askpixie.

05.14.05

Non-hair question:

This is too easy for me, given I'm severely bald and could care less about my hair at this point.

Do you think the era of webcams and "shows" is over?

-NH

Thank you, I appreciate a non-hair query. Unfortunately, the rest of the world still insists on asking me more about hair than anything.

Is webcam-ry and peepshowing over?

Honestly, I'm going to say no, I don't think it's dead yet.

There isn't nearly as much hype as there used to be, back when it was a new and exciting thing, because now it's mainstream.

It's like when I had my nose pierced* like 14 or 15 years ago. I only knew 2 other people that had it, and they were oh-so-cool. But when I walked down the street, people actually stared at me like I had a May-pole sticking out of my forehead or something.

Gradually, everyone else seemed to get one, and I decided that I had to take mine out when all the sorority girls and fraternity boys had them.

The same isn't exactly true of my webcam, which went away more as a software incompatability than as a statement of individuality. Half the time when it was on, it crashed my computer. Now, it lives in a bottom drawer next to my desk.

I think that as long as people have eyes, curiosity, and the technology available, they're going to seek the forbidden. Getting to peer into someone's living room can be titillating, even if someone's left the curtains open and a pair of binoculars on your windowsill.

anacam's still around, and you know she wouldn't keep living completely online it if she didn't have subscribers paying for her lifestyle.

Now that we've truly entered the digital age, everyone seems to have a digital camera of some sort -- phone-based or otherwise. What I've noticed is that a lot of people seem to be more interested in documenting their life off-line and then sharing that with the public at large.

I find it a lot more interesting and intimate to see what a day at the Getty is like for someone than to watch that same person sit at his/her desk and blog.

And thanks to the immediacy and easy accessibility to blogger and places like livejournal, anyone can share the details of their lives, and get nearly instantaneous feedback from an adoring public**.

Once upon a time, it was probably a lot more interesting to read this site when it was only one of few available, but now that you can read about anyone at anytime, it's lost is glamour. And it probably doesn't help that I really haven't made an attempt beyond my initial frustrating fumblings to actually figure out how to use blogger or movable type. The fact that I have to type out each one of these pages and upload them makes my work a lot slower, and more time consuming. (Which, um, like totally explains why I never update. Damn me for gettting a life of some sort.)

Voyeurism is around to stay, I think. And so are webcams and "shows."

Especially the peepshows, because unlike phone sex lines, where Angelique on the other end of the line might actually be some grotesque cow in a phone sex cube farm somewhere, you can see and interact with her online. If she says she's a busty brunette in a leather teddy, smacking her fanny with a riding crop, you can actually see and converse with a busty brunette in a leather teddy, smacking her fanny with a riding crop.

-- pixie

Yesterday & Tomorrow.

*Yes, Mom. Despite your mandate that I remove the nose ring and stop being a fashion slave, else you'd cut me off financially, I still kept it in. for a couple of years, too.

I don't know if you were slick enough to realize that when you were around, I just wore it so that it could be removed easily and look like it was a clip-on, which you didn't seem to mind.

Which is something I don't understand.

It's like the people that wear clip-on or magnetic earrings. Just commit to the holes, because everyone already thinks you have.

**And also thanks to the immediacy and easy accessibility of der internet to the common man, it's a lot more difficult to share intimate details of your life without hurting someone else, or even yourself. Case in point, dooce.com's Heather Armstrong lost her job over her site. Everyone's got to have psuedonyms and be extremely vague about many aspects of their lives because you never know who's watching.

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