And Baudrillard rolls in his grave...

iChannel was invented on a weeknight by a group of friends that lived together in a university dorm at Santa Clara.  They reportedly came up with the idea after watching The Truman Show.  People that created an account at iChannel could post real-time footage of what they were up, like a “status update in video form.”  Each member’s account had a profile picture, a wall of saved videos from the past, and, at the top of the page, a live video feed of the member’s life.

It started slowly; at the beginning only a few people joined, mainly to check out what their friends were doing.  The feed came directly from people’s phones, and you could watch your friend enjoying a concert, traveling, at a party, or just shopping at a grocery store.  Then, more and more people started to create accounts, and there was a short-lived fad that involved randomly looking at what strangers were doing.  As this fad became mainstream, celebrities entered the fray.  Now you had the inside scoop on the daily lives of your favorite celebrity.  You knew iChannel had lost all its initial cred, when middle aged news reporters trying to sound “in” on the latest tech craze started doing stories on the company.  Suddenly, parents and uncles starting joining iChannel.

It became addictive.  People shopping at a grocery store would walk down the aisles looking down at their phone at the video feed of a celebrity shopping at a grocery store.  People at parties spent most of their time watching the feed of other people at other parties.  Celebrity iChannels became incredibly popular, reaching a point where television companies started paying these celebrities to broadcast their iChannel feeds.  Reality stars now spent their time off from shooting reality shows, getting paid to film footage of their real life.  These celebrities started hiring writers to help them create better iChannel material.

In the end, all but the iChannel feeds of the paid celebrities became dull and redundant.  Most of the feed of regular people involved them watching iChannel feed.  So you had the odd experience of watching the iChannel feed of someone who was watching the iChannel feed of someone else,  who was watching the iChannel feed of someone else, and so on and so forth.  When this happened the image on your computer looked like an endless digital abyss, one that got deeper and deeper as time passed.