Ustream, Istream, WeAll Stream, or, ScobleCam: our final fall into narcissystem-atical insanity

That's right folks, we have finally reached the pinnacle of human insanity, exhibitionism, and voyeurism. A while ago (to be more exact, 27 days, nine hours, and 38 minutes ago), some guy named Justin started to broadcast his life over the internet through a webcam. Ever since, for every single minute and second in the day, there has been a webcam that people can watch through the internet.

What does this mean? Why on earth is this enjoyable to people? The only thing I can think of that would explain why people are watching someone's life through a webcam is that they are unsatisfied with the lives that they lea. They decide since they 'have no chance to make a difference', they will just watch someone else 'not making a difference'. This is insane.

I would say that it is narcissm (see Scoble's post, Nothing more boring than the "narcissystem") on the part of Justin and the like, thinking that people actually would want to watch his every movement, but he is right! So many people actually do want to watch his life, wasting away their own. This is insane.

Yesterday, Robert Scoble posted an article called ScobleCam coming?. In it, he introduced his testing of his own ScobleCam, which broadcasted for more than three hours. I believe that this trend could have been something that would just die off, because the majority of internet users (I hope) are smarter than to unproductively watch someone driving around in a car for hours. But Robert Scoble, possibly the foremost internet tech blogger, is in it, and that changes everything. Things like Ustream die, but not if they have extremely important people talking about them.

What is different about this and Twitter? Isn't this just a bigger, better, more visual version of Twitter? No. While this performs the basic purpose of Twitter (what am I doing, where am I doing it, etc.), this is pure evil, and Twitter isn't. Period. While with Twitter you can quickly scan through peoples tweets, and by having quick, 140char conversations, you can make a social connection, with things like Ustream (the site that hosts Scoble's cam), you sit there for a long time, waiting for something to happen. Just watching. Waisting time. For instance, if I were into watching these weird whatever.tv things, I would not have time to be blogging, or reading my feeds. This would cause me to be unproductive, and uninformed. Do we really need more unproductive, uninformed people?

What makes watching other people bad? If we feel the need to watch someone else's life unfold before us, we must have some sort of psychological problem. We must feel that we don't have an interesting enough life, so we resort to envying someone else's, and watching it. All day. This is just like all those really bad reality shows on Television, except they really are reality. Just wait, I bet there will be some commercial ones, where there is an actor playing the person on screen ($$$ADS$$$MONETISATION$$$$$).

What is so bad about broadcasting your own life? Of course, it is your decision. But by broadcasting your own life, 24-7, I think that you have to have some sort of psychological problem. The condition that people who watch your life have is called voyeurism, and the problem of people who broadcast their lives is called exhibitionism. Not only does this demonstrate the existance of a psychological problem, but it also could create a psychological problem. Having that many people watching you must feel like eyes, everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if this got popular, and we had an entire generation of schizophrenic youth. Being watched, you have to be careful about what you do, say, how you say it, who you are with, etc. It brings a whole new world of pressure into what once was reality.

So, readers, join me in not jumping into the pit of narcissystematical insanity.