During my senior year of high school I was working on a project with my friends Forrest and Erik. We had just gotten back from a necessary Five Guys run and were getting ready to settle down to work. That was when we found it.
Justin.tv brought a strange idea to the forefront: Lifecasting. This is a method of digital media that is a mix between blogging and television. A lifecaster broadcasts his or her life 24/7, except for when they are in the bathroom. They are mostly sitting in front of their computers doing a bunch of nothing. My friends and I watched a guy with a camera attached to his hat go to a restaurant. We watched a girl interact with others on the site asking what outfit she should wear. We even watched a 13-year-old boy play video games. Don’t ask me where his parents were, because I have no idea.
Here is what the lifecasting pages look like:
The lifecaster owns a page/channel, and people watch them and interact with the chat box on the right. It is super, super weird.
The one I’m listening to is just a guy at work. Pretty boring.
But there are also pages about gaming, more people just living, and even one of live, constant footage of an indoor skydiving place.
What a weird phenomenon! Seriously, poke around on this site, you’ll be amazed at what people think is important enough for strangers to watch.
This is a different kind of digital storytelling because it doesn’t necessarily end. There’s no quick punch line like the Barack Obama/Chuck Norris joke we saw the first day of class. Instead, it’s just people existing. If you believe that everyone has a story to tell, lifecasting may be something you should check out.
