I Was Just Intimate With One Thousand People | Victor Varnado Public Diary
She’s never heard my voice but I still feel like we’re friends. I recently met a woman online. Actually, I can’t assure you that our interaction qualifies as “meeting.” Her name is GinaSowaPratt and she just played a concert from her bedroom in front of five thousand people all over the world. I was one of them. I watched this previously unknown to me 20-year-old singer do covers and original songs on her ukelele.
I’m using a free video broadcast service called Camfrog. It allows anyone to just sign on and start a broadcast to their millions of users who are on the app just waiting for a broadcast to happen.
Full disclosure, I was hired by Camfrog to broadcast on their service. I use it to virtually hang out with people and take them to shows and activities with me. Recently I played pool with a bartender (Jasmine Sid) while 900 people watched.
Watched.
Most people on Camfrog silently watch whatever is happening while only a few actually send messages to the broadcasters. The result is that most broadcasters have the time to respond to every message individually. It creates a sense of false intimacy. (I’m calling it false intimacy because I am afraid of it being real intimacy.)
For expedience, let's call them watchers, talkers, and broadcasters to separate, those that only view from those that message.
The simplest way I can explain it is this. You know when a great conversation or even a mundane one is going on at the next table in a restaurant and you are listening too intently and suddenly the people look at you? It feels like that except people are inviting you to eavesdrop instead of becoming enraged.
Sometimes it feels like eavesdropping because it’s a live feed. Like when GinaSowaPratt casually discusses what's for dinner with her off-screen boyfriend.
Not everyone is so popular online. Some people just seem to start a broadcast and “hang out” knowing that eventually, people are going to just stop by. There was a Santa Claus style bearded dude just chilling on his couch. I told him his beard was fantastic, he gives me a quick “Thank you.” and I was off to see what else was going on.
If I were to guess, this is what I think people get out of the platform.
BROADCASTERS
Broadcasters get attention. Whether you’re a singer who is trying to gather fans or just a guy who’s bored at home, you can go live and know for sure that people are going to stop by and hang out for at least a while.
TALKERS
Talkers, I think, get attention from someone whom they admire in front of others who admire the same person. I recognize that it’s silly but the simple fact that GinaSowaPratt would chit chat with me between songs made me feel special. It didn't matter to me that she was just as polite to anyone else who had the courage to speak up. It still felt cool.
WATCHERS
Watchers (Get your minds out of the gutter) — Watchers I think could range from who knows what people are doing in their own homes to people who just keep the app on in the background as room noise. But there is something more to listening when you know there is a real person on the other end, right?
It’s been around for like a decade apparently but I just found out about it and I’m guessing that there are some of you in the same boat. If you decide to check it out please follow VictorVarnadoNYC.
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Victor Varnado is a brilliant writer and comedian who always authors his own bylines. Following the rule of threes, his work has appeared on Comedy Central, Vice, and Marvel Comics. You can catch up with him weekly on his podcast Six Unseemly Questions and you should also follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
