There was an interesting event recently that happened to another live-streamer named Arab Andy. Arab Andy streams himself walking around with a speaker strapped on that plays text-to-speech and audio clips of whatever his viewers send him in their twitch donations. One viewer sent him a sound clip of a bomb countdown and detonation, and Arab Andy was subsequently arrested and last I heard was possibly facing prison time on a felony charge. Personally I don't think he should have to go to prison, but it's an interesting question what, if anything, should happen in cases like this.
"Arab Andy" cared more about the donation than his own life. He clearly let the bomb sound happen on purpose for the sake of fame. He didn't even bother muting it or at least muffling it.
Weakly moaning "It's TTS!" (Text-to-speech) as an excuse to the officer that arrested him not so long later is enough of a proof that this guy was disconnected from reality and just doing that for the money.
It doesn't matter where you're coming from, you just don't play a bomb countdown - especially not in a room crowded full of people. You're scaring people on purpose, and that's called terrorism. He deserves that prison sentence.
Isn't one of the main caveats of the first amendment that you can't say "Fire" or "Bomb" in a crowded theater?
As someone who watches live streams normally, it's weird to see the clashing of the online world with its disdain for social norms and encouragement of casual racism mix in with the normal day to day lives of people. A future where a good chunk of people walking on the streets are disconnected from the people around them and instead are trying to please a faceless mob which demands that life constantly be reality TV is a weird one to think about but I honestly believe that this is a future that is possible.
I confess to having read the Popehat link quickly (I do not have audio right now to be able to listen to the podcast) and it is possible I missed some subtext, but the link seems more to speak to that the quote was made in a context many today would find disagreeable as part of a series of bad rulings, and that it has subsequently often been invoked to support restrictions on speech as though the existence of some restriction on speech automatically justifies others. Both points are well taken.
But this is quite literally a situation where a person shouts about a fake threat so as to cause alarm in a crowded fora -- the article does not seem to argue that doing so would be legal or that it would not be a permissible restriction on speech.
So I defer to anyone who knows more than I do about speech law -- to be clear, it is still impermissible to (falsely) shout fire in a crowded theater, right?
> it is still impermissible to (falsely) shout fire in a crowded theater, right?
The underlying point is that, it's a complicated topic that is not easily answered. This is like saying "Shooting someone is illegal, right?" Well, it's complicated. You have Murder 1, Murder 2, (sometimes more), Manslaughter (Voluntary, or Involuntary), and you have shootings of self-defense which are legal. It entirely depends on the circumstances under which you shout "Fire!" and the outcome of that situation.
There are legal principles involving whether or not you caused harm, whether or not you intended to cause harm, whether or not you reasonably knew it could cause harm but proceeded anyway. These questions will have outcome on which charges are applicable, if any are at all.
Should you shout fire in a crowded theater, and folks stampede. Expect to be charged for inciting a riot or at least disturbing the peace. Should nothing happen? You might be asked to leave and not come back by staff and have a no-trespass order, you may even get picked up on a disturbing the peace charge. One of the "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride" situations.
There are however issues that are not related to just speech. There are property rights issues for the owner of the establishment if you create panic, which results in damages to people or property.
For example there is likely no literal law against the following; however, you would likely be at similar fault if you walked into a crowded theatre with a live hornets nest. It is not so much what you say, but the damage which results you would be responsible for.
> weird to see the clashing of the online world with its disdain for social norms and encouragement of casual racism mix in with the normal day to day lives of people.
This is most likely to be resolved by normal life increasing in its disregard for norms and explicit racism, until someone gets lynched for the benefit of streaming hits.
I saw another one where somebody sent arab andy a clip of the n-word being repeated over and over 50 times while he is on the bus. A very liberal looking white guy in his 40s threatened to stab andy so he got off the bus immediately.
The guy was unstable yes, but he also looked super liberal. It's tough to articulate, but it exists nonetheless, it's like asking what strawberries taste like. Perhaps I can't articulate it but that doesn't mean nobody can taste them or the taste doesn't exist. Some facets about him that I don't care to enumerate gave me that impression. He was trying to appear crazy yes and he did brandish a knife as well.
You are being far too charitable with him. He essentially committed assault by creating the impression that andy was not physically safe and that he may use a knife against him.
I once posted a timelapse video of my commute on facebook and people were calling me out for not blurring license plates. This guy just walks around all day live streaming the life of random people ? How is that not a clear violation of privacy rules ? Disclaimer: Am European.
