Jennifer Ringley started off Jennicam when she stumble upon the new technology webcam and wanted to try and challenge herself on the programming skills in 1996. Jennicam originally it was only for her family and friends and suddenly it when viral when one of the Australian news wrote an article about the website.
Her webcam would take a photo of her bed room every 15 min and automatically post it on her website. One of the things I am really amazed was her openness about publicly broadcast her private life even when she was changing or having intimacy with her partner. However, she was portraying her real life in real just like how she would react in real life. What I mean was nowadays, the celebrity who was on frame and off the frame would act differently or not as what we have seen. Even us, we indeed have a certain image that we want others to perceive.
Jennifer also mention that:
“I’m not going to deny that there is a certain amount of insecurity that goes along with being 19 years old. It’s natural to be seeking approval, but I also tried not to listen too hard to the feedback that was either really good or really bad.”
It really do matter to me how people would say about me even though I know we should just being ourselves. I agree with Jennifer way of doing, tired not to listen too hard to the feedbacks because I am the only one who know what are the things I wanted to achieve. She also mention one of the reason why she has stopped broadcasting in a podcast interview was she felt she was exhausted and she develop thick skins for good stuff and bad stuff. She still wants to connect with people and not to distrust strangers. From this I feel that she has reach the extreme point where she had received lots of comment either good or bad. In order to protect herself she in turn subjectively look at these criticism, which this protective layers prevents her to get connected with others and having this distrust.
One of the interesting points she mention in the interview was there is this guy who feel like a loser when he was doing his laundry at home emailed her that he felt better that someone was doing exactly the same thing as him as she is so popular. Jennifer finds is comforting that she was showing someone that is okay to just being themselves. Which this bring me to think about the host from Letterman’s late show said about how people feeling lonely and desperate might be the reason why they wanted to see someone’s life taking place. This kept me thinking if technology really are the one that creates the barrier between us when this problem already happen way before when social media became popular. However I really like the aspect that through this platform someone felt better after he know that actually we are all the same as human.
In overall, Jennifer giving up her privacy at a very young age to a point where she develop thick skin or even has problem connecting with people. In the podcast interview she also mention about the danger of living in public the way we do now when the public would usually over react to the things that is posted. Yet another aspect of it brings comfort to people when Jennifer was broadcasting her real mundane life. Jennicam also reflects the differences of how she put up her real life during the early days if internet and how the current society only portray the good stuff in our social media. There are various of reasons of why and how we crafted the image but most importantly we shouldn’t have expectation or definition of what success are based on what others has posted as that was just a small portion of their life.
Reference:
http://web.archive.org/web/19991013013338/http://jennicam.org:80/gallery/index15.html
http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/patient-zero-of-the-selfie-age-why-jennicam-abandoned-her-digital-life/news-story/539cd1b26016fcee1a51cfca3895a7b5
Excellent essay. You made me realize that in fact JenniCam was a project that Jennifer Ringley used to essentially find herself through connection with others. Perhaps since there was no social media in 1996, she literally had to invent a platform that allowed her to be in constant connection. It was like she created her own Facebook!
This was an interesting comment you made:
This is what got me thinking about how we all adapt ourselves to the communications platforms of the day to be connected socially with others, whether it be letters, telegrams, radio, television, telephone, Internet, mobile devices, etc. We always depend on platforms to gain a strong sense of ourselves.
Excellent essay, it really made me think!