When I was a kid, we had a handful broadcast channels and I watched what was on because that was literally it. If I didn't like what was on, I found something else to do. Read a book, play with friends, play with toys, play a game, or go outside.
Then we got cable. More stuff to watch, woohoo. Plus those scrambled premium channels where you might catch a glimpse of a boob. But MTV and HBO were only unscrambled in the family room, and seeing the same video over and over again, or the same movie over and over again got boring. So I'd read a book, play with friends, play with toys, play a game or go outside.
Eventually I grew up and bought a cable subscription of my own. Hundreds of channels. At first, some were really good. Like Discovery. Then "reality TV" showed up, and the combination of cheap to produce + novelty become too irresistible for those cable networks that used to put out decent content and once again I'd read a book, play with friends, play with toys, play a game or go outside.
So then came YouTube. YouTube has some good stuff on it, but honestly a lot of it is poorly made crap that isn't worth watching. So I read a book, play with friends, play with toys, play with my kids, play a game or go outside. I largely skipped Vine, Instagram and the rest of the ocean of other self-promoting content platforms. There are some decent blogs out there, but honestly I see things like Tumblr and the content is generally pretty awful, and I've conceded that I'm losing my edge to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent. And they're actually really, really nice. They just have more time and energy to sort through the boatloads of content being produced and find the good stuff.
I cut off cable. Best decision, I get shows I'm willing to shell out for or that come off the antenna for free. I still have Internet. And now this "livestreaming" thing comes along, and I can't imagine how much deeper the spiral of "too much crappy content delivered at a rock bottom price of zero" is going to go. I'm betting that we'll see some standouts and people who create compelling content in this new medium, and I can totally get how it's going to be amazing for people who are living in shitbag countries with repressive regimes who try and control thought, but there are going to be plenty of livestreams that quite honestly suck.
I also remember Jennicam ... it was novel for a while, but having a billion Jennicams is no longer novel ... it's going to be clogging up the Internet with the boring everyday drek of life. I don't want to watch that, I live it.