Wednesday night, after he posted a suicide note on the Web, he overdosed on pills on camera as users of Justin.tv, a lifecasting site, watched. Some posted comments egging Biggs on. When he took the pills and stopped moving, they laughed, expecting his corpse to revive and announce it was all a joke. No one called the police until hours had passed. They kept watching as officers came to the scene and verified his death. Even then, commenters wrote "OMFG" and "LOL."

NewTeeVee, an online-video industry publication, called the incident a "a striking display of the power of live video." The power, but definitely not the glory: It shows how the viewers of lifecasting devalue life. Users of sites like Justin.tv have grown accustomed to watching people mug for the camera. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women on webcams are merely players. But what happens when we're not playing around?

Justin.tv CEO Michael Seibel, in a statement, didn't comment on the video, merely noting the site's policy for removing content flagged as "objectionable." The digital record of Biggs's death is just bits on a server. What about the users who cheered Biggs on as he performed a snuff film? Can we flag them, too? There will always be teenagers who try to kill themselves in awful ways. But one would hope the audience would not applaud.

As a nearby source explains:

Justin got introduced to some guy sitting down and quickly started yelling and waving his arms. Justin accused the guy of stealing his broadcasters, using words like "incessant" and "out of control". Justin then said something about "staying off his fucking site" or that he'll just "break the guy's face", with his fists clenched. The guy just sat there pretty calmly and simply asked Justin for more than 1 example of content poaching. After Justin stumbled to answer the guy continued to say "this is not worth my time." Stumped, Justin kind of gave up, apologized, and walked away embarrassed.

More photos of Kan, Julia Allison, Sarah Lacy, and other afterpartiers:

At August, things got crowded up real fast. There were more women in the crowd this year, a change from sausagefests past. But they were hardly breaking Valley gender barriers. The marketers at the Plista booth lamented that their competitors were getting attention by hiring cute girls to serve free beer. (I still don't remember what Plista does.) A fellow with an accent — possibly a put-on — asked Yahoo Tech Ticker cohost Sarah Lacy if she worked in PR, because "you're so pretty." Here's Lacy's account of the conversation:

Dude: "You girls are really lovely you must work in PR."
Lacy: "Did you really just say that? That's incredibly insulting. Never say that to a woman in any business setting."
Dude: "No, I just mean because every pretty girl I've met here is in PR."
Lacy: "Yes, I know what you meant. that's why it's insulting. It's like assuming a woman in an office is a secretary."
Dude: "Blah blah."
Lacy: "You know what? There's a lot of people i actually want to talk to here." (walks off)

He came up to me TWICE after that, interrupting conversations to apologize.

Lacy: "Look, I don't care dude. just don't ever say it again because it's textbook insulting."

Everyone was mesmerized by Julia Allison, the former Star editor-at-large (read: TV spokesperson) turned Wired covergirl. That is, if you were important enough to warrant a conversation with her. Once the 30 seconds of polite time she gives you is up she'd turn free agent and could easily be stolen by somebody like Facebook's Dave Morin. Speaking of being mesmerized, rap impresarios MC Hammer and Chamillionaire showed up as well. They mingled amongst the geek kids talking about tech and rap while the Olds just guffawed at the entire thing from afar.

As the party wound up and the business-card-swapping got all the more frantic, Duck9's Larry Chiang put his afterparty plan into motion. His brilliant scheme: Send the entrepreneurs a URL with an invite to the Four Seasons Palo Alto and misdirect the venture capitalists with an otherwise identical invite to the Westin — a plausible location, since that was where Chamillionaire was staying. For non-VCs, the choice came down to Chiang's pool party at the Four Seasons, or Julia Allison's expedition to the Cheesecake Factory with Randi Zuckerberg, the nerd chanteuse and sister of Facebook CEO Mark. I crashed the pool party. I like to think I made the right decision for Valleywag readers.

At the Seasons, we saw Brian Solis working the crowds like a pro. Justin Kan of Justin.tv enjoying the jacuzzi in his underwear surrounded by girls. Shira Lazar mingled with Michael Arrington (perhaps prepping for an interview). And I even witnessed Jason Baptiste of Publictivity pitch a movie deal to Sarah Lacy based on her book. Michael Cera to play Zuckerberg anyone?

Which brings us to a tweak in Arrington's business model. Michael, instead of charging sponsors for booths at the party party, why not sell sponsorships at the afterparty? I don't remember any of the companies who paid for my attention on Sand Hill Road. But the scenes of Silicon Valley's finest stumbling around at poolside? Burned into my memory.

