How Streaming Culture, Commerce & Attention Are Finally Becoming Today’s Reality

I’m always looking for consumer behavior. Much of what I pay attention to, I’m trying to get the timing right in my older age more.

People often ask me these days, “What have I gotten wrong?” In my younger career, I used to think things were going to happen faster than they did.

With live shopping, with collectibles, I’m in the moment I was back then, where I saw the world and other people struggled fully seeing it.

Recently, my team and I revisited some of these early predictions, and I wanted to share my current thoughts.

What I Said in 2008:

“You don’t think most of the world is going to be living in a live-streaming universe in the next three to four years? You’re crazy, because it’s coming.

Every single high school kid has been walking around live streaming through the phone, and everything is going to be out there, and it’s going to all be saved.

Somebody might not be watching that. Everybody says to me, ‘Yeah Gary, I’ve heard your theory on that, but isn’t everybody so diverse that nobody’s going to be really watching it?’

Sure, nobody’s going to be watching it, but it’s all going to be logged. It’s always there. It’s there forever.

What you need to ask yourself is, “What am I doing with my life today, and do I believe in what I’m doing?”

My Reaction in 2026:

It’s crazy to watch that older video. So many things just went through my mind.

I always say, in my younger career, I used to think things were going to happen faster than they did. I really referred to the nineties and early two thousands, but it’s humbling. Even in 2008, I hadn’t fully learned that lesson yet, because I talked about live streaming happening by 2011 and 2012. I feel like it’s only really happened since maybe before COVID with Twitch, but we’re really there now.

It’s scary to see how much I saw live streaming coming.

Live streaming is about community.

It’s because it’s live and there’s a follow-along chat. If you actually pay attention to live shopping or live streaming, the community starts to become friends with themselves and each other, oftentimes not even worrying about the subject anymore that’s live.

You’ve got the old 1990s community bulletin boards, Twitter 2007 vibes of, “Oh, we’re talking to each other with less friction,” these live chats.

The reason I was able to say what I said in that video is I started to feel these effects with UStream. I was UStreaming back then, even before Justin.tv, which became Twitch.

What I knew was, “Oh wow, they like talking about me with each other, or what I’m doing.”

I think it’s all about community, community, community. The sense of community—we’re all watchers of this. Guess who I love the most? All the watchers of the New York Jets :) They are my best friends.

This might be around an individual doing mundane stuff. When people are like, “That’s mundane stuff,” I’m like, “Well, that’s what they said about reality TV.” They shit on that. Reality TV became a hybrid of half real, half not. This (live social shopping) is fully real. Not everybody can afford a backpack and walk around, ,most people have no interest in even that level of scrutiny or weirdness. But it keeps getting destigmatized. And whether you’re running around the world like a N3on or something of that nature, or you’re just sitting at your desk kind of more like a Kai Cenat, it really doesn’t matter. I believe so many more people should be live streaming. One of the great opportunities to build your brand is to go live on TikTok because they send you audience. Or, if you’re really going to go for it and you think you’ve got it, go into that Twitch kick kind of reality.

What I Said in 2008:

“The big business idea that’s out there right now is the QVC Home Shopping Network internet play.

Pay attention to what I’m saying to you. Online video, low production cost, live streaming, Ustream style—slap it on a site and then affiliate link underneath yourself for the rest of your life. You will make straight cash.

Same thing that QVC does. Nothing different.

Get people on. Let them affiliate with you. Live stream it. Build up that credibility.

You have a billion-dollar player.

A little charisma in a host or two, and straight hustle, hitting it out of the park by putting product after product after product on video, live on the internet, building up that audience, and then just selling it through affiliate link.

It’s easier to click in a shopping cart than it is to actually even call QVC and place an order. It’s even a lower cost of entry.

In the beginning, you don’t even have to make the business deals yourself, because things like Commission Junction and all these things out there have nothing but affiliate links left and right.

Within a week or two, a month, after you get a little hype, your PO box will be full of crap for you to sell on this show.”

My Reaction in 2026:

I don’t know if I’ve ever made a better piece of content in my life. That was from 2008. Maybe when I die, they should play that clip and say that he made this 20 years before it happened.

Most of my old-school “20 years ago” content has something that’s off a little… this clip has me like, no wonder everyone’s like, “This is AI.” How could you possibly believe that I could hit it that hard on the nose that long ago?

I don’t understand why anyone who sells stuff and is a retailer or makes products isn’t live stream shopping, selling every day.

Let me be very clear to the broader audience: live shopping is what social media was in 2007.

Everybody knew what social was. It was already big, but it was nowhere close to what it was about to be over the next 20 years.

Right now, everybody kind of knows live shopping is happening. You’re like, “Yeah, it’s big.” You have no idea how big this thing is.

If you’re trying to make a couple side bucks, you should go on Whatnot or eBay Live or Fanatics Live or TikTok and try to sell stuff in your house.

If you’ve got a little side project—you make your own hot sauce, jam, honey—you must go on. You must go on live shopping and start selling stuff. You must try to see if you’re that person.

Not everybody went on to be an influencer. But everybody had a chance to be an influencer. Everybody has a chance to be a live shopper.

A lot of you who are not destined to be an influencer because you’re not an entertainer or an educator might crush on live shopping because you’re a salesman.

Salesmen suck at social usually because they have no romance. They’re just going for the kill. But that does well on live shopping.

What I Said in 2008:

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the people that have personal brand in this movement right now, over the next decade, will have enormous opportunity for monetizing.

I hate every tech thing when people present, ‘How are you going to monetize it?’ Of course, that’s what everybody thinks about.

But going back to ‘legacy is greater than currency,’ if you’re talking about what you believe in and you’re building your personal brand in this space right now, I think you are absolutely hitting some critical points in this huge opportunistic era that is the gold rush of personal brand.”

My Reaction in 2026:

It’s funny. I feel like with live shopping, with collectibles, I’m in the moment I was back then, where I saw the world and other people struggled fully seeing it.

That was my reaction to that: how uncomfortably correct all that is, and how uncomfortably correct I am about collectibles joining music, fashion, and sports as a lifestyle genre, and how live shopping is the biggest opportunity for businesses and people.

How many people see what I see with live shopping? Shockingly small.

Every single big influencer should be live stream shopping once a week. Logan Paul should be live stream shopping once a week. Alix Earle should be live stream shopping once a week. IShowSpeed, Kai—everyone should be doing this.

You know what the difference is between being an influencer and live shopping? Being an influencer, you have to wait for your economics to trickle down to you.

Live shopping, you make money day one.

You might be destined to be the 900,000th-best live shopper in the world, you will make more money than your full-time job being it, whether you’re a paid host to sell someone else’s thing or you stand up your own thing and you’re the face of it.

This has been a huge opportunity for many people who failed to try to be social influencers.

Everybody has a chance to be a live shopper.