I, Justine: An Analog Memoir Read online

  The night before the camera was scheduled to go on, Dez and I went out to celebrate (mourn?) our last night of freedom. We went to dinner at Chili’s and then to a concert to see a mutual friend’s band play. I ended up meeting a guy there named Cory, who had seen me filming this crazy woman dancing like a loon in the middle of the bar. After saying hello (to Cory, not the crazy woman), I quickly steered the conversation to Apple computers (classic Justine). As we continued chatting, I figured I might as well tell him about the project, too.

  “So starting tomorrow, I’m going to be live-streaming my entire life on the web. Every day. All the time,” I told him.

  “Wait. You’re doing what?” he said.

  I wasn’t kidding when I said that virtually everyone I told had that exact same response.

  At that moment, however, I realized the only people I had told about Justin.tv were my friends; they more or less expected this kind of thing from me. Hearing the shock from a total stranger gave me a twinge of anxiety. Maybe putting almost every detail of my life on the web wasn’t such a great idea?

  Here’s another funny thing about the Internet, though: Cory ended up casually watching the live-stream and we kept in touch (off camera, usually via email and text message), even though it would be roughly seven years before I’d see him in person again. We’re still friends to this day. In fact, he’s one of the people who encouraged me to write a book! (Thanks, Cory!) And it’s all thanks to live-streaming!

  Anyway, I didn’t have all that much time to feel weird about my decision, because the next morning I went live. Justine.tv was officially on.

  I fell into a kind of routine fairly quickly: I’d wake up and greet the chat room, say hello, ask how everyone was doing. Then I’d pop into the shower (obviously, I didn’t film that, either) and start the twenty-minute drive to Crazy Mocha, where I preferred to do the bulk of my work. Because that’s the other thing: I wasn’t getting paid to live-stream. Justin.tv, after all, was just another in a long line of start-ups—in fact, those guys were spending tens of thousands of dollars a month, essentially all of their seed funding, just to cover their Internet costs. Meanwhile, I was still trying to make ends meet by way of freelance graphic design work, video editing, and the occasional hosting gig. So every day, I’d arrive at Crazy Mocha and start unloading my “office.” Let me give you an idea of what this insanity looked like:

  1. MacBook Pro 1.16 Intel Core Duo (my personal laptop, the one I did actual editing work on)

  2. Apple Mighty Mouse

  3. Treo 700p

  4. iPhone 8G

  5. Incase Fitted Sleeve for iPhone

  6. Logitech QuickCam Fusion (mounted to the bill of my hat)

  7. Western Digital 1TB My Book external hard drive

  8. Crazy Mocha beverage

  9. Sony VAIO VGN-TVN15P (the laptop I’d received from Justin.tv, which I used mostly for streaming purposes)

  Not pictured:

  10. Canon SD800 (for still photography)

  11. Panasonic PV-GS300 3.1MP 3CCD MiniDV (for video)

  12. Integrated Sprint EVDO card

  It sort of looked as though I were operating a portable NORAD command station from that tiny Formica tabletop, doesn’t it? Some days, I’d eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner there—not to mention drink a whole lot of coffee—before eventually packing up and heading home.

  On days when I needed to be a bit more mobile, I’d just wear the camera on my hat and carry the VAIO around in my purse (the laptop was configured not to go into sleep mode when the lid was closed).

  A peek at the Justin.tv chat rooms—I was live-streaming from Crazy Mocha.

  Now for a couple of unexpected consequences of live-streaming, right off the bat: I slept with music on in those days (usually the gentle, soothing melodies of the nineties alt-rock band Tool, if you’re wondering). Apparently, however, sleeping with music on is deceptive, because some of the viewers were so convinced that something was wrong with me that they started calling my parents’ (then-listed) phone number.

  “Is Justine dead?!” they’d ask. “We think she’s dead.”

  My mother would have to explain that her daughter wasn’t dead, she was just sleeping late.

  Courtesy of Scott Beale

  You would think this sort of thing would have been terrifying, that it would have completely freaked my poor parents out, but that’s where the second unintended consequence of live-streaming comes in: it turns out that broadcasting yourself twenty-four hours a day gives a parent unfettered access to what his or her child is doing. (Who knew?) Since I was only twenty-three and hadn’t been out on my own for that long, my parents were still pretty protective. In fact, they didn’t just watch my Justin.tv channel, they patrolled it—it was on twenty-four hours a day in their house. Occasionally, the results were comical: like the time my mom called and told me not to buy the bathing suit I had just tried on—the one I was still holding in my hands—because my sister already owned the exact same one. Other times, though? Not so much. Like the time I was in Atlanta, drinking in a bar, and my mother called to yell at me for being out so late. “You don’t know those people!” she said. “And you’re drinking! You shouldn’t be doing that!”

  Eventually, if I was planning on being out late and/or drinking, my backup battery would conveniently “die” and the stream would shut down, affording me some much-needed privacy. Whoops. Sorry, Mom.

