TechWag

: Image by feastoffun via Flickr

The new rage, stop blogging start life streaming is great if you have a life. If you don’t have a life, or you do not want to live on a public stage, then life streaming might not be right for you.

Life streaming is quickly becoming the euphemism for people who are tweeting about their lives today, so thanks for sharing that you had a latte this morning, and that your car was starting rough (you really should get those belts checked on your car), or that your darling snow flake turned over for the first time today, or that you are married to a swimsuit model but are looking because the relationship is just not hitting it right lately. In the mean time, there will be more and more people sharing the small little things in life, that really in the grand scheme of things do not and cannot amount to very much. In my opinion, life streaming is for people with lives that do not change the world.

Interestingly enough, Steve Rubel (who I do like and is worth following/listening to) has posted an interesting life streaming workflow graphic on his web site. The small problem with that is he has capture, but no production. You have to produce something to capture, some of us produce blogs, and some of us produce videos, pictures, and podcasts. Some of us do all of the above at various times of the week, but do I really care if someone is on a photo shoot, no not really. Some of us have complex enough lives that we are at least somewhat interesting to follow, but at some point, you still have to produce content that engages someone. Great to share, great to life stream if your life and thoughts are interesting enough, but without the initial production, life streaming isn’t going to go very far.

What would strike me as interesting though is if life streaming becomes a circular reference to the Jerry Springer show. We all have our ups and downs, and while the Jerry Springer show could be considered the bottom for some of life’s more interesting events, the Jerry Springer show provides entertainment. If you want your life to provide entertainment, then there you go, life streaming all your thoughts, and the incessant inanity of what you do every day might be entertaining for some, but in the longer run, I think we are all going to find out how incredibly boring we all are. “Breaking news: 100’s of people life streaming that they are surfing porn right now! Catch the news on Fox news as we talk about “porn addiction and life streaming, has America finally hit bottom”.

The sad part of life streaming, and if you look at Tweeting Too Hard you get an idea of where I am going here is that some of us are relentlessly self centered, some of us are open minded, some of us are not. Life streaming might be interesting if we lead interesting lives, but if we do not lead interesting lives (and mine really isn’t that interesting) then life streaming is going to be a bore. That is what the more interesting outcome of this is going to be, what happens when we all find out just how incredibly boring we really are. Life streaming might die before it really takes off, or we are going to focus on the drama rather than the brilliant minds around us. If TV media is any indication of where life streaming will go, the next life stream will be brought to you by some corporation somewhere.