2009-06-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

I started streaming my life over the Internet because I felt like it would force me to become a better person. I started a live video feed from a camera that I could clip onto my shirt, or hat, and it would capture a first person perspective of everything I was doing. I started a website where the video would stream 24/7 and anyone could go and watch and I put up a chat room for people who wanted to talk to each other about whatever was going on in my life at the time.

When I started the most part I stayed in doors and sat in front of my computer doing my homework or reading. I liked the reading thing because I could position the camera so that anyone watching could read the pages of whatever book I had in my hands and everyone could follow along. I went to all of my classes and I went to work. I came home each night and got ready for bed and then went to sleep. I felt like I was being productive. I didn’t want anyone to see the ways that I used to waste my time and my money. I was more conscious of what I bought at the grocery store and of what I ate and how much I drank. There were nights when I would get home from class or work and have nothing to do. These are the times that I normally would have gone over to a friend’s house, but now I didn’t want to. I felt like the situation would be out of my control and I also didn’t want to run the risk of any of my friends finding out what I was doing. I tried to keep it a secret from everybody who knew me in real life so I could get better reactions from them in the end, once I felt I had become a better person.

I got pretty lonely during this time and I started sitting at home drinking by myself. I tried to conceal whatever I was drinking. I would intentionally block the camera’s view as I poured bourbon into a plastic cup and then pretended it was iced tea. This ended up being a very bad idea. I started staying up late like this and I would eventually get onto my own website and be depressed at the small number of people logged on and how the majority of those watching where in the chat room talking about how boring and stupid my life was and that they felt sorry for me. They threatened to never watch again if things didn’t start getting interesting.

People didn’t want to see me being a good person, or at least a responsible person. I felt like I had ruined that already anyways with all of the drinking. I had started over sleeping and missing class and showing up late for work. I decided to go to a bar where nobody who knows me would ever go. I walked there and I tried to point the camera in the direction of some interesting things on the way. There was some art displayed in the window of a vacant storefront. I panned the camera in front of the window and then kept on walking. I got to the bar, had my ID checked at the door and headed out to the patio. It was a warm early late spring night and the outdoor area was packed with guys in pastel colored polo shirts and girls in short denim skirts and sorority tee shirts.

I ordered a beer and stood against a tree. I downed my drink in a few large gulps and tossed the bottle into a trashcan and ordered a second. I drank that one slower while scanning the crowd around me. I was hoping the people watching on their computers liked this a little more. I didn’t find it particularly exciting. I hadn’t been to a bar in awhile, especially since I had begun the whole self-improvement thing and this bar was not one I had ever been to before and thought I would ever have a reason to enter. There was a group of four people standing nearby; I think it was two couples. They were talking about cramming for finals and how the semester had flown by. They were annoying me. I was finishing my beer and I was ready to leave but I felt that if I left then I would be letting down my audience and myself.

“Hey, dude, you all right?” one of the guys asked. I think I might have been staring.

“Yeah, sorry.” I drank the last bit of my beer, centered my camera on the guy who had just talked to me and I swung my beer bottle at him, breaking it over his head. It didn’t seem to do anything. I jabbed at him with the broken end of the bottle that was still in my hand and it bought me enough time to turn and run. I hopped the small fence surrounding the patio and I ran home. The camera was running the entire time and I made it all the way home. I heard police sirens, but I was home safe, and nobody there knew me and it was too dark and crowded for anyone to get a real good look at me. I felt I was safe and I checked the website and the chart room was packed and they were going wild. Somebody from the chat room threatened to call the police on me. They knew who I was. That guy started getting called a pussy and to fuck off and I think he did eventually, and the cops never came knocking at my door.

2009-05-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

internet superstar