6 ms·

Patient Zero of the selfie age: Why JenniCam abandoned her digital life

127 points by JacobAldridge 12y ago

dredmorbius 12y ago
I've long suspected that the oversharing life is at most a phase and/or a personality trait. Not one widely shared. Jenny is only one of many early online personas (of varying levels of sharing) who's largely gone silent.
- JonnieCache 12y ago
  Here's the classic "I'm leaving the internet, its bad for me" essay, from 1994: http://folksonomy.co/?permalink=2299 http://folksonomy.co/?permalink=2299 As you can see, absolutely nothing has changed.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    Starting with shunning conventional capitalization....
blfr 12y ago
Also yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9374397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9374397
- JonnieCache 12y ago
  Indeed, this article is blogspam for the digg article/podcast, believe it or not.
  - headgasket 12y ago
    Wow that took a while to sink in. How much of what you read daily is semi-machine generated? Are smart editors using machine-learning text editing techniques about to bog down the creative/productive for eyeballs?
  - yitchelle 12y ago
    Interesting. How did you draw this conclusion? I thought the article was one of the better ones from digg.
    - JonnieCache 12y ago
      Sorry, what I mean here is that this news article took the story from digg. Which is something of a role reversal considering digg's past as an aggregator.
netcan 12y ago
One interesting aspect of whatever this is a part of (sharing, privacy, digital culture, take you pick) is how strong and emotionally charged people opinions and theories are. I think it's like asking an 18th century village dweller about urban life and its implications. Maybe that's not the right analogy. Maybe it's like asking a clan member about national identity or maybe it's like asking a scribe about university life in 2015, with parties and labs and counter culture thrown into the mix. Can you imagine walking by someone and not acknowledging that you just walked by each other? Barely noticing to the point that if you walk by each other tomorrow you won't remember them? What kind of people are these? Walking by someone without acknowledging them certainly is counter to human nature. It's against how people behaved since before people where people. It's counter to behavioral patterns we share with other primates. What I mean is that all the "laws of nature" that make up the environment for our lives are thrown up in the air and rearranged as the world we live in becomes digital. How public something is, how permanent. Context. Feedback. Norms. Rules. Consequences. Anonymity. Empathy. It all changes. How do you feel about this? What is your perspective on privacy in the digital world? What do you think of your boss seeing you twitter jokes? really? How can we expect ourselves to really have a mature, realistic perspective on this? Imagine that no one has died in 500 years. We have trillions of digital and physical copies of ourselves that merge and reduplicate every 7 days. We an colonize worlds by creating copies of them here and copies of us there. We occasionally spend millennia examining fleeting moments of our lives and can experience and re experience every sequence of moments infinitely and uniquely each time. How do you feel about the social implications of this world. Does John Locke still apply? Demosthenes? Im being purposely cartoonish and over the top (can you tell?). The point I think I'm trying to make is that looking at everything that's changing and where we think we're headed within our lifetimes is tricky to process. It's impossible. We can't have a clear perspective on these issues.
- unwind 12y ago
  Walking by someone without acknowledging them certainly is counter to human nature. I think that is very much a function of your local culture, not some core "human nature". Here (Sweden) I regularly walk by people without acknowledging them, and that's in the office. Out in public, I would probably be considered mildly strange if I started acknowledging strangers.
brohoolio 12y ago
Reply All, an excellent internet podcast did an episode about jennicam. Pretty interesting stuff. http://gimletmedia.com/episode/5-the-jennicam/ http://gimletmedia.com/episode/5-the-jennicam/
- acjohnson55 12y ago
  I just listened to that yesterday! I'm loving Reply All, and also the other podcast by the same company, StartUp [1], which documents the creation of Gimlet Media, itself. [1] http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/ http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/
- speik 12y ago
  The episode is explicitly mentioned in the article. Also, just curious, is there any other kind of podcast besides an internet one?
  - thedaemon 12y ago
    podcast - Episodic content played on an iPod. So yes, you download podcasts and play them on your iPod, originally. A newer term is Netcast. I find it better because it removes the branding. :|
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Oh, so that's why they're called podcasts... Always wondered, but never bothered to check it.
  - JohnBooty 12y ago
    I know you're being facetious and poking fun at the redundancy of the phrase "Internet podcast" but now you have me thinking about how cool an offline podcast might be. Maybe it would be distributed via physical dead drops on USB sticks, or pirate wi-fi networks beamed from disposable drones flown by courageous freedom fighters, or maybe it would be distributed via IP over avian carrier: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 (In all seriousness, my very loose understanding is that in a lot of countries without robust Internet infrastructure, music is often traded directly from phone to phone. It's possible that podcasts or spoken-word messages are traded this way as well...)
driverdan 12y ago
If this interests you see the documentary We Live In Public. It's also about early life streaming: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329/
peter303 12y ago
One of the first selfie guys Jeff Harris posted a daily selfie for nearly 14 years, then dropped off the face of earth. Toward the end he showed a gruesome cancer operation, so I presume he may have passed. The web doesnt reveal his fate.
Tloewald 12y ago
I see no mention of Kibo, who was an early (Usenet) presence projection who also (2005ish) eventually pretty much disappeared. I wonder if it's the fame or the sustained effort after fame has peaked. It seems exhausting.
cagey_vet 12y ago
i remember when #hack on efnet hacked her cam feed, i dont recall laughing so hard at antics.

