It’s wild rewatching iCarly and kind of seeing how they were basically Twitch, Kick and YouTube streamers and content creators before streaming and content creation were even really a thing. The show premiered in 2007; YouTube was around, but it wasn’t really considered a career at the time. Live streaming was basically nonexistent at the time, and even though the show iCarly got millions of views, they didn’t make much. a lot of money on it and occasionally had to get jobs. They were still in a time when the Internet and social media weren’t as big as they are today. And making money off the Internet wasn’t as common as it is today. And even if the iCarly gang were making some money from their show, we don’t know how they would have gotten it since sites like Patreon, Cash App, or Venmo didn’t exist yet. It was the mid-2010s, and the word ‘influencer’ didn’t even exist yet.
iCarly aged pretty well, and it was ahead of its time.
Streamers were definitely a thing back then. The name iCarly is almost certainly a deliberate riff on iJustine who at the time of the show’s premiere was broadcasting her life 24/7 on what was then Justin.tv and who was easily its biggest star.
Someone who was actually alive in 2007 here. Live streaming was definitely a thing in 2007. In fact, that was around the time it stared getting big with the launch of Justin.tv (later Twitch.tv and acquired by Amazon). You forget that the internet at the time wasn’t as centralised as today. So many creators simply had their own website where they could post videos and stream.
PayPal was more popular than it is today among other options at the time (like you know, using your card and making regular ass bank payments). Buying merch to support your favourite creators was common.
The word “influncer” did exist and there were tons of them on the “blogosphere” in the 00’s. Today largely replaced by Instagram.
So the internet just got worse
iCarly was just a follower of JenniCam and AmandaCam from the late 90’s and camgirls/camboys/cammers in the early 2000’s.
Yeah, a lot of things existed way before they got mainstream.
JenniCam’s existence was mainstream, it was talked about on all the morning news/late night talk shows as human interest/disguised mocking/outright derision.
I’d argue if something needs to be talked about in news/late night talk shows as a curiosity it’s not mainstream.
Today, streaming is totally mainstream and the concept is not something that would appear in news/late night talk shows unless there’s something specifically extrodninary (e.g. a death) that happens in the context of streaming. But the concept of streaming on its own is so commonplace, that it wouldn’t be talked about in TV.
Tom Green was on public access TV taking commentary from the internet. He was “live streaming” before most North Americans had internet.
ICarly came out after twitches predecessor launched. Streaming however was something done back in the 90s but mostly for things like event coverage.
I’ve talked about this with friends before, I agree. They even say the same thing in the Dan Schneider documentary from a while back
There’s a YouTuber named Aggressively Average who does dives on 2000s kids shows, and he brings this up