Not sure about license plates, but when Awkwards Travels (much smaller channel, a couple live streaming traveling, mostly SEA) were here in Germany, they had to be way more careful about what they showed.
Yelling "fire!" in a crowded theatre is not protected free speech, which is exactly what this kid did in the video. I think this is a pretty clear cut case where someone does deserve jail time.
The thing Ice Posidean has going for him is an almost cult like following. Unfortunately the way that plays out is often quite negative who people who aren't a part of the community. I wonder if building a community with this level of dedication is even possible without victimizing people or causing mayhem.
There are other streamers who have a cult like following that isn't toxic. Some of the Twitch streamers pull this off, if the streamer has mods who wield the ban hammer hard and earlier, it is possible to shape the community that grows up.
All of the cult of personality type of streamers are going to have a viewer base that is a bit odd, but they don't have to be malicious.
As an example, one community I'm part of decided one day that we were going to play punk music on stream. Since on Twitch, $=free speech, music requests are $3 a minute or so.
It (de?)volved into a battle of the bands as fans of different bands went back and forth.
I think it's rather that people like Ice Poseidon do everyone else a favor by being a magnet for all of those toxic people so they don't go and be toxic elsewhere.
You definitely need something to channel that dedication into. Political groups use it for change in their favor, companies use it for work, terrorist groups use it for terrorism.
That was a really interesting piece. All I can think of after reading it is Grandpa's quote from the Simpsons:
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!
If you don't get the whole Twitch/YouTube live streaming concept, then sure, but don't mistakenly think that Ice Poseidon is what's mainstream and "it."
This is essentially social media 2.0 for 4channer.
The dystopian literature of the last century tended to view the TV as a device that enslaved the masses, turning them into obsessive, entertainment consuming automatons. I feel like we're living in that dystopia, only with the Internet taking over TV.
Man, Adrien Chen has done some really interesting pieces while at the New Yorker. I'm constantly impressed by his ability to cover niche parts of web culture and technology in a way that is always engaging and at least close to topical.
> The restaurant starts getting a lot of unusual phone calls... An employee asks the man if he is Paul Denino. He says yes, but then explains that the callers are pranking him. He is live-streaming through the camera on the stick, and some of the thousands of people watching are trying to fuck with him. The calls grow more disturbing... The restaurant manager asks Denino to leave. Almost immediately, the restaurant’s rating on Yelp begins to plummet. Dozens of one-star reviews flood the page within seconds.
It's hard for me to see things like Ice Poseidon's stream as media or entertainment, really. If this is a predictable consequence of streaming which restaurant he's going to, then Denino is basically just ruining someone's day (and possibly much more) because he thinks he'll make money off of it. Nor is this anywhere near the bottom of the pile. Trollstation has picked up jail time over three different 'pranks' - a bomb threat, a fake armed robbery, and a fake kidnapping. Which puts "fire in a crowded theater" to shame, honestly - waving a fake gun around specifically to frighten people isn't even something that gets considered in most free speech debates, and rightly so. (I shudder to think how that prank might have ended in the US.)
My favorite example, though, is still RossCreations. Whose idea of a prank was... taking down stopsigns. Just that, going to an intersection and taking away stopsigns so maybe some people would get in a car accident. He was apparently charged with felony grand theft (stop signs aren't cheap), but I'm a bit surprised no one threw in a public endangerment charge alongside it.
I guess I don't understand how we got here. I know people doing stupid stuff and misjudging pranks is nothing new, this isn't a "kids these days" complaint, but where did people get the idea that "it's for my channel" changes the ethics or legality of things they know will go wrong?
I never even heard of this guy until I was in a bar in Phoenix Arizona and listening to a flight attendant tell the story about how her plane was raided by SWAT armed response earlier that day, because of him. It looks like that was April 28 last year.
She was absolutely terrified and all of the passengers were asked to keep their window covers shut while armed personnel surrounded the plane and prepared to board from the rear entrance and take him out of there. It's a predictable consequence of him going places and streaming. He'll even say things like "I hope nobody figures out what plane I'm on and calls in a bomb threat" but honestly what actual law is being violated and by whom in this situation?
I mean I can personally see he knows he has antagonists and he is specifically egging them on, and he is profiting from it, but I don't know the specific actual law that he'd be breaking in this case, as much as I'd like for there to be one. Ruining dozens of peoples' day just isn't a violation of the law in and of itself.