127 points by JacobAldridge 12y ago

I've long suspected that the oversharing life is at most a phase and/or a personality trait. Not one widely shared. Jenny is only one of many early online personas (of varying levels of sharing) who's largely gone silent.

JonnieCache 12y ago
Here's the classic "I'm leaving the internet, its bad for me" essay, from 1994: http://folksonomy.co/?permalink=2299 http://folksonomy.co/?permalink=2299 As you can see, absolutely nothing has changed.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Starting with shunning conventional capitalization....

blfr 12y ago

Also yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9374397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9374397

JonnieCache 12y ago
Indeed, this article is blogspam for the digg article/podcast, believe it or not.
- headgasket 12y ago
  Wow that took a while to sink in. How much of what you read daily is semi-machine generated? Are smart editors using machine-learning text editing techniques about to bog down the creative/productive for eyeballs?
- yitchelle 12y ago
  Interesting. How did you draw this conclusion? I thought the article was one of the better ones from digg.
  - JonnieCache 12y ago
    Sorry, what I mean here is that this news article took the story from digg. Which is something of a role reversal considering digg's past as an aggregator.

netcan 12y ago

One interesting aspect of whatever this is a part of (sharing, privacy, digital culture, take you pick) is how strong and emotionally charged people opinions and theories are. I think it's like asking an 18th century village dweller about urban life and its implications. Maybe that's not the right analogy. Maybe it's like asking a clan member about national identity or maybe it's like asking a scribe about university life in 2015, with parties and labs and counter culture thrown into the mix. Can you imagine walking by someone and not acknowledging that you just walked by each other? Barely noticing to the point that if you walk by each other tomorrow you won't remember them? What kind of people are these? Walking by someone without acknowledging them certainly is counter to human nature. It's against how people behaved since before people where people. It's counter to behavioral patterns we share with other primates. What I mean is that all the "laws of nature" that make up the environment for our lives are thrown up in the air and rearranged as the world we live in becomes digital. How public something is, how permanent. Context. Feedback. Norms. Rules. Consequences. Anonymity. Empathy. It all changes. How do you feel about this? What is your perspective on privacy in the digital world? What do you think of your boss seeing you twitter jokes? really? How can we expect ourselves to really have a mature, realistic perspective on this? Imagine that no one has died in 500 years. We have trillions of digital and physical copies of ourselves that merge and reduplicate every 7 days. We an colonize worlds by creating copies of them here and copies of us there. We occasionally spend millennia examining fleeting moments of our lives and can experience and re experience every sequence of moments infinitely and uniquely each time. How do you feel about the social implications of this world. Does John Locke still apply? Demosthenes? Im being purposely cartoonish and over the top (can you tell?). The point I think I'm trying to make is that looking at everything that's changing and where we think we're headed within our lifetimes is tricky to process. It's impossible. We can't have a clear perspective on these issues.

unwind 12y ago
Walking by someone without acknowledging them certainly is counter to human nature. I think that is very much a function of your local culture, not some core "human nature". Here (Sweden) I regularly walk by people without acknowledging them, and that's in the office. Out in public, I would probably be considered mildly strange if I started acknowledging strangers.

brohoolio 12y ago

Reply All, an excellent internet podcast did an episode about jennicam. Pretty interesting stuff. http://gimletmedia.com/episode/5-the-jennicam/ http://gimletmedia.com/episode/5-the-jennicam/

acjohnson55 12y ago
I just listened to that yesterday! I'm loving Reply All, and also the other podcast by the same company, StartUp [1], which documents the creation of Gimlet Media, itself. [1] http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/ http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/
speik 12y ago
The episode is explicitly mentioned in the article. Also, just curious, is there any other kind of podcast besides an internet one?
- thedaemon 12y ago
  podcast - Episodic content played on an iPod. So yes, you download podcasts and play them on your iPod, originally. A newer term is Netcast. I find it better because it removes the branding. :|
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Oh, so that's why they're called podcasts... Always wondered, but never bothered to check it.
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  I know you're being facetious and poking fun at the redundancy of the phrase "Internet podcast" but now you have me thinking about how cool an offline podcast might be. Maybe it would be distributed via physical dead drops on USB sticks, or pirate wi-fi networks beamed from disposable drones flown by courageous freedom fighters, or maybe it would be distributed via IP over avian carrier: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 (In all seriousness, my very loose understanding is that in a lot of countries without robust Internet infrastructure, music is often traded directly from phone to phone. It's possible that podcasts or spoken-word messages are traded this way as well...)

driverdan 12y ago

If this interests you see the documentary We Live In Public. It's also about early life streaming: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329/

peter303 12y ago

One of the first selfie guys Jeff Harris posted a daily selfie for nearly 14 years, then dropped off the face of earth. Toward the end he showed a gruesome cancer operation, so I presume he may have passed. The web doesnt reveal his fate.

Tloewald 12y ago

I see no mention of Kibo, who was an early (Usenet) presence projection who also (2005ish) eventually pretty much disappeared. I wonder if it's the fame or the sustained effort after fame has peaked. It seems exhausting.

cagey_vet 12y ago

i remember when #hack on efnet hacked her cam feed, i dont recall laughing so hard at antics.