Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

JenniCam Closing After 7+ Years

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-longer-refreshing dept.

An anonymous Jenni fan writes "Details are sketchy, but apparently within the past few days, JenniCam has announced that it is closing permanently on New Year's Eve. Jenni Ringley has run the site for over 7 and a half years and was even voted more popular than Linus in a ZDNet poll. Of course, such constant exposure has had its downsides; she has received death threats in the past. Last chance to check out that Slashbox while her life is still online."

19 of 605 comments (clear)

  1. The end of an era... by musingmelpomene · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think this calls for a moment of silence, or something. No, I really mean it. This was one of our first chances to see the true potential of the internet - for good and for bad. It spawned camwhores of all varieties and gave rise to a new kind of voyeurism. Goodbye to a pioneer.

    1. Re:The end of an era... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I've been online since the late 1980s. Am I the only person who hasn't heard of Jenni?

    2. Re:The end of an era... by SystematicPsycho · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'll be glad to give it a moment of silence when shows like Big Brother and Survivor are finally gone. That's the kind of voyeurism is spawned.
      --

      --
      Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
  2. Am I the only one? by sageo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who didn't know about this site OR care when they heard about it?

    1. Re:Am I the only one? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
      Otherwise you can be absolutely certain she would still milk it.

      Ah come on, you had a 9600 BAUD MODEM!!!! You know you had a Borland Turbo C compiler sitting on at least one or two of your computers. There was no internet, but there sure were BBS'.

      I miss the BBS days. On BBS systems you pretty much knew all the posters on a personal level. There were only 100-200 people on a GOOD BBS. The Public Domain ones were annoying with too many people. The internet started out similarly with contained forums, IRC chat rooms where friends would hang out, etc.

      Now due to the large spread of IM clients people don't need to hang out in chat rooms to talk to their friends and now forums have grown so large you can't really keep track of the people in the forum. You can barely keep track of the actual topics and a few posts let alone all the inside jokes that people try to put into their comments.

      If it weren't for the fact that most people on this forum are unix geeks then most of the posts on this forum would be uninteresting because there is nothing of real interest that bonds ourselves from one comment to the next.

      I dunno... internet sux. I've been saying that ever since it came "alive" with real audio. I was like, "Uh, huh huh .. this sux..".

      We put people on the moon several decades ago and we couldn't even get audible streaming audio for the longest time.

      E-Mail, which drove most of the rest of the world to the internet is now full of SPAM and useless information. Reading e-mail is a chore for most people due to spam. It's not helpful to most of the world any longer. A HOTMAIL account gets about 50 spams a day. It's a chore.

      The internet is such a downer. Thanks for nothing AL GORE!
    2. Re:Am I the only one? by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I guess she's faded into insignificance, because all the teenagers who watched her with the hope of seeing her naked have grown up.

      No, they've just watched the Internet evolve into the greatest pornography distribution system the world has ever known. In 1994 it was hard to find any good free porn sites.. 1995 brought the businesses who locked down their porn and blurred it out for guests. Eventually the race to compete for customers brought us to the point where you can now just type in random URLs and get to a hardcore pornography site. Who needs to sit around on Jennicam.com hoping some 30+ year old chick takes her shirt off? God bless the Interweb and smut peddlers.

    3. Re:Am I the only one? by CrazyTalk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      9800 baud? Yes, I remember when that was like a dream come true, hooking my Atari ST into the grad school network. But, I also remember when 300 baud seemed fine, and those new fangled 1200 baud modems were just too fast - after all, who can read at 1200 baud? With text scrolling by at 300 baud, I could easily manage to keep up. Clearly, faster modems were not needed.

  3. Closing Jennicam? by xeno_gearz · · Score: 5, Insightful
    On one hand, I could lament the "loss" of an internet mainstay of whom many of us were aware of. On the other hand, webcams have become so overdone. Every teenage girl and her best friend have one. Consequently, this is played out. So who cares? I'm sure "Jenny" has realized she has better things to do than pose on a webcam.

