On her final day as a pioneering internet celebrity, Jennifer Ringley got up some time after 7.30am, used her computer for a while at around 1.15pm, had something to eat at 6.15pm, and then apparently went out for the evening.
So it was clearly not the promise of ceaseless excitement that brought hundreds of millions of web users to Ms Ringley's site, which since 1996 has broadcast a live, unedited, 24-hour chronicle of her life from cameras set up around her apartment.
But Jennicam.org, an online experiment that predated the Big Brother TV series and laid the ground for hundreds of subsequent internet cults, still proved too exciting for PayPal, the company that handled the annual $15 (£8.38) subscription to Ms Ringley's site.
Visitors with nothing better to do than watch her cameras for hours on end occasionally caught sight of her naked, contravening PayPal's regulations and forcing closure of the site this week, according to an email Ms Ringley sent to subscribers. "They've disabled my account so I'm not able to accept subscriptions," the email read, according to one recipient.
Jennicam was established, initially as a college project, to "provide a window into a virtual human zoo," Ms Ringley wrote at the time. "I keep JenniCam alive not because I want or need to be watched, but because I simply don't mind being watched."
Since her main competition at the time was a live broadcast of a coffee-pot set up by Cambridge University computer scientists, it proved a popular notion.
A host of other "micro-celebrities" soon followed, including the Turkish web hero Mahir Cagri, whose kitschy web page, headlined I Kiss You!, spread around the world in days. Ms Ringley took her cameras with her as she moved from Pennsylvania to Washington DC, and on to California, where she reportedly now works for a social services agency.
Despite an early appearance on David Letterman's US talkshow, Ms Ringley's passion for publicising her life does not normally extend to accepting interview requests, and she was not responding to them yesterday.
But on the internet news group alt.fan.jennicam, enthusiasts and detractors were busy picking over her legacy, making little effort to disguise their hostility towards Ms Ringley's boyfriend Dex, and speculating about her future.
"I am glad she could get much more than her share of 15 minutes of fame and live to tell the story," one admirer wrote. "Furthermore, she has a good chance to resume a normal (albeit boring) life."
inputs by Guardian UK
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