I know what you’re thinking: the world of webcams will always make us look at Live Jasmin, Cam4, My Free Cams, Chaturbate and its varieties, whether or not you’re going as far as inputting your credit card on it or if you’re just gonna scroll to see what it’s about. Try sticking to that innocent scroll, though: it’s hard not to be compelled by the world of adult entertainment in its live performances, but is that what we’re talking about when we think of cameras, in the general picture? A lot of people will say that no, it’s not. And it matters to take a look at why such an inconvenience was brought upon users of all ages and social backgrounds.

When the world knew photography, it was a movement that had explored a lot of possibilities in painting and wanted to bring something completely new to the artistic production scope. While it was only in small scale that the 19th century daguerreotypes were used, painters had new ways of expression in the waves of modernism and literature was abandoning romanticism to replace it with realism, later developing a sense that the social attributes and observable characteristics were not supposed to be a history lesson, but a depiction of life as it is; many authors found a way already paved by realist prose to put into pages an even more “realistic” dialogue, for example, with words that were prohibited for decades in the 20th century. Film made impressive impact, and television became a post-war necessity. Needless to say, editorials at traditional newspapers became more and more comprised of urgency but felt, when hitting commercial peaks, the need to inform but also entertain. Literature was shared in it, and by the end of the 20th century, we had crossword puzzles, color pictures, jobs available and opinion pieces, the latter a forgotten genre now that everyone compresses their thoughts into social media posts.

But speaking of social media, we saw the rise of social networking. That’s prior. Before I uploaded a video to YouTube, in order to be consumed by any potential viewer (and I wish I could fast-forward, but I’d have to check in with an insider), I had interactions between people in private fashion. It was like giving out your phone number, a scene so overused in the movies that it’s not funny anymore, to the guy at the bar stand. Now, thanks to technology, we can sit at Starbucks and scroll Tinder (please don’t). But these magnificent minds of the 21st century really thought that was the direction where people were going, and that it would be all fun and joyful to have an “open playground” for everyone. Except that some early content creators started to take things more seriously, invested in their production skills, and became legit broadcasters — like the ones we saw on traditional media. Now, if they wanted to do a music review or sit and play video games, that was a different story; but some of them even started to comment politics and make callings to the public, the subscriber base. That sometimes had a backlash like “stick to your topic”. They’ve learned their lessons, and everything else is today’s marketing 101.

By that, I mean automated processes of previewing the impact of a marketing campaign, with a target audience with specialized demographics and goals to be achieved, lists to be made and welcome messages to be sent. The massification of media is not new. It’s how it started. Well, not in the core history of it, considering how people get philosophical about the term, but in essence and practical terms. And so, in the words of Brian Solis, a guy I came across on Twitter some time during university, the internet became a “many-to-many model”. But context added, he’s in marketing, and he was talking about marketing. I challenge his view, although this quote is from his book “Engage” (2010), and say that now, more than ever, we need private conversations to be our safe space. But people will disagree.

The fact that the internet broke so many of our expectations in terms of relationships and their critical dissolution, one hurtful story after another, with slight hints of excitement and disappointment balanced accordingly, made us all a little confused. And the phenomenon of gazing at the other, over live camera, was fascinating. Beautiful. Mesmerizing. To die for. Except that, sooner or later, we would come back to reality, where people on the street don’t look at your face in the crowded city, and everyone has things to do that are absolutely unrelated to your lived experience — nobody knows, nobody cares, and if you’re honest about it, you’d rather let it stay like that.

Because what’s the opposite? The Zoom call phenomenon? Maybe that’s what we’ve witnessed. The requirements became more sophisticated, for lack of a better wording. If we’re radicals, managers were being bitches. But I mean, is that semiotically valid? What is certain is that more factors were taken into consideration when you were applying for a job, and it got really hard, really fast (in case people didn’t notice because, I don’t know, they were busy calling someone a monkey on the internet). And with broadcasting, that was felt in many different ways. The meeting was suddenly remote, but also unnecessary. Education, not on a pivot from this or that guy, became distance learning. But have we learned about the distance that separates us or are we trying to make a needlessly hypercritical point about the tech space, everyone’s favorite past time ever since they were introduced to the world of academia?

I have to say that seeking live interaction from your college dorm was a high risk. But man, I had fucking fun. And it didn’t matter that the connection was terribly slow, that sometimes I had to tangle uncovered wires in my plug to turn on the computer and lay down on a specific position (yes, and you wouldn’t believe it, that was some Horny MacGyver shit), and the pixels were not there at all, there were glitches, and it’s like my brother trying to use a cheap antenna signal capturer to watch open TV today: lots of cuts in the transmission. But I still did it, for the love of it. I was meeting people who fucking mattered. And while they were not so enthusiastic at times about the prospects of getting on a call with me, I was always rushed with adrenaline, and so genuinely pleased to be able to talk to a foreigner.