Terrorism "conspiracy" charges can be pretty wide-ranging. It sounds like that incident alone would have incurred tens of thousands of dollars of costs for both law enforcement and the airline.
Yes but how do you prosecute someone because a bomb threat was called in against them?
Which part of what he was doing should he not be doing? It was all external parties that caused the kerfuffle. He's obviously a successful broadcaster, and he's making money at it without himself breaking the law, so you can't tell him not to do that anymore. (That's a prior restraint, no?)
I agree that it's problematic and it's costing money, but if those trolls that called in the bomb threats cause his show to be closed, isn't that basically the end of free speech? The fraudulent reporting caller should be prosecuted, sure.
Anyone can call in a SWAT raid on anyone else. I myself haven't watched the show, so I don't know to what extent a conspiracy charge would stick, but ...
If I go somewhere and start a Live Vlog, and someone watching figures out where I am and manages to put the police onto my camera, "for the lulz," and that's the whole story, then why should my "broadcasting license" be revoked? Never mind no such license is required, just hypothetically.
If I remember correctly, he wasn't even streaming during the whole thing. The fans simply pieced it together by things like departure times and roughly where he's going etc.
>> I know people doing stupid stuff and misjudging pranks is nothing new, this isn't a "kids these days" complaint, but where did people get the idea
Back in 2005 I was at school when a local radio station had a water drinking contest. A woman died. Just yesterday I was watching a video about how airliners don't really use hydrocarbon fuel (another global warming conspiracy). There are plenty of morons out there.
>Back in 2005 I was at school when a local radio station had a water drinking contest. A woman died.
You're really oversimplifying this, the contest was to drink as much water without peeing so you could win a Nintendo Wii ("Don't pee for a wii"). If you don't pee you offset your body's electrolyte balance and can die. It's not reasonable to expect most people would know this, and the woman that died obviously did not.
It's totally reasonable to expect someone to know that not peeing for an extended amount of time is not healthy. It's common sense that most bodily functions happen for a reason, and stopping the function could be dangerous.
It's even more reasonable to expect that a business running a contest would do their due diligence in assessing the safety of their contestants.
Doesn't matter. Just knowing that something could be very harmful should give any business pause before including it in a contest. This business acted recklessly.
RossCreations also had a "prank" where he put a "Hit me with your bumper, I like it!" bumper sticker on a guy's truck, then followed him and intentionally ran into the back of him in his truck at a stop. Complete idiocy and he's lucky the guy just got out, looked at his bumper, and drove off.
His "sneaking hot dogs into people's pockets" is actually funny though, I'll give him that.
It was a light tap, but maybe in the strictest reading of the law it could be. Honestly if he had gotten unlucky and did that to the wrong person he could have easily become a victim himself.
Meh, if anything, Denino's stream exposes how poor our systems are in general.
For example, how trivial it is to leverage our militarized police with a fake call. With no effort to vet the call, they'll happily drive over to your house and shoot your dog or ground the plane for five hours.
Or Yelp where anyone can organize to nuke the ratings of a single place. (Yelp and Steam, two examples I know of, have recently put systems in place to filter out mass 1-star spam)
You're barking up the wrong tree if you think this is a "people will do anything for views" problem. And the examples you cite of people getting criminally charged for stealing stop signs and brandishing arms sound like system successes. They don't seem relevant
It's like getting upset that people use CloudFlare instead of realizing how hilariously vulnerable our internet still is to things like IP address spoofing and the fact that your IoT toaster can be nuking a website without you, the owner, realizing it. I bet you'd notice if it showed up on your bill. Maybe you'd think twice about buying in to IoT devices next time (incentives are now aligned!).
Maybe it's time to ask why our systems are so vulnerable to abuse. Getting mad at abusers and their incentives isn't going to fix the problem because they will always exist.
To suggest otherwise is to suggest that our systems should depend on the Deninos of the world not existing, and that should give you a good, long chuckle.
Historically, human beings have kept people like these pranksters in check by heaping shame and guilt on them along with a punishment. This is just how all societies have always worked. Your attitude that shame and guilt don't work and that we should drop this strategy in favor of something else is what is concerning to me.
That was a disturbing read. That guy is practically a slave to his followers. There may be money in it, but I have the impression he is beyond the point of no return. Even if he would want to stop streaming, the more sociopathic lot of his "community" will probably sniff him out and expose him.
> “It was just easier to break up with her than to deal with it.”
