Media benefits immensely from mass domestic surveillance because it allows for unconditional access to the daily tragedies of human existence. These tragedies are curated for distribution to the public, and they bring in profit eclipsing that of even the greatest blockbuster horror movies. Their particular appeal is their undeniable “reality” in time combined with the screen’s obviation of space, and it’s that “reality” which foments addiction—truly an opiate for the masses.
A quality horror film accomplishes its goal by coaxing the viewer into identifying with the fear of the character, and then validating that fear with a gruesome, gratuitously violent death. “That would scare me if it were to happen to me.” The horror flick solicits a certain suspension of disbelief from the viewer, and asks the viewer to come along for the ride—“Tremble in terror along with Scarlett as she is exposed to the visceral demonic energies lying dormant deep within French catacombs.”
The video of a street slashing, however, obviates the request to suspend disbelief entirely. In fact, it demands the opposite. “Believe!” it accosts. “This could be you, anytime, anywhere! It will be you, if you do not do what I say!” The liveleak evokes an emotion distinct from that of your run-of-the-mill horror movie. It is more intense, you can feel your body become heavy, the amount of blood flowing to your brain decreases, and you feel vaguely, ever-so-slightly ill. Horror movies in comparison just disgust you, they make you sweat, you get anxious about what’s going to happen to the characters as well as how they’re going to die (because it will be gross). You don’t, however, feel compelled to do anything while watching The Shining (except maybe turn it off).
These videos of murders on the sidewalk—always depicting the most undignified, undeserved, untimely demises—simultaneously compel you to do something while reminding you that you can’t do shit about anything. You want to get off your ass and champion a Salvadoran crime crackdown, and you end up writing a tweet about black people.
It is not, though, just the homicide recordings that drive you insane. Viral clips of unruly women on airplanes, passersby smashing the instruments of street musicians, silly grocery store disputes, fented-out inhabitants of the CHAZ that was once San Francisco—these also draw out a similarly poisoned righteousness where you wish that the perpetrator would materialize from out of your screen so you could execute their due justice.
These “PoV” videos are not “fictional” like movies nor are they “real” like NFL games. They are object-ifications of memories. They are “realities” delivered via a fictional premise—“virtual reality” you might say. What makes the format addictive is the seamlessness of the viewer’s transition from personality to personality, from subjectivity to subjectivity. You tap the screen and you are transported into a foreign, novel experience of perception—that is, while your perceptions change, the sensory experience of the act of perceiving also changes. You feel the act of perceiving in a new and different way. It’s clearly something other than your own. Link Start!
You’re exhausted after three hours of TikTok because human beings are not meant to inhabit so many different subjectivities every day. You’re not supposed to be assuming a new person’s “Point of View” every 30 seconds. “POV: the family down the street gets butchered and raped by invaders.” You really think this doesn’t affect you just because it’s someone else’s “PoV?”
TikTok stole the “PoV” annotation from porn because that’s what that website is, along with all its mimics. Every TikTok content creator pornographs their own subjectivity. This is because—just as porn isolates then stimulates erotic sensation—the format of a TikTok (or any “first person” video on any site for that matter) isolates then stimulates the primary emotion. A depression video about solidarity with other depressed users isolates your sadness and then brings it into being. The video evokes one’s more depressive feelings and then asks, “Feel this depression with me.” Likewise, a video of somebody getting jumped captioned with “Random stranger gets assaulted by group of teenagers!” evokes anger and demands that you feel angry. But nothing else happens. You get sad, you get mad, you get horny—nothing happens. You don’t seek comfort or change your surroundings, you don’t bring about justice, you don’t court a significant other. You just sit there, stand there, frozen in someone else’s moment.
The stasis renders you ravenous, insatiable. All you feel is that single, solitary, immured emotion in all its decontextualized intensity. Whether smut, snuff, or sorrow—you develop an addiction that keeps you staring at the screen, bent over like the dope fiends you’d guffawed at only a few scrolls ago.
It’s nice that we’re turning to “Citizen Journalism” in light of the CIA’s annexation of our newspapers, but the freedom won from that is fleeting, if it isn’t gone already. The idea of “Misinformation” is a seizing back of the means of information production—Cyber-LandBack for journalists. Instead of recording events themselves on-site like they used to, reporters and fact-checkers will simply regulate the meta-information—“This video is true, this video is false”—while ordinary people suffer the bombings in their place. “Here’s a clip of Israeli children in cages. Actually they’re Palestinian, owned!” (Don’t you find it a little odd that, in this ethnic conflict, no one can tell who is who?) You’ve been deputized to do the journalist’s hard work for her. Every video you post is a labor cost passed onto you, the consumer. Oh, you tweet under your own name? You work for the New York Times now. Here’s some Elon-bucks as compensation.
The whore of Babylon will be an AI TikTok poster, and she will be married to the Pope. Stop watching porn.