But then came the question of culture. What is or has been normalized in some, isn’t or hasn’t in others. This is a point of friction, or rather, collision, for many across the world. Whether it’s the moderation practices that are local or the network’s security and your configurations, which are a part of your experience because you’ve had to do some amount of research in order to be safe, and you did your best, but still struggle, there’s always a problem. The reply that never comes. The misinterpretations. The lack of commitment. The lack of basic care and attention. The lack of fucks to give, if you disappear one day or they do. And that has been artificially inputted in the internet experience: like a hologram, people are there for you, sometimes at your disposal, sometimes telling you what to do, and then they’re not there at all. Their bodies were never there. But there’s a weird feeling when you hop off a call. Like getting on a bus to see another city, and literally get off out of the air conditioner and noise cancellation, suddenly smelling the sea and feeling the breeze, with some cars passing by, and buses, and people who are just taking a slow walk, and haven’t traveled 80 kilometers.

For the professional broadcaster, on a model of one-to-many, things are a little bit different. Sitting at home, they need to invest, like said earlier. And they put on their best show, whatever kind it may be (now might be a good time to reminiscence of the sites mentioned at the beginning of this blog, but maybe hang on a second). Think Tumblr. Think Twitch. Think YouTube. Think TikTok, and Instagram. Think You Now. God knows, I tried a platform once called “Woo Me”. The idea was to match you up with people and if they accepted your request to call, you’d be in a standardly limited to one minute conversation that could easily lead somewhere else. It comes down to saying: “Hi, I’m Ivo, I work as a teacher, and I do some other stuff, I have a lot of projects. How old are you? I’m 34.” Wow. A normal guy. How awesome, isn’t it? But ask India.

Not everyone may be so enlightened, but allow me to share a perspective: India is a developing country, part of the BRICS block. One and a half billion people live there, topping the entire American continent, from North to South, combined. The sense of urgency that a person from India might feel is much more different than a New Yorker. These people don’t have basic plumbing, and in many cases, food to eat. The phenomenon that technology became available to them is a question of, maybe, manufacturing, and definitely, castes, a historical observation better made by a specialist. But these people are seeking connection. It’s shocking that so many people overlook the Indian situation, with literate people saying “how are you bro” and trying to make new friends because that’s all they have. Or at least, a very common distraction. They have hard lives, and most of them are desperate. Eventually, you meet a tech wiz. But that’s gonna be a case out of many thousands. The Indian haven’t experienced broadcasting culture like the Americans, and neither have Brazilians. But there are a lot less people in Brazil. It would be interesting to see a comparison established between the two countries that didn’t take religion as a main takeaway, but again, that’s up to someone else to debate.

Americans, however, experience broadcasting culture in daily life. There’s always a call. There’s always someone to watch. Did I mention that there are adult websites that specialize in this? Anyway. It might be just two people making company to each other. Telling each other dumb jokes. Making fart noises over the webcam. Or maybe doing full on ASMR. The free world is the free world, man. It has a reputation. But as it turns out, so do people. And it matters to say, given a state of things where adults feel annoyed by younger people and older adults feel annoyed by younger adults, that conversations need to happen.

Maybe that’s why people are investing in one-to-many models. Someone is trained, and speaks to a wider audience. They can interact, but that is limited and moderated. There are rules to follow, identification and accountability. If you want to take this debate further, watch the film Brazen. If not quite there, maybe look at how teenagers interact online. But here’s the newsflash (and I think this is just a hilarious expression, because what flash? This is kept in the dark at all costs!): if you wanna know what teenagers are doing, you have to actually talk to them and see for yourself. Crazy, right?

On a closing note, I’d like to say that it’s probably good that people can interact in real time, and develop a sense of intimacy with someone they admire. But becoming a broadcaster requires a lot of preparation. Podcasters decided to do video. They didn’t wanna call it a talk show, and “broadcast” would feel wrong; so the anomaly term “videocast” started to be used. This is where a lot of bets are placed, to the point where YouTube and Spotify had a clash for audiences, an old conflict from the world of music. But Spotify had the new thing. YouTube then just showed the way for creators, but with that, it highlighted the work of very well-prepared, but still underrepresented people in traditional media, and transformed the landscape a little bit. he general public? We’re still thinking of a one on one. We don’t always have many things to share for a whole hour, with carefully designed pauses for advertisements. There’s no advertisements in camming. Think about that. Think about it with care.