I don't know whom I find more pathetic, him or his followers. This is just sick.
A while back I had the chance to watch user research interviews of streamers. People clearly loved doing it, but also struggled to find a healthy balance. Being on camera that much, especially with the expectation of continuous engagement with lots of followers, is an extraordinarily intense situation.
Long ago I was an exchange student in Ecuador, where some workers would still chew coca as they worked, basically the same way people consume coffee. It was normal and boring for locals. Refine that same leaf, though, to cocaine and crack, and you get something so compelling that it becomes dangerous.
I sort of think of streaming as a similar thing: it takes normal human sociality and refines is to a degree previously never seen. I'm sure some people will find healthy ways to deal with it, but I'm not shocked at all that it breaks people.
The problem I keep hearing from gamer streamers is searching for your niche, and stumbling into something you dont enjoy, but suddenly you start making real $$. Jump from streaming for 20-50 people to 2000-3000 does things to you.
I'm pretty sure if he stopped streaming the followers would eventually move on.
Also it's later stated in the article that he didn't actually break up with the girl, it was just a smokescreen to get the community off his back about it.
What an oddly modern version of The Truman Show (I guess?).
> Denino resisted for months—Caroline made him happy—but eventually he relented. “It just got too much, dude,” he told me. “It was just easier to break up with her than to deal with it.
There's something really deeply somber about that.
I'm always curious what happens to these people in twenty (or even ten) years. I imagine this isn't a long-term career, but obviously I could be 100% wrong about that (e.g. Reality TV doesn't just star young adults anymore).
Of course some of these people are also earning (maybe just near) pro-athlete levels of income, so I guess with some foresight maybe they don't have to work ever again after retiring, really.
I've never understood what "Ice Poseidon" was, but I notice at any given point on Reddit if you search by "NEW" posts basically 25% of posts will be in the Ice Poseidon subbreddit.
It's really the only community that keeps pace with r/The_Donald.
I think the relationship between streamers and their audience is a more extreme form of the relationship between celebrities and their fans (some of whom may tend toward fanatical).
It's not surprising that things end up this way. When you remove the music/movies/whatever that the celebrity is producing and give the fans direct, real-time access to the celebrity's life things were bound to get weird.
One area where I disagree with the article is this characterization:
> [Viewers] are immersed in an online culture that believes that “social-justice warriors” and political correctness are the main obstacles to self-actualization
In my opinion this kind of "extreme speech" should rarely be taken literally. Instead, misogny/racism/xenophobia/ranting about "SJWs" on the internet should be viewed as a weird kind of performance art rather than an expression of genuine beliefs.
None of that makes it pleasant to an uninitiated spectator, but I'd compare that to how someone might find a dead baby joke terribly offensive. Really, I'd compare the whole thing to an inside joke between friends that would be considered "over the line" if someone else heard it. There's nothing new about that.
> In my opinion this kind of "extreme speech" should rarely be taken literally
That's what surrogates said about donald trump before the election. The muslim ban was just hyperbole. Then he got elected, and people were getting detained at the airport.
Now I'm not naive, and I know that some of the outrageous speech of online trolls is just for show. The problem is, you can't detect sarcasm online. White supremacist groups are actively recruiting on chan boards. You can't say it's all just a joke.
> I think the relationship between streamers and their audience is a more extreme form of the relationship between celebrities and their fans
I totally agree. One of the things the Internet has dramatically increased are asymmetric relationships between people. Some amount of asymmetry has always been part of life — the peasants know who the king is but the king doesn't know the peasants.
But now that anyone can broadcast to millions, it's easier to have a one-sided relationship that a peer-based one. I believe that's profoundly unhealthy, and a problem society is going to have to confront and learn how to deal with.
My favorite story about Ice Poseidon was when he and his friends were at a Denny's talking shit about black people and a person comes up to them and calls them out to fight outside for being racist. They backed down so fast.
That's the problem with people who grew up streaming their lives, there is no normal life for them. Everything is a meme, etc.
Regardless of his political views, they can't be that important to him to back down from his toxicity when called on it.
How did we become so lonely and disconnected that watching a stranger's live-stream became a substitute for human contact?
It's something I see in all online video. Lets plays, mukbangs, makeup tutorials.. the game, the eyeshadow, the food is not important. It's having someone talk to you about their day. It makes you feel like you're not alone. Take ReviewBra for example. He barely reviews food anymore. He just sits at a table and says comforting things.
