Screenshots of Hall Cooking
So I decided to broadcast a live show of me cooking lunch in my hall room.
Lunch menu: Onion, tomato & pepper stir-fried chicken, kailan, hard-boiled egg and bread.
Initially I found it hard to hold the phone and cook at the same time, so after painstakingly taking a couple of screenshots, I took a few minutes to find a place where I could mount my phone and show me cooking. It felt weird, knowing that people were just watching you cook. It felt weird because it felt like an intrusion, but at the same time they had been invited to watch, so it isn’t actually an intrusion.
However, after a while I began to feel responsible for putting on a good show for them; after all, they were my audience and they were giving me their own personal time.
After I ended my broadcast, I decided to explore other people’s broadcasts. Here is one screenshot that I took:
The feeling this time was very different; I felt curious, intrigued at what people were broadcasting. It seems to me that either the sharing culture is very different overseas or that people are simply much more outspoken online than in real life. I noticed that people will comment on a wide variety of things. For example, one post was titled “Making breakfast”, and people were asking whats for breakfast, or commenting on the different foodstuffs that the broadcaster was showing. I felt like rather voyeuristic, somewhat like a peeping tom. However, I think that it’s great that people are able to feel comfortable talking to complete strangers and perhaps after using these social apps long enough, I too will feel comfortable in other stranger’s shared spaces.
September 16, 2015 at 4:36 pm
Its interesting you said that you have to put up a good show! it seems that you are actually care what people think of your content, i guess this is how reality tv actors do feel. Interesting and maybe one day you can cook for me Esmond.
September 16, 2015 at 6:33 pm
Yes, Kamarul also found this need to be responsible to the viewer to provide an engaging broadcast. But maybe it’s just a matter of sharing. How engaging are Facebook posts? Often rather mundane and sometimes it seems the more mundane the more popular they are, like when someone just says: “I’m sad.” They end up receiving numerous likes because people sort of fill in the blinks. Esmond, I am curious if you were able to see any of the comments from the audience while you were cooking, how many people were watching?
September 17, 2015 at 7:33 am
Unfortunately I think I only managed to attract a total of 5 viewers during my entire broadcast (which was 15 minutes long) and I think I only had a maximum of 2 viewers at one time. But no, I didn’t see any comments, mostly because my phone was perched somewhere else but I think more because no one found my piece interesting enough to comment on! Maybe I should have chosen a more interesting title.