  • • •

  Despite the fact that live-streaming was a nonpaying enterprise (and I was still struggling to pay my bills), it didn’t take long before I started feeling the pressure to entertain. I tried interacting with the chat room whenever possible. If I had a freelance job I was working on, for example, I might ask the viewers for feedback: What do you think of this video? Or, how does this logo look? Some mornings, I’d poll the chat room, asking for opinions about how I should spend the day. Other times, I’d convince Dez to walk the aisles of Walmart with me, just to have a reason to get out of the house. If all else failed, I’d just sit at my desk and field questions and requests (ranging from “How many gigs is your iPod?” to “I dare you to do the Chicken Dance” to “Take your shirt off”) for hours.

  For the most part, at least in the first few weeks of live-streaming, the viewers were supportive and cordial. There were absolutely gross and inappropriate and lewd comments, too—I mean, this was the Internet—but I was generally able to ignore them. Besides, I’d had some exposure to nastiness already. The worst things in the world had been said about me during the Yahoo! Talent Show. I figured, after that, live-streaming would be a walk in the park. I thought I had developed a thicker skin.

  What I hadn’t planned on were awful, unkind comments about my friends and family, including—maybe especially—about Dez, just by virtue of the fact that she was on camera so much. It was one thing for Internet trolls to attack me—I’d signed up for this. Insulting the people closest to me, though, was a whole other thing, for which I felt both awful and responsible.

  I did have some help policing the chat room: over on Justin’s channel, some particularly loyal viewers were granted moderator status, allowing them to completely block particularly abusive or rude viewers. Some of those moderators migrated over to my channel, and I also had the ability to grant moderator status to other viewers as I saw fit. And usually there were enough kind souls out there to ensure that someone was there to stick up for and defend me round-the-clock. Over time the moderators even started to organize themselves into shifts—for no money, compensation, or recognition other than having achieved moderator status, just because they wanted to be there, to ensure things were running relatively smoothly.

  Even with the moderators, though, live-streaming would slowly begin to take its toll, not just on me, but on everyone around me. The question was: How long would I be able to hold out?

  • • •

  I had been live-streaming for only a few days—a week, maybe—when a company called Technology Evangelist offered
to fly me to the Mall of America to document the release of the original iPhone. It was June, six long months since Macworld, and I’d been dying to get one. Unfortunately, I had two hundred dollars in my checking account. I had no credit cards. There was no way I could afford one. So I agreed to cover the launch, even though I knew I wouldn’t be purchasing a phone for myself.

  This was not something I was particularly ready or willing to admit to on camera, by the way. In the world of product reviews, it’s common practice for companies to send out trial versions of their gadgets or software to editors and bloggers so they actually have something to write about—it’s hard to recommend or evaluate a product, after all, if you’ve never so much as held it in your hand, let alone used it for a while. But I didn’t have those kinds of connections. Even though I’d become an occasional host and spokesperson, even though I had a huge following on Myspace and I’d hit the five-thousand-friend limit on Facebook, there weren’t yet a lot of viable options when it came to monetizing an Internet following. Making a career out of living your life online was still just too new a concept. I had to have faith that, eventually, this whole live-streaming thing would start to pay for itself.

  But until then, I would head to Minnesota, courtesy of Technology Evangelist, where the iPhone was scheduled to go on sale at 6 p.m. I showed up relatively early in the morning and promptly got kicked out of the Apple Store (which was quickly becoming something of a habit; I’d been politely asked to leave Apple Stores in Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, New York, California, and now Minnesota, usually for unauthorized “video blogging,” this time because they were banning all “media” until the launch). By 1:30 p.m. I had decided to interview the first person waiting in line, which turned out to be a young guy named Joe Dowdell. I did what I had, by then, grown accustomed to: I immediately asked if he was on Twitter (he was not), and then I dutifully explained all the reasons why Twitter was amazing and why he should join (until he did). Then I harassed the Internet to be Joe’s friend, which seemed only fair. By three I’d been yelled at for juggling in the mall (now that I think about it, security was really tight at this thing). And by six, after spending roughly eight hours standing in a line for something I couldn’t even purchase, Joe was welcomed into the store.

  I don’t know who was more excited about the whole thing, though: Joe or me. Because he graciously agreed to perform his ceremonial “unboxing” not once but twice, so that I could film it for my live-stream and the guys from Technology Evangelist could capture the moment in HD video, but I just stood around screaming, “Oh my God, it’s so beautiful!” like an idiot. Then I announced—without even asking Joe for his opinion—that this was “the best day of his life.”

  It was another one of those strange sort of coincidences: I mean, Joe could have been a huge jerk; he could have been way too tired to participate in my silliness (since he’d been camping outside the Apple Store all day); he could have politely asked the strange girl with the camera on her head to get the hell away from him. Instead, he was willing to let us share in his fun. I’m still Internet friends with Joe to this day, and I still think about him every time I attend a new iPhone launch—and it’s all because he just happened to be the first in line for the original iPhone, and I just happened to be there to document it.

  Celebrating the iPhone launch with Joe at the Mall of America, June 29, 2007.