At least he's trying to use this for good. But why has this content taken off in the first place? So many young people I encounter are practically hikikomori.
Digital communication is not inherently substituting human contact. It can be used to augment our relationships - organizing meetups in real life, and keeping in touch with long distance friends. It can also help you make new friendships in real life, or online-only. Online-only friendships are not a problem, as long as you have IRL friendships also.
But read the article. When they talk about this streamers fan base. How some of them felt so depressed, and the stream made them feel like they had a friend. Maybe the stream kept them from ending their life. What makes people so lonely that the stream is the only thing keeping them going?
I'm not critiquing online video. There will always be a need for entertainment. What I'm asking is why so much of it, lately, seems designed to comfort lonely people. And why are so many people in need of that?
> How some of them felt so depressed, and the stream made them feel like they had a friend. Maybe the stream kept them from ending their life. What makes people so lonely that the stream is the only thing keeping them going?
> depressed
> Maybe the stream kept them from ending their life.
Did you not answer your own question? As someone with a lot of social anxiety (it's hard for me to even comment in forums/here) Twitch streams make it feel like I'm getting human interaction. But it's mainly a distraction from the feeling of loneliness, obviously. Hopefully it gives these people the time they need to deal with their social anxiety/depression rather than progressing further down the spiral.
Thank you for commenting. I know it can be hard with the anxiety. I appreciate getting your insight.
I agree with you. These streams can distract you when you feel alone. That might even be a good thing for some.
But I'm trying to figure out why so many people are lonely in the first place, that we would need these streams to fill the void. Maybe we've always been this disconnected, and it just feels worse now. But I have noticed more people feeling isolated and alone.
I remember when I was in college, I felt so much pressure with my courseload that I hid away for days binge watching a tv show. I was avoiding writing a term paper. I was also avoiding my classmates.
I work with teenagers in my profession. And I'm seeing lots of high school students dealing with the same type of anxiety and withdrawl. Is it normal? At that age? Is this becoming more widespread? And if so, what is causing it?
I read this last year, and it confirms what I'm seeing. One of the schools mentioned is actually in my area.
I have no idea why that is, honestly. I think, at least for me, there's always some sort of pressure to have a lot of friends or social interactions. Go on FB, everyone's hanging out with each other and posting about it or talking. Snapchat, same thing. Dating sites everywhere. Dating apps.
But that's about all I can think of. There's probably more going on. I'm just personally thankful that I was able to get that anxiety out of the way via Twitch/streams.
I think it's easy to forget about how widespread the reach of these platforms is. The article talks about fans from all over the world.
I'm sure there are a number of chronically super depressed, super isolated individuals, but even just a few people here and there going through a rough patch can add up to huge viewerships on a global scale.
Also, when I was sick in school growing up I had shit daytime TV to watch. Binging on a YouTube stream might have been more entertaining.
So many people Seem to be extrapolating this into something it just isn’t. He could stop tomorrow and live a normal life in a couple of months. This isn’t the trueman show or someone propelled into international fame against their will. It’s the long tail of the network effect. You can sustain yourself by being moderately entertaining to some 50k people but you have to stick to the role. Ice Poseidon has chisen a role of being a huge jackass who runs the border of criminal behavior. That was his choice, not something his fans pushed on him, and honestly I wish serious media like HN and the New Yorker would just ignore him. There are NeoNazi personalities and Scientologist preachers with more followers than him, and we’d don’t give them screen time because they don’t contribute anything to society so why wast your attention on this but?
83 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadHere's a video of the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVWX7r1WQLg
Weakly moaning "It's TTS!" (Text-to-speech) as an excuse to the officer that arrested him not so long later is enough of a proof that this guy was disconnected from reality and just doing that for the money.
It doesn't matter where you're coming from, you just don't play a bomb countdown - especially not in a room crowded full of people. You're scaring people on purpose, and that's called terrorism. He deserves that prison sentence.
Well, no, that's not terrorism. At least not in terms of criminal charges[0].
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism#Unite...
As someone who watches live streams normally, it's weird to see the clashing of the online world with its disdain for social norms and encouragement of casual racism mix in with the normal day to day lives of people. A future where a good chunk of people walking on the streets are disconnected from the people around them and instead are trying to please a faceless mob which demands that life constantly be reality TV is a weird one to think about but I honestly believe that this is a future that is possible.
It's a complicated and, IMO, interesting topic.[0][1]
[0] - https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
[1] - https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-law/2018/06/fi...
