I went to work for a cable company in 2007. This old timer there told me about his cable TV dog turd theory. His theory said that you could put a camera on a dog turd in your yard and leave it on for a month. When you switched it off there would be hundreds of calls about why this channel was off. There would complaint after complaint that there was a fly that was about to land on the dog turd and they missed it.

Hahaha this person thinks babies are boring

Says the person who's never had a baby, clearly.

The first few seasons of Big Brother UK had nighttime episodes where you could watch the contestants sleeping. They were very popular, and even had catch up shows so you could see what you'd missed 🤷🏻‍♂️

Reads post

Has the author not met humans?

This would definitely get hella views on twitch just for the fact that its live 24/7

I think the point was that there were also paid actors intentionally stirring up drama around him.

Bit of trivia I learned this week... The Truman Show house is Matt Gaetz' childhood home.

They jazzed it up with fake scenarios specially to boost ratings. Haven't you seen the movie? That was more of the point than just the fact he was being filmed. His life was all Hollywood bullshit. His own father was "killed off" when he was a kid, but the man didn't actually die.

Ads!

Guy was living the fantasy of a somewhat happy suburban life.

Keep in mind his birth was live. They said by random chance in the film, but I suspect they induced labor and this was something like a post-Superbowl event that was hyped up.

So even if the show got boring, everyone would have been aware. So maybe you are just flipping through the channels (as was the style at the time), if the baby shows up you might watch for a few minutes just to see what it's up to.

Remember Reddit had that hotdog in gelatin? I'd want to check in on that every few months.

The first few years were probably inexpensive and eventually things would get interesting.

Marketing, and this movie came out during the Reality TV era, it was the peak commentary of where we were heading as a society if we stayed on the course we did. Wanting to know everything about someone’s life, start to finish.

(I’m saying that from both the POV of us watching it as well as the people watching from within the movie)

hypothetically, there was also the literal world building around the kid. the enormous 'set' would have taken years to build. i can imagine a chunk of early broadcasting demonstrating the build and subsequent soap drama of all the actors to fill that void.

Being lightly scripted, drama would be easy to add:

Oh no, the mom put the baby on the counter near the stove with boiling water!

I feel like this comment is ignoring a whole bunch of cat TikTok. Plus a whole bunch of grocery haul Youtube, for good measure.

I mean, canonically they aired a live birth and then just had a 24/7 babycam. I'd watch.

What I don't get is how they got through the 5-15 period, because there are plenty of real world parents that tune out for that already.