  I flew back home to Pittsburgh, deliriously happy, only to find another surprise waiting: the people at Technology Evangelist had taken pity on me. They had bought me my very own iPhone.

  • • •

  So, I was kind of starting to get the hang of this live-streaming thing. In fact, sometimes I even found it helpful. In the period immediately following the release of the iPhone, I was rarely home for more than a few days at a time—I was traveling nonstop, to Los Angeles and San Francisco (usually for Justin.tv-related press, though sometimes to meet up with other tech companies, including the folks from Revver); down to Texas to shoot with xTrain; to Atlanta for something called the HOW Design Conference (also with xTrain); to New York to check out the Live Earth concert—and every time I hit the road, the chat room ended up being of unexpected assistance. For example, when I was sitting at the airport waiting for my flight to Minnesota, I didn’t realize I was at the wrong gate until members of the chat room alerted me. (Because I am a forgetful person, I also asked for help locating my car in the parking garage when I got back to Pittsburgh.) On the drive to New York, I kept trying to use Google Maps, but the technology wasn’t what it is today (that’s a nice way of saying it pretty much sucked), so I utilized directions from my Internet friends. I still rely on the Internet—and I don’t mean websites or social media platforms, but the actual people—to this day. Whenever I’m headed out of town, I ask for recommendations on things to do and see—it’s like running a real-time web search, only better. It’s crowdsourced.

  Of course, there were a number of ways in which live-streaming was also starting to make life difficult, to put it mildly. For one thing, I was lugging around a ridiculous amount of equipment—extension cords and a power strip, in addition to my usual haul. TSA agents were actually starting to recognize me as I unpacked my carry-on bags at the security line. And then there was the time things got really scary.

  I was headed back home from New York. I boarded the plane without incident, turning off my streaming equipment before takeoff. The flight was uneventful, until we landed. Just as the cabin door opened, one of the flight attendants got on the loudspeaker: “Is there a Justine Ezarik here?” she asked.

  I slowly raised my hand. “Um, yes?”

  “Will you please stand up?” she said. “We’re going to escort you off the plane now.”

  A sky marshal appeared out of nowhere, and I was immediately sick to my stomach. I couldn’t figure out what I had done, but I knew it was bad—and it had to be something related to the live-stream. For all I knew, it was illegal to film at an airport. As I was being walked down the Jetway, into the terminal, it occurred to me that I was going to be led into some kind of private interrogation room. I didn’t know what would happen when they got me in there so I started emphatically insisting that I needed to go to the bathroom.

  I was halfway in the ladies’ before I was booting up my laptop with one hand and trying to find Justin Kan’s contact info in my new iPhone with the other. He answered on the second ring.

  “Listen,” I said frantically, “I didn’t do anything, but I need you to wipe whatever I might have filmed at the airport from the Justin.tv servers.”

  “What?” he said.

  “Just delete it!!” I screamed at him. “I don’t care what you have to do, get rid of it. I think I’m in trouble.” Meanwhile, I was busy trying to wipe any evidence off my computer’s hard drive. (Which is stupid, of course, because any information I “deleted” could easily have been recovered.)

  I threw my computer back together, splashed some water on my face, and came back out to face my interrogators. We continued to the dreaded little room, and a couple of airport employees started pummeling me with questions: Who are you? What were you filming? Who were you talking to? What were you doing? Obviously, someone must have seen me back in New York and thought talking to my computer and filming the airport seemed suspicious.

  At first I tried to avoid saying anything about Justin.tv, but I realized that if they so much as googled me, they’d only wonder why I was lying. So, I began carefully trying to explain: “Well, I do this live-stream stuff? I make videos and put them online?”

  This only seemed to confuse them further. “Well, who’s watching it?” one of them asked.

  “Um, people?” I said. “On the Internet?”

  I was not helping myself.

  After another hour or so of questioning—mostly along the lines of Why would anyone want to watch a stranger on the Internet all day long?—they finally let me go.

  Looking back, I now know that security would have been heightened a
s a result of the 2007 London terror bombings—which could have been the cause for the suspicion relative to what I was doing. However, I have a blond-haired, blue-eyed friend who lives in Iceland; she got stopped so often at airport security that she finally freaked out one day and asked what was going on. A polite TSA representative explained, in a very matter-of-fact tone, that she fit their profile of an international drug smuggler. She dyed her hair brown the next day, and hasn’t been stopped at airport security since. So, maybe that’s what was going on? All I know for sure is that no one has ever questioned me again, and I film in airports all the time. I think about that day every time I whip my camera out, though—I’m telling you, it was so scary, I didn’t even tweet about it.

  • • •

  Back home in Pittsburgh, I was either at the coffee shop or, increasingly, finding weird and interesting things to do on the live-stream. Some of my friends, meanwhile—in particular CJ and Anthony—had grown more and more interested in “helping,” though probably to unexpected results. CJ, for example, got a little overexcited and revealed his private phone number online. Like, just to see what would happen. Years later he would tell me he was still getting random, middle-of-the-night phone calls from people.