However, signing distribution deals with American big leagues is rather more complicated — and expensive. The leagues have preferred to own their own Web outlets. Major League Baseball has nearly a decade of experience doing just that. Justin.tv's enablement of real-time piracy will not win it many clubhouse friends. And ultimately, why would anyone pay to watch crappy Flash video when they can get HD over satellite and cable? (Photo by miss karen)

How would you do it without causing problems (ie people thinking you're up for sale)?

You can read others' "exclusive" posts with lots of fantastic-sounding statistics about how well Justin.tv is doing. Short version: the site has 57 years worth of video that no one will ever watch in its archives. Too bad those bloggers didn't bother to count the hours of improperly streamed videos. We suspect investors and potential advertisers, not to mention MLB and NBA attorneys, would be a lot more interested in that figure.

Michael Siebel, Justin.tv:

Justin.tv is the biggest live video startup with the most traffic, the most registered users, and the best community. But it wasn't easy to get to the top spot. There are many hard problems to building and scaling a live video site and Yahoo Live is going through those pains currently. I think YouTube will face similar challenges.

YouTube's reported plans to move into live video is important validation for the market and will bring more awareness to the ways live video is changing the way people access media online. Ustream.TV has been singularly focused on live video broadcasting for more than a year now, and has built a large base of regular, compelling broadcasters who use our simple, reliable and robust platform to stream compelling, event-based content to a broad range of audiences across the globe, many of which weren't before privy to such media. Our growth is further evidenced by the traction we have gained through partnerships with leading companies such as Veoh, Digg, Sun Microsystems, the Republican National Convention, Bebo and others; the 200,000 broadcasters and millions of viewers that are now using our site regularly, and the daily growth we continue to experience. We welcome YouTube to this growing market and are glad that even more consumers will have access to great live video content.

Yahoo! Advanced Products releases an internal alpha of the new video service Yahoo! Live.

Yahoo! Live is social TV, where you're the star! Create your own social broadcasting experience. Start by broadcasting yourself from your webcam, invite your friends to chat with you, they'll go live with you, and you're all on candid camera!

The service is scheduled for release in early February, but be the first to test it and tell us what you think!

Join our mailing list at http://ilist.yahoo.com/wws/info/ylive-discuss for general discussion and to announce upcoming broadcasts.

We know it's easy to get carried away once you're on camera, but a few things to keep in mind about Yahoo! Live -
- This is an internal alpha release (Yahoos only!) so it's confidential.
- The service is still in development and may undergo outages, so any data saved may be lost prior to public launch.
- The service may not be accessible if you are on a wireless connection, due to security concerns. You can work around this by setting your browser to go through a proxy server. Here's how: http://twiki.corp.yahoo.com/view/Mingle/SocksProxyHowTo. Otherwise, please use the service from a hard wired connection.

Anker, LiveJournal founder Fitzpatrick, Sup CEO Andrew Paulson and some of his Russian engineers, a passel of Six Aparters, and one slightly bewildered goat held a bash at 111 Minna to celebrate the split. Also there: Fitzpatrick's omnipresent ex, Pownce engineer Leah Culver. Culver was in good spirits, though, despite the rumor Fitzpatrick's seeing someone in Russia. She too has a new beau, Justin.tv's Kyle Vogt. We're just waiting for the inevitable Leahcast.

Culver wasn't the only camera-friendly type there. Natali Del Conte, CNET's newly hired TV personality, stole the spotlight with a sparkling appearance just as I was leaving 111 Minna.

Ezarik quickly rose to the top of the lifecasting niche, and now she's cashing in. That she's going with an unknown just shows how her own brand has outgrown all the services she uses. But will her old flames stay infatuated while she pumps up the competition? And is iJustine a strong enough commodity on her own to support a dedicated site? As her male counterpart Justin Kan can attest, achieving fame is no small task, but staying on top is a whole lot harder.

Justine claims:

I never said I was leaving jtv.. so I'm not really sure where they got that info!

Justin.tv's PG-rated guidelines restrict far more than just sex. Commenters can be banned for "sexually suggestive" comments and "acting like a complete idiot." Doesn't that sum up the site's audience? Broadcasts without the voluntary age restriction can be banned for "cursing." Any broadcast can be banned for "nudity." The typical lifecaster and his audience is going to cross all of these lines, and live broadcasts will be impossible to police. Our suggestion to Justin.tv: Drop the sex angle altogether and pay to send your users to war zones. Call it "strifecasting."

