每日跟讀#564: The Teenage Life, Streamed Live and for Profit

On a recent afternoon in Los Angeles, 15-year-old Bryce Xavier went to the Olive Garden with his mom, pulled out his phone and broadcast lunch. Across the country, teenagers’ phones lit up with a push notification: Bryce was live.

The phone framed Bryce in close-up. His mom sat off-camera across the table; her son had really come to eat with his fans. Tens of thousands of them poured into a virtual chat room that layered over his image. A bright stream of emoji floated up the side of Bryce’s face, the product of hundreds of fingers tapping the “like” button at the same time.

洛杉磯近日一個下午，15歲的布萊斯．札維耶與母親一起去到「橄欖園」，他掏出手機，直播午餐實況。全國各地青少年的手機亮起推播通知：布萊斯上線直播。

手機框出布萊斯的特寫鏡頭。他的母親坐在同桌的對面，沒有入鏡；她的兒子實際上是前來與粉絲一起用餐。數以萬計的粉絲湧入與他的影像重疊的實境聊天室。一串明亮的表情符號浮現在布萊斯臉的旁邊，這是數以百計的手指同時按「讚」的產物。

Bryce is a star on Live.ly, a year-old live-streaming platform with a core audience of teenage girls. Within three months of its release, according to the mobile app data firm SurveyMonkey Intelligence, Live.ly had unseated Periscope as the iPhone’s top live-streaming app.

Bryce is a budding multihyphenate — he identifies as a singer, actor, model and violinist — but he has recently distinguished himself as a Live.ly personality, spending nearly every day wading through a virtual crowd of anonymous fans. Since joining Live.ly last summer, he’s accumulated over 33 million bits of “emoji-love,” the platform’s main metric of success. His most dedicated fans also ship him physical emblems like teddy bears, packets of Sour Patch Kids and posters inscribed with their internet handles and notes like: “I love you. Follow me.” A few months ago, he stopped attending school and started home schooling to accommodate the demands of his social media and entertainment work.

布萊斯是直播平台Live.ly的明星，這個成立一年的直播平台有一群青少女死忠觀眾。根據行動app資料公司SurveyMonkey情報公司的資料，Live.ly在上線3個月內就把Periscope擠下iPhone的直播app冠軍寶座。

布萊斯是初露鋒芒的多角明星─他以歌手、演員、模特兒和小提琴家自居─最近卻成為表現亮眼的Live.ly名人，幾乎每天都為一群虛擬的匿名粉絲賣力演出。去年夏天加入Live.ly至今，他已累積超過3300萬個「愛的表情符號」，亦即這個平台衡量成功的主要工具。他的最死忠粉絲也寄給他實體的象徵，像是泰迪熊、一包包的「小人兒酸軟糖」，以及寫上他們的網路別名和留言的海報，像是：「我愛你。跟隨我。」幾個月前，他不再上學，開始在家自學，以因應他的社群媒體和娛樂工作的需求。

In the streaming of Bryce’s life, lunch is a recurring event. He calls it “A Bite With Bryce.” “It’s like we’re going on a lunch date,” Bryce told me later. “I go to my favorite places, and then they can become my fans’ favorite places, too, through the phone screen.”

Live streaming has been hailed as an “authentic” respite from the artificial projections of other social platforms.

在布萊斯的直播中，午餐是不斷重複的場景。他稱為「與布萊斯一起大快朵頤」。「這好像我們有個午餐約會」，他後來對我說。「我去我最喜愛的地方，然後這些地方透過手機螢幕，也成為我的粉絲最喜愛的地方。」

串流直播被譽為「真品」，讓人暫時擺脫其他社群平台的人造播出內容。

Source article: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0067/316288/web/