In recent years, we’ve seen a surge in live streaming apps popping up everywhere and it seems that they’re the next big thing in social media. The premise is simple, point your camera and record everything that is happening in real time. Viewers will join your live feed and see everything as if it were through your eyes. Many streamers will open their live stream while traveling around the word. You can see many of them riding their bikes through Brussels, or streaming from the top of Machu Picchu. Others will simply point the camera to their face and speak to their viewers about whatever may be on their mind. There are streamers for anything you could imagine. I decided to explore some of the popular apps like Periscope, UStream and Livestream.
It took me a while to adjust to the fact that I was jumping into people’s private lives. I’m no stranger to sharing everything I do in the world, but I had never been on the other side of the table. Whether it was through Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, I’ve always put my life on display, but I had never seen something so raw and unscripted before. My main thought was, “This takes guts.” With Snapchat, at least you can rehearse your Stories and delete them if they don’t turn out well. Here, you have one shot at capturing your audience.
I was a little disillusioned after a week or so of jumping from stream to stream. I started to see the same trends that turned me off from so many other platforms. The comments people would leave were inconceivably negative and offensive. And I’m not talking about microaggressions that people usually overreact to and blow way out of proportion, I mean terrible things. That’s not even taking into account the misogynistic and sexist things I’d see viewers post.
In one instance I was watching a young woman try to discuss a philosophical question she posed to the public, only to get extremely explicit responses. One streamer fell victim to a cascade of antisemitic comments simply because one viewer pointed out that he had a “Paul Rust nose.” It seems as if the much of society still believes what happens on the internet isn’t real, that there aren't any consequences and you can post whatever you want because it’s funny and no one knows who you are.
A lot of people aren't ready to accept it, but times are changing. The internet has evolved and we need to evolve with it. You wouldn’t go to the produce section of a store and tell the lady next to you to take off her shirt and giggle like an idiot. If you did, you’d get arrested. We need to grow up as a society and take responsibility for the things we say and the content we post. This also means holding the people around us accountable. They may get mad whenever you tell them that it’s not okay to post something referring to people as, “the Gays," or "the Blacks," or "the Jews,” but what they don’t realize is that you’re trying to save them from crippling their reputation. This isn’t about being politically correct. This is about not being a mindless walnut who can’t function in an advanced society. It’s not that hard to have a more mature internet presence.
There are two simple rules of thumb for this. The first is if you don’t have the guts to say whatever you’re saying to someone’s face, don’t do it behind a screen. The second is that if you do have the guts to say it to someone’s face and you’ve decided you’re just going to be a miserable person, nobody cares.
