The Culture of Voyeurism

Earlier today, a  Japanese livestreamer accidentally burned down his house on stream. Of course, someone was recording it, so they uploaded it to youtube, posted it on reddit, and thousands of armchair firefighters got to work trying to retroactively tell the guy what he should have done, and trying to check news stories in the area to find the guy. At the time of writing, 2.2 million people have watched this guy's misfortune, and the comments people are making are not supportive, to say the least. Schadenfreude, the feeling of satisfaction that some people get from watching the misfortune of others, is by no means a new phenomenon, but modern internet culture seems to revel in it far more than society has in the past. Fail videos, swatting, and prank videos are all examples of the ways that the internet just loves to see people get hurt. Now I'm not going to say whether this is a good or bad thing, because honestly I don't really know, but what I will say is that this is something that we as a society need to be aware of before livestreaming gets even more ubiquitous.

While it may not be immediately obvious, there is a difference between this type of content being recorded and uploaded and being streamed live. If someone records themselves doing something stupid, gets hurt, and decides to share that with the world, it's still a dumb thing to do, but at least the person had a chance to make the decision as to whether or not to upload it, and the people watching the video are watching it after the dumb thing has already happened. In a livestream, the person streaming doesn't know whats going to happen when they start streaming. If their house catches on fire while their streaming, the event isn't being publicized because they made the decision to film themselves burning down their house and uploaded it after the fact, it's being publicized in real time, whether they want it to be or not. And what do people do when these things happen? do they rush in to help, calling emergency services in or telling the guy what to do to prevent the situation from getting any worse? Nope. They laugh, record the video, and post it on reddit for other people to laugh at. I'm not trying to judge these people - I probably would have done the same thing if I was in their shoes - but I do think that we should be aware of the implications of watching a disaster happening live. If it's happening live, something can still be done about it. Maybe not in all cases, but there are some pretty serious ones that come to mind. What happens when the next incident of police brutality against minorities is livestreamed instead of recorded? What do you do when you log on to a livestreaming social network (because you know those are going to exist in the next few years) and see that, in your own town, the next Ferguson in happening? Do you sit back and watch, knowing full well that you can be there in 10 minutes to start a protest, not after the fact, but as the event unfolds? These questions are something that we as individuals, and as a community, need to answer. We should think about these things in theory before there comes a time that we need to put our principles in practice.

Note: a large portion of this was inspired by this talk by Tom Scott. If you're interested, go watch it. It goes in to far more depth than what I've covered here.