But this is quite literally a situation where a person shouts about a fake threat so as to cause alarm in a crowded fora -- the article does not seem to argue that doing so would be legal or that it would not be a permissible restriction on speech.
So I defer to anyone who knows more than I do about speech law -- to be clear, it is still impermissible to (falsely) shout fire in a crowded theater, right?
The underlying point is that, it's a complicated topic that is not easily answered. This is like saying "Shooting someone is illegal, right?" Well, it's complicated. You have Murder 1, Murder 2, (sometimes more), Manslaughter (Voluntary, or Involuntary), and you have shootings of self-defense which are legal. It entirely depends on the circumstances under which you shout "Fire!" and the outcome of that situation.
There are legal principles involving whether or not you caused harm, whether or not you intended to cause harm, whether or not you reasonably knew it could cause harm but proceeded anyway. These questions will have outcome on which charges are applicable, if any are at all.
Should you shout fire in a crowded theater, and folks stampede. Expect to be charged for inciting a riot or at least disturbing the peace. Should nothing happen? You might be asked to leave and not come back by staff and have a no-trespass order, you may even get picked up on a disturbing the peace charge. One of the "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride" situations.
http://civil-liberties.yoexpert.com/civil-liberties-general/...
There are however issues that are not related to just speech. There are property rights issues for the owner of the establishment if you create panic, which results in damages to people or property.
For example there is likely no literal law against the following; however, you would likely be at similar fault if you walked into a crowded theatre with a live hornets nest. It is not so much what you say, but the damage which results you would be responsible for.
This is most likely to be resolved by normal life increasing in its disregard for norms and explicit racism, until someone gets lynched for the benefit of streaming hits.
Ive seen that clip. The guy was either super unstable or just trying to "out crazy" the streamer and scare him away.
You are being far too charitable with him. He essentially committed assault by creating the impression that andy was not physically safe and that he may use a knife against him.
[0] - https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
All of the cult of personality type of streamers are going to have a viewer base that is a bit odd, but they don't have to be malicious.
As an example, one community I'm part of decided one day that we were going to play punk music on stream. Since on Twitch, $=free speech, music requests are $3 a minute or so.
It (de?)volved into a battle of the bands as fans of different bands went back and forth.
This is no longer true. His stream has been banned on that subreddit for producing scripted content. https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/8p7sib/ice_...
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV0wTtiJygY
This is essentially social media 2.0 for 4channer.
First of all, Max Headroom. I think there it was a felony to turn your TV off or some such.
Second, Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It is a anime tv series that involves an undercover security force in future Japan.
Other recommended reads:
A "Daily Show" style satirical program tries to get off the ground in Nigeria: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/22/using-comedy-t...
Making ironic, absurd art and gaining an internet following: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/brad-troemel-t...
Lessons from the radio era for the "fake news" era: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/04/the-fake-news-...
It's hard for me to see things like Ice Poseidon's stream as media or entertainment, really. If this is a predictable consequence of streaming which restaurant he's going to, then Denino is basically just ruining someone's day (and possibly much more) because he thinks he'll make money off of it. Nor is this anywhere near the bottom of the pile. Trollstation has picked up jail time over three different 'pranks' - a bomb threat, a fake armed robbery, and a fake kidnapping. Which puts "fire in a crowded theater" to shame, honestly - waving a fake gun around specifically to frighten people isn't even something that gets considered in most free speech debates, and rightly so. (I shudder to think how that prank might have ended in the US.)
My favorite example, though, is still RossCreations. Whose idea of a prank was... taking down stopsigns. Just that, going to an intersection and taking away stopsigns so maybe some people would get in a car accident. He was apparently charged with felony grand theft (stop signs aren't cheap), but I'm a bit surprised no one threw in a public endangerment charge alongside it.
I guess I don't understand how we got here. I know people doing stupid stuff and misjudging pranks is nothing new, this isn't a "kids these days" complaint, but where did people get the idea that "it's for my channel" changes the ethics or legality of things they know will go wrong?
She was absolutely terrified and all of the passengers were asked to keep their window covers shut while armed personnel surrounded the plane and prepared to board from the rear entrance and take him out of there. It's a predictable consequence of him going places and streaming. He'll even say things like "I hope nobody figures out what plane I'm on and calls in a bomb threat" but honestly what actual law is being violated and by whom in this situation?