The law placed onerous requirements on producers of sexually explicit material to maintain extensive dossiers on the "actors" appearing in their content. When Justin.tv first removed a broadcast for containing sex (one half of the tandem happened to be Nick McGlynn, a staffer at Valleywag publisher Gawker Media), we argued the site was turning its back on its best chance for traffic, in a bid to attract mainstream investors. Emmett Shear, the CTO of the startup, defended the decision in the comments by claiming the startup did not have the resources to comply with the law. It was a weak argument then, and now it's entirely invalid.

At the time, Shear stated:

As for sex — there are, unfortunate as it may be, laws regarding putting sex on camera. And we don't have the resources or capability to comply with those laws. We actually can't afford to become a porn site.

Should Justin.tv become a porn site? Not that there's anything wrong with that. There are plenty of other sites, like PornoTube and YouPorn, willing to fill that niche in today's Web 2.0. When Shear said that Justin.tv couldn't afford to become a porn site, perhaps he really meant that it didn't want to tangle with the competition. With its legal shield removed, Justin.tv has been revealed as simply not up to the task.

That's what's so brilliant about Justin.tv's policy. It's a play straight out of Google's YouTube playbook. The startup can claim to do the right thing, while allowing salacious content to boost traffic, until, inevitably too late, it gets reported. In fact, we suspect there's plenty of adult content cropping up all over Justin.tv, like supposedly infertile velociraptors laying eggs. There's lastcall808 of GravTV doing gravity bong hits, for example. (Photo by Justin TV Gossip Blog)

The lifecasting site could learn to accept all that is natural about life from its Y Combinator sibling. Of course, Scribd doesn't have to comply with laws requiring extensive verification of the age of porn actors — a requirement that Justin.tv apparently believes applies to its volunteer broadcasters. And Scribd's founders may not be the best role model in other aspects of business. This is, after all, a company that foolishly promised a future management role to all of its early employees. But at least they know what their users want.

When we previously reported the removal of a broadcast showing sex acts (involving Gawker staffer Nick McGlynn), Emmett Shear from Justin.tv commented:

As for sex - there are, unfortunate as it may be, laws regarding putting sex on camera. And we don't have the resources or capability to comply with those laws. We actually can't afford to become a porn site.

Moreover, thousands of porn sites with fewer resources and more questionable material easily have the capability to comply with the law. Justin.tv's introduction of age verification is the primary requirement to allow adult content. And yet the lifecasting site will not even permit nudity.

As we said previously, Justin.tv is seeking funding and mainstream publicity. Its founders are not afraid of legal concerns; they're afraid of controversy. Porn might distract reporters from writing puff pieces like the recent New York Times article, "A Site Warhol Would Relish." Actually, I suspect that Justin.tv's flailing hypocrisy is what would really crack Warhol up.

The Y Combinator guys may be acting starstruck, but maybe its MC Hammer who's playing the fanboy here. Y Combinator's coterie of entrpreneurs could easily return the favor by providing the rapper with real video services. Everyone, including MC Hammer, knows they can. Why would the startuppers reduce the Hammer to begging for volunteers — if not to subtly put him in his place?

(SnapLayout Demo Video by Dan Veltri)

The irony, of course, is that the offending lifecaster is Gawker Media video staff member Nick McGlynn, who works for Valleywag's publisher and prepares some video clips for this site. He's also responsible for the slightly less riveting, but featured, Gawker book-party broadcast.

As a result of "sexual acts" appearing in McGlynn's live stream, Justin.tv has issued new community guidelines, which try to emphasize broadcasters' freedom to police their own streams, but ends by banning a host of activities that many would consider a part of their daily life, including "documented unauthorized real-world contact." I don't know what that means but it sounds ominous.

