Life Became a Spectator Sport
1.
It is truly fantastic that no matter where you are, there’s a good chance you’ll be recorded or photographed. You have no control, no say over this at all. I don’t even refer to CCTV or any kind of surveillance camera technology, recording of that type feels normalized because it is constantly expected everywhere. It’s the fact that there is always someone with a phone, someone recording something for their own life or (most likely) for others.
At any moment, you could be subjected to being in the background of someone’s video recording, which is panning around the area to make an Instagram story to show how cool they are for not being at home like your fat fucking ass chucking sugars and seed oils in that fat flapping mouth. If it’s done for a reason like that, I think I’m fairly justified to be annoyed to the extent that I am. I am, of course, not bitching about some woman lovingly sending a video of downtown to her mother, who hasn’t been in Vancouver for years. Instead, it's people who subject the world and those around them to their en masse recording for their own vain pursuits, taking that footage to present themselves as someone who is out and about — for the sole intent of posting.
For that reason, I detest people who post/take photos of themselves at museums, art galleries, or any cultural event. The problem lies in the fact that they are in the picture, presenting themselves along with the works up for the display. Anyone who does this is incredibly vain, narcissistic to an Instagrammable degree. They went to the art gallery as a group, under the shared unacknowledged pretense that it was because they wanted to get their photo, recreating a photo taken by a much cooler and hotter person that they follow.
Everyone will skip pass concert footage someone posts on their story, even the person posting must know that no one is gonna watch their way-too-long shitty sound quality footage. But they post it anyways, because the intention was never about sharing something worth sharing, but loudly publically exclaiming that you were there. And their footage mostly consists of the backs (and occasionally a turned head) of people they do not know, people whose phones are not out, and the vain poster (unknowingly, or uncaringly) records them for a reason only for themself.
2.
We can’t install suicide nets everywhere, but we can put cameras to determine the outcome.
The man, six stories up on the wrong side of the balcony, looks down to see a sea of phones. Suicide by height becomes a vaudeville act. It would motivate me to jump if I saw that. I’ll jump down stretched out like a starfish, trying to land on as many people with their phones out gawking that I see below. It’s truly disgusting how quickly people jump to being a spectator, their determination to record is a faster jump than what is about to happen.
Maybe recording violence or something horrifying is their process of disassociating from the event that is happening — they recede behind the camera, a shield protecting their eyes. It’s like covering your ears during a horror movie, or hiding in comment sections while your media plays. The power of media is that it functions almost in another reality, transcending the physical. What do they do with the footage they record anyways? I'm just gonna record this suicide real quick so I can share it with my gc, and I can also post this on Reddit to get some sweet Reddit karma! I like to think that they forget they’ve recorded it, and it shows up in their “end-of-year photo recap,” jarring them senseless into finally feeling 0.1% of the fear the jumper might have felt.
3.
But what is the solution to my complaints? Asking everyone who’s going to be in frame for permission to record them? Even if them not knowing and acting naturally is the very intention of the recording? The idea of a society that constantly asks that is ridiculously absurd. Funny at first, but quickly cumbersome.
You just have to accept it — it’s the way it is now. Just hope that you don’t get unknowingly posted on something that goes viral, millions laughing and ridiculing you for your fit as you wait in line barefoot at the Cineplex Oden International Village painted yellow, occasionally fiddling with your blue overalls and adjusting your big one-eyed goggle. This could happen to anyone, and it is so rude to be laughing at a 22-year-old mixed-race man who decided just to be himself for a day. We’ll see if they’re still laughing when I jump down to my despicable death from six stories up, leaving a splat of yellow and red on the ground. Like a sad hot dog that was dropped and then stepped on. I just hope that the CCTV camera will pick it up — this minion wants to be martyred.