I mean I can personally see he knows he has antagonists and he is specifically egging them on, and he is profiting from it, but I don't know the specific actual law that he'd be breaking in this case, as much as I'd like for there to be one. Ruining dozens of peoples' day just isn't a violation of the law in and of itself.
Which part of what he was doing should he not be doing? It was all external parties that caused the kerfuffle. He's obviously a successful broadcaster, and he's making money at it without himself breaking the law, so you can't tell him not to do that anymore. (That's a prior restraint, no?)
I agree that it's problematic and it's costing money, but if those trolls that called in the bomb threats cause his show to be closed, isn't that basically the end of free speech? The fraudulent reporting caller should be prosecuted, sure.
Anyone can call in a SWAT raid on anyone else. I myself haven't watched the show, so I don't know to what extent a conspiracy charge would stick, but ...
If I go somewhere and start a Live Vlog, and someone watching figures out where I am and manages to put the police onto my camera, "for the lulz," and that's the whole story, then why should my "broadcasting license" be revoked? Never mind no such license is required, just hypothetically.
Back in 2005 I was at school when a local radio station had a water drinking contest. A woman died. Just yesterday I was watching a video about how airliners don't really use hydrocarbon fuel (another global warming conspiracy). There are plenty of morons out there.
Someone, many very smart people, thought this was a good idea: https://miepvonsydow.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/uz3wiuk.png
(The cat is fine. It was a zero-g experiment. Didn't go so well for the human.)
You're really oversimplifying this, the contest was to drink as much water without peeing so you could win a Nintendo Wii ("Don't pee for a wii"). If you don't pee you offset your body's electrolyte balance and can die. It's not reasonable to expect most people would know this, and the woman that died obviously did not.
It's even more reasonable to expect that a business running a contest would do their due diligence in assessing the safety of their contestants.
'Not healthy' and 'cause immediate death' are vastly different.
His "sneaking hot dogs into people's pockets" is actually funny though, I'll give him that.
The only difference between then and now is they're filming it because filming technology is ubiquitous.
For example, how trivial it is to leverage our militarized police with a fake call. With no effort to vet the call, they'll happily drive over to your house and shoot your dog or ground the plane for five hours.
Or Yelp where anyone can organize to nuke the ratings of a single place. (Yelp and Steam, two examples I know of, have recently put systems in place to filter out mass 1-star spam)
You're barking up the wrong tree if you think this is a "people will do anything for views" problem. And the examples you cite of people getting criminally charged for stealing stop signs and brandishing arms sound like system successes. They don't seem relevant
It's like getting upset that people use CloudFlare instead of realizing how hilariously vulnerable our internet still is to things like IP address spoofing and the fact that your IoT toaster can be nuking a website without you, the owner, realizing it. I bet you'd notice if it showed up on your bill. Maybe you'd think twice about buying in to IoT devices next time (incentives are now aligned!).
Maybe it's time to ask why our systems are so vulnerable to abuse. Getting mad at abusers and their incentives isn't going to fix the problem because they will always exist.
To suggest otherwise is to suggest that our systems should depend on the Deninos of the world not existing, and that should give you a good, long chuckle.
> “It was just easier to break up with her than to deal with it.”
I don't know whom I find more pathetic, him or his followers. This is just sick.
Long ago I was an exchange student in Ecuador, where some workers would still chew coca as they worked, basically the same way people consume coffee. It was normal and boring for locals. Refine that same leaf, though, to cocaine and crack, and you get something so compelling that it becomes dangerous.
I sort of think of streaming as a similar thing: it takes normal human sociality and refines is to a degree previously never seen. I'm sure some people will find healthy ways to deal with it, but I'm not shocked at all that it breaks people.
Also it's later stated in the article that he didn't actually break up with the girl, it was just a smokescreen to get the community off his back about it.
> Denino resisted for months—Caroline made him happy—but eventually he relented. “It just got too much, dude,” he told me. “It was just easier to break up with her than to deal with it.
There's something really deeply somber about that.
I'm always curious what happens to these people in twenty (or even ten) years. I imagine this isn't a long-term career, but obviously I could be 100% wrong about that (e.g. Reality TV doesn't just star young adults anymore).
Of course some of these people are also earning (maybe just near) pro-athlete levels of income, so I guess with some foresight maybe they don't have to work ever again after retiring, really.
> Yet he felt that he had to act as if he didn’t care, or his viewers might suspect that he and Caroline hadn’t actually broken up.
There's some hope for humanity, isn't there?