McGlynn, however, never imagined that a lifecasting site would restrict, you know, lifecasting. He didn't see any issue with broadcasting a stream of his own nakedness or sex with his girlfriend. McGlynn, in his own words via IM:

i didn't know it wasn't allowed, who reads the TOS anyway
haha
they should have made it more prominent, i mean if you are going to have your whole life online
half my life is spent naked
and sex is a quarter of that half
ha
i won't do it again, but seems silly that you can't

i just started it that morning
so it wasn't a big loss for me

well they should create a section for over 18 cams
it would give a more "real view" on peoples lives if they didn't have to turn the camera away durning naked times

first of all
nobody ever read TOS
ever
people just click agree
if there is something very imporant like "you can't be naked" then include that somewhere else
like a check box, saying "i agree to not be naked"

i just find it funny that everyone is making this much of a deal about it
people in america are so weird when it comes to sex and nudity
i haven't heard from them since, i don't know what repercussions there would be, they already closed my account so i can't broadcast

why not just up the age from 13 to 18 and say anything goes
if there are 13 year olds broadcasting there life on cam that is creepier than nudity anyday in my book

Kan's company is late to the lifecasting-platform game — Ustream.tv or Kyte, anyone? — and yet he remains convinced he's the Second Coming of online video. Does the Internet honestly need thousands of people lifecasting? No one can possibly be that interesting. And hundreds of companies to help them embarrass themselves in public? If this doesn't devolve into live pornographic Webcamming, it's time to move off the grid.

Scientific formula
Business + Hot Chick = Wildly Successful Business

Case Studies: The Hot Chick Tipping Point switches the polarity of male reactions, as observed in the following two case studies:

Budweiser, which it that tastes like piss water that tastes like piss:

Photos: bitte baby bitte and gbalogh on Flickr

Result: Budweiser is the world's best-selling beer.

Ron Jeremy, nicknamed "the Hedgehog" and about as sexy as one:

Photos: Ron Jeremy promo photo; Morbidthoughts on Flickr

Result: Ron Jeremy has acted in over 1900 adult films including two this year, destroying everything holy about pornography.

Hot Chick Tipping Point in Tech

Go Daddy isn't a particularly special domain registrar. It's decent, but so are plenty of others. So why is it the most used by far? Because of the Go Daddy Girl, WWE wrestler Candice Michelle.

Ha, of course, she's not the only reason Go Daddy is popular! That would be silly! There's also the sexy Super Bowl ads and the front-page endorsement by racing star Danica Patrick!

Justin.tv is popular without the aid of hot chicks, of course. The online video stream network will still benefit from adding the hot (and intelligent, witty and creative, for what that matters) chick Justine Ezarik to their line-up; she's now broadcasting at Justin.tv/ijustine. So far, chat room chatter generally focuses on her breasts, the number of hair flips per minute, and whether she's a lesbian. On the other hand, that means the network has nailed the sweet demographic of gen-Y males.

Photos: Lane Hartwell and Scott Beale

Of course, the Justin.tv network still broadcasts the life of average-looking male CEO Justin Kan. (Note: at the time of writing, the camera is off Justin and pointing at a hot chick.)

Conclusion
Business + Hot Chick = Wildly Successful Business

Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag and Look Shiny. He was unknown until he hung out with hot chicks, at which point he blew up like a skate park made of candy.

Warning: Because Justin cut his mic, his cohorts filled the silence with a NSFW audio feed from a porno. Put on some headphones.

Click To Play

Pathetic. What happened to Justin's promise to keep on the cam during sex? Here's a guess: Justin, having found a girl he really enjoys spending time with, felt he'd rather share a private moment with her than come through on his commitment with viewers.

Justin has set up a dangerous precedent over the past few days. His self-censorship has gone beyond practical measures (like disabling his microphone during a bank visit to protect his account information); Justin started disabling his microphone and/or camera during business meetings, phone calls, and now intimate moments.

What the hell? Isn't total access the point of lifecasting? It was central to earlier broadcasters like 90s camgirl Jennicam and the residents of We Live In Public's webcam-fitted warehouse. And sex tied into the philosophy behind The Real House.

The Real House, like other "Big Brother"-style live-to-web homes, offered more exhibitionism than allowed on network TV. But unlike most, the display of intimacy seemed not exploitative but invitational. For example, the Real House launched a monthly project called "Globalgasm," in which house members led Internet users around the world in an attempted simultaneous orgasm.

Real House member John "Halcyon" Styn said Globalgasm was inspired by a scene in the original Star Wars. Jedi master Obi-wan Kenobi feels the pain of an entire planet dying at once. Could one create such a force in a positive way? Viewers were invited to tune in and cum with the household.

And thus the Real House cast off the usually prurient feel, already diluted by the honesty and non-titillation of Jennicam's on-camera lovemaking, of live-to-web sex. The Real House lovefest wasn't a free porno show; it was a chance to share one of humanity's most universal pleasures. The peep show became an orgy.