    On the other hand, perhaps Jenny's subscriptions were dropping as creepy men were finding other girls' webcams to ogle. Maybe Jenny realized that her extended 15 minutes of fame are finally up. No disrespect though. She certainly seems to have garnered all the attention she could from a webcam.

    Remember the coffee cam? Now that was cool. Wasn't it at MIT?

    --
    *
    troll blacklist. Please mo
    1. Re:Closing Jennicam? by jandrese · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Most people who had "broadband" in 1996 had .edu in their domain. I was sadly not one of those people. All my school had was a digital PBX (ROLMphones) that allowed you to make a 19200 baud PPP connection through the serial port on the back of the phone. The 28800 (and 33600) baud modems that were common at the time were faster.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
  4. Maybe not to you... by Channard · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Watching someone else's life just doesn't appeal to me I guess...

    Maybe not to you, but to Joe Public it does. In fact, the preponderance of webcams may have had something to do with the rise in popularity of reality TV. Here in the UK, we get Fame Academy, Big Brother, Celebrity Big Brother, and a slew of tedious TV shows that someone must be watching for them to stay on air. Maybe the majority of Slashdotters are just too cynical to be swayed by that sort of thing, but there are plenty of people who are convinced other peoples lives are somehow better than their own, and therefore worthy of viewing.

  5. Re:Jumped the Shark... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I watched the Jennicam for about twelve minutes and never went back. What's so interesting about a less-than-attractive (no offense) chick sitting around in front of her camera all day, sleeping half nude at night and occasionally bonking an ugly boyfriend? I can't believe there were actually suckers willing to pay for a subscription to that. Lame lame LAME.

    I'm sure the ONLY reason she's closing it is that she's no longer raking in the dough. Otherwise you can be absolutely certain she would still milk it.

  6. The creepiest thing ever... by Channard · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I heard some sad news on PBS this morning. Jennicam was found dead at her website today.

    Jennicam the concept, maybe, not the person. Though there's got to be the plot for a horror story in there - someone decides to stop their popular webcam, only to find that the webcam keeps transmitting, showing someone her walking around her flat doing her usual things. Except that said person is there when Jenni herself isn't..

  7. Zombie site by marmoset · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The site's been undead for years, stumbling around muttering "brains, brains" and bumping into shit. 99% of the time the camera's focused on an empty blue chair. It all went downhill when she stole her "friend's" fiancee and boinked him on camera.

  8. Re:Much more interesting camgirl by liquidsin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No self respecting web designer would have that stupid-ass mouse trailer on their own website.

    --
    do not read this line twice.
  9. age comments ... hee, hee by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hee, hee ... I just love the wtf, she must be , like, 27 or even 30 now! Of course she has to quit! posts ...

    Yes, egads, how could a 27-30 year old woman possibly be attractive? :o

    Hmm, maybe I should just be glad that there is a whole segment of the population too stupid to give me any competition ;)

  10. Re:end of life, universe and the internet by markhb · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I wasn't a fan, but in the NS 1.1 days, remember all the buzz about... The Spot?

    --
    Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
  11. Re:bound to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I think there are many porn stars over 30. Asia Carrera and Taylor Hayes come to mind, but I'm sure there are many more. Any woman who is hot at 25 should be hot at 30, and much later than that. All she needs to do is take care of herself.

  12. Re:Era, pfft! by Afrosheen · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's the opportunistic spirit that drives many would-be-free-camwhores into a life of 'click here to see my naughty parts live'. Think about how many people used to throw old crap away, now they hock it on Ebay. The same concept applies to camwhores. They figure, hell, if I'm going to show my tits on the internet to some anonymous pervs and skript kiddies that cracked the password server, I might as well make a few bucks.

    I tell ya, there just aren't enough quality whores anymore.

  13. Not eating is free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    If only poor people could afford to get to one of those fat-burning movie theaters or weight-reducing restaurants they'd be thin?

    You're kidding, right?

    I don't know about where you live, but here it doesn't cost anything to step out of the front door and go for a walk or maybe even a run.