Back in the early days of the internet, there were a bunch of webcams anyone could view - sometimes a street, sometimes the coffee machine of a lab, and, occasionally, someone’s bedroom or appartment. Although they were much talked about, I’m sure it was a tiny number of people, and probably not for very long. And because of crappy bandwidth, most of these cams were more like constantly updating image, rather than actual video. Tbh, maybe it’s not even a real thing, but I definitely remember it being spoken about.
Nowadays obviously things are great for people who want strangers to know what they’re up to, they’ve got countless media to choose from. And ‘watching a stranger do mundane things’ was packaged up and sold as reality TV a long time ago.
But I guess my question is, are there people still live-streaming their life - without it being a sex thing (like onlyfans) or advertising / shilling front (so, ruling out most ‘influencers’). Are their folks out there just running a 24h twitch channel where people can watch them fold their laundry or doomscroll the night away on a poorly illuminated couch?
You’re probably looking for something like Opentopia
Good to know webcams are still a thing! Although mostly that site seems to be outdoor cameras and a ‘adult’ section, not someone turning their life into the Truman Show.
And just for clarity, this isn’t something I’m searching for (I’m way on the other end of the attention spectrum from people who want to watch someone do nothing). I’m more just curious about if it’s a thing, and why people would want to stream or watch something like that
that site is cameras found by crawling the web with something like a search engine. they are exposed accidentally. the adult section is an ad
Wasn’t it security issues? I thought those people didn’t know their stream were publicly accessible?
This was more likely. I seem to remember people passing around IPs on IRC then AIM chatrooms of webcams from all over that were accessible from a browser, but I’m fairly certain the owners had no idea they were open to the internet. This must’ve been late 90s/early 00s.
Those still exist. You can still find some using a search-engine.
insecam.org is one, although they intentionally remove indoor webcams.
Ah! That would make more sense!
Edit: did a bit of research, and there were defintely some intentional live streamers, but maybe aiside from those couple of people, the rest were just a reminder of the importance of ip security.
Shout out !owncast@lemmy.world 🤷🏼
my friend had one of these in high school until he forgot about it and wacked off one time
“Camera’s been on the whole time huh?”
Uh huh, forgot. :p
One of the longest running webcams I know of:
https://multimedia.panama-canal.com/Webcams/miraflores.html
I remember back in the early 2000s, I was in school and decided to checkout this webcam, and I caught it right as the sun rose, is was really cool at the time
Twitch has life streams all over the place.
Do they just stream their day to day life though? I’ve never really used twitch, but I thought it was mostly folks doing specific sessions of playing a game or drawing a picture or something, not just streaming 24/7 as they live life.
There are many streamers who stream somewhat daily things. But the streamers are content creators - they interact with the viewers and choose their activities such that it is likely to be interesting to watch.
So, I’d give it a try if I was you. But probably not exactly what you are looking for.
Thanks for the info! But honestly, I’m not looking to watch anyone. I just remember it being a thing people talked about in the past, and wondering if people still did it or if social media had replaced it. As a piece of culture, I find it intriguing - but I’m the sort to watch YouTube at double speed because of impatience, no way I’m sitting through any sort of stream, let alone a pointless one.
Im sure this isnt what you are looking for but it reminded me that there’s a video where Snoop was live streaming him playing a video game, says his good eyes when he is done playing, then forgets to sign out of the live streaming and left it on for for like a day and a half lol
There are quite a few TikTok live streamers. Often hobbyists that chat while knitting or painting or doing crossword puzzles. I’ve seen a few that seemed like they were just in the middle of their day, but I didn’t stick around to find out.