And that's why Justin's cop-out is such a disappointment. Last night, my friends sent a flurry of messages on the group message system Twitter. Both men and women were thrilled at the prospect of watching Justin get it on:

These weren't lonely guys getting their rocks off. These people love watching Justin like they love watching Heroes. They liked Justin, they liked J, and they were about to share a milestone for Internet TV after rooting for their hero.

And then the screen went black.

"I actually watched the chat thread for a LONG time after the lights went out," said my friend Rex ("Fimoculous" above) about the on-site chat rooms. "It was seriously like its own show." He continued:

Mostly, it was people who were outraged, wanting to boycott... and then something funny would happen... someone from ROOM1 would drop into ROOM5 and say "We're all boycotting Justin, are you in." And everyone in ROOM5 would scream.

And then, someone showed up who allegedly knew him in real life from a long time ago, and told stories about him. and everyone ate it up.

It was just so weird to watch this while a black video stream played above. It was like a bunch of kids who didn't know what to do once the TV was turned off.

Some connection was made here, but despite Justin's shyness and less important. By retreating, Justin reinforced the idea of on-screen sex as not a shared moment but an exploitative spectator event.

The Justin.tv team plans to launch more shows; their favorite concept is a real-life "Sex in the City" character in New York. For the good of the Internet public, let's hope they find someone less like Justin and more like Halcyon and the Real Housemates.

Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Blogebrity, and Look Shiny. He would have left the camera on, but then again, he wouldn't wear it in the first place.

Blogger fandom
Justin.tv: When does Justin not have a blogger on screen? He's hung out several times with San Francisco kingpin Scott Beale (head of the web host Laughing Squid and one of the godfathers of Burning Man), videobloggers Irina Slutsky and Eddie Codel from the show Geek Entertainment TV, and, of course, me, the world's leading expert on undeserved Internet fame (I took video). He got namechecked on Leo Laporte's popular This Week in Tech podcast. And I just joined a finely written Justin-dedicated group blog.

Twitter: Let's take a look at Twitterholic, the list of Twitter users with the most followers. The aforementioned Laporte is at the top with over 4000 fans; #3 is old-school blogger Robert Scoble, then Amber Macarthur, who worked with Laporte at Tech TV, G4 TV, and TWiT. Other famous bloggers include funnyman Merlin Mann, Weblogs. Inc. founder Jason Calacanis, Lockergnome conference founder Chris Pirillo, Blogger (and Twitter) founder Biz Stone, Daring Fireball writer John Gruber, and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. And me.

Winner: Twitter

Traditional Old Dirty Media
Twitter: Newsweek asked this week if Twitter means brevity is the next big thing. BusinessWeek, in its usual manic-depressive style, conjured up a "raging Twitter debate" over whether microblogging is a leap forward or a spin out of control for the collective consciousness. CBS used the word "cyberspace," which is okay for a network that only recently retired the term "Information superhighway." The Wall Street Journal used Twitter as an example of clever thinking from an entrepreneur, explaining that founder Ev Williams dropped his startup's first product, a podcasting tool called Odeo (which the Journal says was nearly in the black) to focus on Twitter.

Justin.tv: Today Show, bitch. Justin chatted on the show live from San Francisco. He spent the rest of the day mocking the "irritating" questions like "What makes you feel comfortable?" "I dunno," he joked to a friend. "Blankets?" He's also been filmed by MTV and G4 TV and covered in a front-page SF Chronicle story.

Winner: Justin.tv

Stop asking me about
Twitter: How much we pull in. Twitter doesn't make money yet. The company doesn't get paid for all the text messages that run through it; in fact, it pays a per-message fee.

Justin.tv: What I do with my pants down. A camcorder watches me shower (but doesn't catch my junk), I tilt the camera up when I use the bathroom (sound's still on), and we haven't dealt with sex yet, but it'll probably get on camera. Haven't you already seen me naked?

How can you afford your rock-and-roll lifestyle
Twitter: Struggled with downtime under heavy use during the SXSW Interactive festival; down every week or two, usually for a few minutes to a few hours.

Justin.tv: Constantly breaking up; the site always loads fine, but the video feed has been constantly pounded, especially since hitting the Today show. The team is supposedly fixing this.

Called mundane?
Twitter: Forbes: "I'm not interested in what you had for breakfast."

Justin.tv: By CBS 5's Joe Vazquez. Granted, that guy's used to covering gunshot victims.

