What does Justin mean?

Yesterday we went to Fisherman's Wharf -- to buy a book, of all things -- and on the way back we saw the apartment building where Justin lives. I instantly knew it, and it felt like I was looking at some sort of landmark. That startled me a little.

Mark my words, people will be studying Justin.tv for years. What makes Justin a celebrity and his home a landmark? He's good-looking, but no more so than many other 23-year-olds. We never actually see Justin anyway unless he's facing a mirror or sleeping. He doesn't have to "work" per se, but that's not uncommon in San Francisco, and what he does instead is hang out with boring venture-capital types and sit in his apartment looking at his computer. The apartment is as rigorously nondescript as a college dorm, less interesting visually than most viewers' homes. A lot of the time Justin's view is just like mine: A notebook computer screen.

What makes him matter is that we get to see what he sees, and know what he's doing, almost every second of the day. And because we know so much, we want to know more: What kind of person is he, really? Why is he doing this? What's it like to expose your whole life to the world all the time?

I don't even watch Justin much. A minute here, a minute there. Honestly, the "content" is incredibly boring. What matters is that so many people are watching. We get to share this and stay cooped up in our little worlds, looking at our computers.

I know this all sounds trite. I'm barely scratching the surface. That's why people will be studying this for years to come. It's more than a gimmick.