Pick Me!

A weblog by Laura Moncur

4/1/2007

Justin.tv Is Strangely Calming

Filed under: General — Laura Moncur @ 8:10 am

Justin.tv is sleeping…

Years ago, when I watched the movie, The Truman Show, I wondered why people would even care about watching some guy 24 hours a day. Heck, the eight hours a day when he was sleeping must be boring, right? Why would anyone watch Truman while he was sleeping?

For 13 days, 8 hours and 38 minutes, Justin Kan has been wearing a camera strapped to his head and a backpack to power it. For twenty-four hours a day, the cameras have been running. As I write this. Justing is sleeping. Why would I watch Justin sleep? Why would people watch Truman sleep? Because it’s strangely calming.

You can see what Justin is doing right now:

The few weblogs that have talked about Justin.tv have acted like what he is doing is amazing:

“Justin.tv is the mobile Internet lifecasting phenomenon that’s blowing up the new and old mediasphere.”

Blowing up? Nah… I don’t think so. Boring? Surprisingly not. I spent twenty minutes the other day watching Justin drive his car and listen to bad music. I loaded it up and the next thing I knew, I had lost twenty minutes of my life. Why did I keep watching? Partially to figure out where the heck he was, where he was going and why he was listening to such lame music on the car stereo. Later, I watched him wait for service at what looked like a mobile phone store. After five minutes, no one in the store had talked to him.

Why, why why? Why do I enjoy watching? It makes no sense to me. Am I waiting for him to crack? After 13 days of my life broadcast on the Internet, I would have cracked. How does he keep that hat on? What magical rocks are in that backpack that make this possible?

I had my doubts that The Truman Show could have happened. I didn’t believe that people would want to watch Truman’s mundane existence. I even thought that without the intervention from the production crew, no one would have watch Truman at all. Instead, I find myself watching Justin sleeping. Oh… he just turned over.

The most surprising fact is, Justin.tv is far more interesting and watchable than most of the television programming on the major networks.

Justin.tv has some sponsors, who I think deserve some props:

Previous:
Next:

3 Comments »

  1. We’re not sure why we’re watching either and we’ve built a whole blog around his show. Check us out at http://justintvguide.blogspot.com

    -Mike

    Comment by Mike (Justin.TV Guide) — 4/1/2007 @ 12:18 pm

  2. I use the term ‘blowing up’ to mean he’s getting a ton of attention on and off the ‘net. Random fans have created blogs to track his highlights (like Mike above), he hit the front page of the SF Chronicle a few days ago, he was on the Today show today and MTV stopped by for a chat. I doubt the media hype is sustainable, but for now, Justin is the first and only mobile lifecaster. And yes, it is strange how addicting the whole thing is.

    Comment by Eddie C — 4/2/2007 @ 6:28 pm

  3. That’s interesting that it reminded you of the Truman Show, because I was just thinking of the Truman show this morning and I have no idea why. I think I better get it and see if it has a message for me.

    Comment by B. — 4/3/2007 @ 11:39 am

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

Powered by WordPress
(c) 2003-2007 Laura Moncur