Compared to famous camgirl Jennicam?
Justin.tv: Duh.

Twitter: Yep.

Winner: Justin.tv, who's often seen as Jennicam with a microphone a dick.

Just the numbers
Justin.tv: 16 days old, 118 news items. About 200 viewers in each of five chat rooms on the site, for at least a thousand viewers at any given time.

Twitter: One year old, 367 news items. Over 19 million messages, assuming the system doesn't skip when assigning message numbers.

Winner: Twitter, thanks to the ten-second turnaround.

And the winner isssss
Both, of course, thanks to Justin's Twitter feed and the show's two unofficial feeds: the group feed at Justin TV Guide and the anyone-can-join Stalk Justin TV (started by me, written by anyone: password is zesjustintates).

Okay, really need a winner? For big-media hype, Justin's got more star appeal. For actual use, the masses choose Twitter. God, you really wanted a winner for a clearly mismatched contest?

Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Blogebrity, and Look Shiny. Hand him an invite to the also-hyped video site Joost so he can review it here.

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. The first dot-com boom brought 24-hour shows such as independent blogger JenniCam (whose webcam posted a photo of her in her room every 30 seconds) and We Live in Public (which filled an apartment with cameras for a more art-project style of broadcast). Both ended: JenniCam because she was just done, and We Live in Public because it was part of an unsustainable dot-com boom, using then-sketchy technology.

The first giddy age of Internet video is over, but live feeds haven't disappeared. Scads of live porn sites feature camgirls in booths chatting for free and stripping for pay. Many amateur broadcasters stream a webcam from their desk or pointing out their windows.

But these are all part-time. Office webcams go dark; camgirls clock out. Justin.tv is the first team to take an all-day show mobile, transforming it from "here's me when I'm at my desk" to "here's me everywhere." This has several consequences:

All the world's the scene. Justin has free run of the beautiful city of San Francisco, and he takes drives (Vehicle sharing company Zipcar is a sponsor) into Silicon Valley. Air travel will mean a few hours of downtime, but Justin says he's willing to sacrifice that in order to "go on tour."

Justin.tv has a cast of thousands. Everyone that Justin sees, we see. The local cafe waitress can be a regular character. So can every drooling fan who bumps into him. This breaks open the show; a viewer doesn't need to like Justin and his entourage to like the show.

Everyone wants in. That cast of thousands aren't all content to be extras. I met Justin at a bar this week, seven days into his live broadcast. He told my friend Melissa that he hadn't yet been kissed on camera. Melissa solved that. As a member of MTV's The Real World remarked, when you're on camera, you feel obligated to step out and be interesting. In fact, that instinct drives shows like TRW. The result is constant drama and happy viewers.

24/7 means warts and all. Speaking of The Real World, ever notice how network TV's reality shows are as heavily edited as any scripted story? There's still a lack of rawness. Justin takes his camera into the bathroom. And as for everyone's favorite question:

Yes, he'll have sex on camera. It's been cute to watch his responses change; by Friday he had moved from "no" to telling Wired News "Maybe we could do it with a half-camera." No, I don't know what a half-camera is either, but by last night he was telling those of use gathered around him that he'd almost definitely have a camera pointed at him during sex (with a girl, if you're wondering).

He's kind of a dick. At least his friends are: they make fun of some people who appear on the show; they swear about their business contacts. The viewers are even worse; one launched a blog giving hilariously cruel nicknames to everyone with a cameo; it was decided that I was a Jewish boy named ShalomBerry, and that Justin was cockblocking me from my friend Melissa. On the way back from meeting Melissa, Justin's crew tried to remember what she does. "She helps sex workers document cases of police brutality," one said about "that girl." "Then she posts it for guys to jerk off to." (The former, yes. The latter, um, no.)

One blogger worried about this behavior, calling it "the dumb leading the dumber, the desperate leading the more desperate, the fame-hungry feeding the fame-starved." But who of us hasn't had such a conversation about a stranger? We're all dicks. The only difference is that when these guys gossip, the subjects can hear it.

Of course, they have to watch the stream to catch it. And that's the draw of Justin.tv: If you turn it off, you'll miss something. As one of the entourage said on the show today, "The interesting things aren't scheduled." That's a problem, but it's also the show's biggest boon: the only way to catch it all is to keep it on for the rest of your life.

Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Blogebrity, and Look Shiny. He is not Jewish, but he is a bit Jew-ish.