The thing was that said chat had a 30 second delay, because every message was read by channel staff before being allowed on the air.
On a different note, i can't shake the thought that there was an uptick of "pranksters" online after the whole Anonymous circus hit the airwaves...
It's really the only community that keeps pace with r/The_Donald.
I think the relationship between streamers and their audience is a more extreme form of the relationship between celebrities and their fans (some of whom may tend toward fanatical).
It's not surprising that things end up this way. When you remove the music/movies/whatever that the celebrity is producing and give the fans direct, real-time access to the celebrity's life things were bound to get weird.
One area where I disagree with the article is this characterization:
> [Viewers] are immersed in an online culture that believes that “social-justice warriors” and political correctness are the main obstacles to self-actualization
In my opinion this kind of "extreme speech" should rarely be taken literally. Instead, misogny/racism/xenophobia/ranting about "SJWs" on the internet should be viewed as a weird kind of performance art rather than an expression of genuine beliefs.
None of that makes it pleasant to an uninitiated spectator, but I'd compare that to how someone might find a dead baby joke terribly offensive. Really, I'd compare the whole thing to an inside joke between friends that would be considered "over the line" if someone else heard it. There's nothing new about that.
Ironic racism/bigotry inevitably attracts people that aren't in on the joke.
That's what surrogates said about donald trump before the election. The muslim ban was just hyperbole. Then he got elected, and people were getting detained at the airport.
Now I'm not naive, and I know that some of the outrageous speech of online trolls is just for show. The problem is, you can't detect sarcasm online. White supremacist groups are actively recruiting on chan boards. You can't say it's all just a joke.
I totally agree. One of the things the Internet has dramatically increased are asymmetric relationships between people. Some amount of asymmetry has always been part of life — the peasants know who the king is but the king doesn't know the peasants.
But now that anyone can broadcast to millions, it's easier to have a one-sided relationship that a peer-based one. I believe that's profoundly unhealthy, and a problem society is going to have to confront and learn how to deal with.
That's the problem with people who grew up streaming their lives, there is no normal life for them. Everything is a meme, etc.
Regardless of his political views, they can't be that important to him to back down from his toxicity when called on it.
It's something I see in all online video. Lets plays, mukbangs, makeup tutorials.. the game, the eyeshadow, the food is not important. It's having someone talk to you about their day. It makes you feel like you're not alone. Take ReviewBra for example. He barely reviews food anymore. He just sits at a table and says comforting things.
At least he's trying to use this for good. But why has this content taken off in the first place? So many young people I encounter are practically hikikomori.
But read the article. When they talk about this streamers fan base. How some of them felt so depressed, and the stream made them feel like they had a friend. Maybe the stream kept them from ending their life. What makes people so lonely that the stream is the only thing keeping them going?
I'm not critiquing online video. There will always be a need for entertainment. What I'm asking is why so much of it, lately, seems designed to comfort lonely people. And why are so many people in need of that?
> depressed
> Maybe the stream kept them from ending their life.
Did you not answer your own question? As someone with a lot of social anxiety (it's hard for me to even comment in forums/here) Twitch streams make it feel like I'm getting human interaction. But it's mainly a distraction from the feeling of loneliness, obviously. Hopefully it gives these people the time they need to deal with their social anxiety/depression rather than progressing further down the spiral.
I agree with you. These streams can distract you when you feel alone. That might even be a good thing for some.
But I'm trying to figure out why so many people are lonely in the first place, that we would need these streams to fill the void. Maybe we've always been this disconnected, and it just feels worse now. But I have noticed more people feeling isolated and alone.
I remember when I was in college, I felt so much pressure with my courseload that I hid away for days binge watching a tv show. I was avoiding writing a term paper. I was also avoiding my classmates.
I work with teenagers in my profession. And I'm seeing lots of high school students dealing with the same type of anxiety and withdrawl. Is it normal? At that age? Is this becoming more widespread? And if so, what is causing it?
I read this last year, and it confirms what I'm seeing. One of the schools mentioned is actually in my area.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-ame...
Again, thank you for your comments.
But that's about all I can think of. There's probably more going on. I'm just personally thankful that I was able to get that anxiety out of the way via Twitch/streams.
I'm sure there are a number of chronically super depressed, super isolated individuals, but even just a few people here and there going through a rough patch can add up to huge viewerships on a global scale.
Also, when I was sick in school growing up I had shit daytime TV to watch. Binging on a YouTube stream might have been more entertaining.