Living in a box

[munkybitch]

Maybe i've totally missed the boat or something but have any of you been totally fascinated by these live streaming websites that have been popping up.

Stumbled upon ustream and also justintv and though was mildly suprised about how useful it would be for groups in the public to have their own platform to talk about stuff upon further investigation it kinda turned into some sort of big brother mutation with people massaging their egos and what not.

Maybe a cookdandbombd love feed might be interesting (or maybe not)

It's worth checking it out if you do get bored with the "real" big brother

http://www.justin.tv/

http://www.ustream.tv/

[Oscar]

Yes CaB people mutating and massaging their egos! This is what we need!

I looked at the sites, but got bored very quickly, sorry. Most of the time people are dull, that's why we have fiction to select and exaggerate the interesting bits.
Should i just have looked longer?

[munkybitch]

Not at all, I got bored very very quickly. It just got me thinking that it might have been a good medium if some people had something interesting to say for example like a writers or scriptwriters group.

I had a chat with some animators (the guys who did that 10th dimension flash animation) which is the reason I entered the site. If I had been animator savey it would have been more enjoyable.

Ho hum, I guess it will take a few months for some people to get off their asses and produce some good shows on.

[Oscar]

But isn't the point that the camera is running all the time?
I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I find this a genuinely interesting conflict: a group of good scriptwriters will write a good script that can be made into a  good film, TV whatever, but watching a group of scriptwriters sit around talking about that script is very dull.
Writers are dull*, they express themselves best in edited well thought out writing, why seek them out when they are at the boring thinking and talking about it stage? Why not just wait until they have produced something?
Documentaries are great because they edit out all the boring crap, but surely the idea of a Big Brother copy is that it isn't edited down.
It seems to me that anything Big Brother like is by nature self indulgent, just as most blogs are self indulgent because no one can be fascinating and insightful all the time, so the medium will end up just being about you just being yourself.
So what is it I'm missing?

*I'm not insulting writers here, but a writer is by nature more cerebral, that is why Big Brother contestants aren't writers.

[munkybitch]

I totally agree with the whole self indulgent thing and the fact that alot of people on the feeds have just turned their web cams on them selves and are documenting their own sad pathetic lives. It would be nice if there were feeds of random things like shopping centres or undercover conversations between random people (though for legal reason this might not work)

I've been to a few writers workshops and groups whereby people could pop along and critique their work however and it was handy getting feedback from people who knew a bit more than the avergae joe or were interested in the same genres.

I just figured it basically another form of "finding people from far flung places who liked the same shit" and talk about your interests and hoping that they might open your eyes to new things. Isn't that what this is anyway?

[Oscar]

I just figured it basically another form of "finding people from far flung places who liked the same shit" and talk about your interests and hoping that they might open your eyes to new things. Isn't that what this is anyway?

Like a kind of MySpace thing? Let me check again...
Heh, I looked at the ijustine.tv, it was showing live streaming of her bed with her not in it. I chose one of the recommended streaming videos and it was her having a very boring conversation on the phone. As far as I can tell the interest is that she's pretty (I'm not saying that's your interest) and one of the comments includes  "check out her nude photos here" (CaB curiosity perks up).
What you say about filming shopping centers and so on, it recently occurred to me that it would be interesting to have a large screen that was connected to a camera filming random life-as-it-is stuff - not to sit and watch it, but to have in on in the background - both restful and interesting, nice for hospitals and sick people who can't get out much (like me, that's why I thought of it). It would provide a connection with the outside world as well as a slow burning soap - mostly humdrum, but occasionally with a bit of drama.
But don't most interesting possibilities on the Net just end up as porn? Or am I being cynical? Maybe that's all anyone wants anyway. Possibly if you can see better potential for this and want it to be something else, you're going to have to do it yourself!