Kan calls it "lifecasting." The concept is simple: Using technology his team developed, Kan has strapped a camera to his head to capture every moment of his existence in live streaming video on the Internet. Viewers literally see the world through Kan's virtual eyes, which broadcast his life onto the Web 24/7. He interacts with his audience through 21 chat rooms and hundreds of e-mails each day. He even took their calls on his cell phone until he got overwhelmed.
The show's slogan says it all: "Waste time watching other people waste time." And that's what tens of thousand of folks around the globe are doing, turning Kan into an online phenom by tuning in to his irreverent and uncensored world. That sudden explosion of peeping onlookers has caused so many technical difficulties that Justin.tv had to recruit volunteers from the audience to keep the show rolling.
I don't get it, I really don't. I mean, I certainly get it from Kan's point of view -- the guy is probably inventing a whole new entertainment/revenue model right before our eyes. There's money in it for him. But is that new model a good thing? Did some of us not recognize The Truman Show as a dystopian satire? Are there really that many idiots with that much time on their hands, that their big entertainment decision involves watching some guy take a dump, sort his sock drawer, maybe rub one out in an old towel on a Friday night? Don't they already do that stuff themselves; is there some cathartic need I was heretofore unaware of that makes people want to watch other people do the same mundane shit?
Like the song says, when the aliens finally land, we'll make great pets. It's just depressing to contemplate, and while I realize that the media market is not a zero-sum game, it's irritating to think that I could potentially get a hundred or even a thousand times the traffic by simply strapping on a camera and picking my nose. And I'm sure this is just the beginning.
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