine). Some of the fans will just start checking into other channels, some will drop off all together, and then there will the select few that don’t care that Justine isn’t online and they will just go into iJustine’s chat room and ham it up with whoever is there. The fact is people have started taking the lifecast for granted and that gets under my skin.
I will continue blogging. Justine “Is the internet” and she will not be offline. I can’t imagine that the tweets will stop or the Viddler videos will die. I expect that I will be writing about Justine working for Pixar editing the next blockbuster film or working with Island Records editing the next Bon Jovi video. Whatever the case, Justine has a bright road ahead of her and I’m glad I get a chance to blog in a shadow of greatness.
So that’s my question to you, what will you do when the camera turns off?
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September 22nd, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Justine has said in a recent phone interview (http://www.justin.tv/ijustine/35855) that she was phasing out 24/7 because it was beginning to interfere with her business and personal relationships, and what rational person could blame her for that. She mentioned she would still do random live events and chat sessions after “lifecasting”, which was basically what she did on Ustream (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/treats) before she came to Justin.tv .
As much as I would miss her, I fully support her making that transition ASAP because people have become so demanding and unappreciative. They expect her to read and respond to the chat every second the camera is on, not understanding the difference between “lifecasting” and “chatcasting”. They ridicule her for having no friends, but when she hangs out with them the chat room rips them apart. They’re often outraged over her supposed lack of a visible means of income (not understanding what a freelancer is or that you can do work on a computer outside of a cubicle), but when she’s working right in front of them they assume she’s just “web surfing” and whine about being “ignored”. Everyone is screaming for her to read their emails and such, but if she takes the time to do so people gripe about being “ignored” as well.
She shouldn’t have to take all this crap, I would much rather Justine do a high-profile tech video podcast with TWIT, Revision3 or Pixel Corps than this anyway. As much as I like Justin Kan and what he’s trying to do, I don’t think “lifecasting” has much of a future. People either want pr0n or someone who will do “stupid human tricks” on cam on demand from the chat room at all times. Most of the other people on JTV only turn on the cam when they have time to chat, giving the illusion that they “always talk to their viewers”, so why shouldn’t Justine do the same?
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:26 am
wafflejuice,
Great reply to the post. I couldn’t have said it better.
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:33 am
Justin.TV will be history for me when iJustine turns off that logitech for good.
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:52 am
i will still have others to watch and there will always be more interesting people coming along…although life without justine may be saddening for most of us, at least we will know that lifecasting won’t interfere with her personal life anymore and that we will be still be seeing her some:)
September 24th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
If she still broadcasts special events and every so often, I’ll definitely watch if I’m home and able to watch. But, the only reason I even go to justin.tv is for justine’s stream. I’ve checked out many of the others and justine is the only one who is actually fun to watch (sarah’s can be entertaining from time to time but not quite as often as justine’s - only justine would sing along to the TMNT theme). I totally don’t blame her for scaling back though. I never would expect someone to do this truly 24/7, that’s just over the top in my opinion and were it me, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice friendships and business relationships just to appease the vocal minority in a chat room. And if she stopped completely, I’d still read her blog, etc.
Most of the time, I have her stream running in the background anyway while I’m doing freelance work of my own, so it’s not like that much would even change for me.
September 24th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
I never started watching the camera. There ya have it.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:50 am
When ijustine turns the camera off for go..i will be done at jtv…she has made that site awesome! Thank you Justine for all that you do and help revolutionize the internet!