Why does reality Web TV suck?
I recently had the chance to interview Justin Kan, whose company Justin.tv is showcasing its Web-based reality TV show network by broadcasting just one show: Justin.tv, the tale of a straight, young, male entrepreneur who straps a vidcam to his head, streams its feed back to some servers over EVDO, and broadcasts his every move to you live via a Web site. There is a live chat session you can join to discuss the feed, and you can actually call or SMS Justin via his cell — he’s posted the number on his site, though I doubt this feature will last much longer due to pranking.
What strikes you immediately upon watching Justin.tv is just how boring his life is. In our interview, Justin said he was unlikely to have sex on camera (thus separating himself from the much more interesting 90s phenom JenniCam). He’s not going to have any personal drama. He’s just going engage in rampant product placement (that’s the biz model), and then hang out with his straight, male buddies who drink, play poker, talk about business, and then play Halo. Look, I love straight men as much as the next bisexual girl, and I love Halo as much as anybody, but do I really care about Justin’s life? No. And that’s pretty much the point of the article I wrote about Justin.tv for Wired.
March 27th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
I think this has to do with a sense of entitlement too many people have– “Since it’s me, it must be interesting!” My feeling is this is because so few people get honest criticism. He needs his own Simon Cowell to follow him around and tell him he is boring!
April 5th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I think its a great idea! I want to see him poop.
April 6th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Hahaha — I ran into him on Wednesday and told him that he needs to start having sex or the ratings are going to go down.
April 19th, 2007 at 11:42 am
I suspect you’ve probably already gotten emails about your Wired article http://tinyurl.com/2zw38d .
The “soundtrack” to Justin’s alleged sex encounter is in fact from a Nikki Dial movie entitled “Hardcore” http://tinyurl.com/34xw23.
The scene is between Ms. Dial and Tony Tedeschi in a kitchen.
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:53 am
Yet, there were 3,000 people watching the dark screen when Justin got it on!
Another phenomena I haven’t managed to grasp.