Being A Voyeur in the Digital Age
By: Rozali Telbis
Tags: Culture, Entertainment, The Bad Influence, Society, Surveillance

The upside of the pandemic is that it galvanized many people to reflect on their lives and find ways to better themselves: some changed careers, others wrote books, and some people even started businesses.

I didn’t have the same ambitions.

Quite the opposite, amid the pandemic, I found even more ways to waste time. The pandemic fuelled my already-spiralling binge-watching habit — a coping mechanism I’m sure. I’ve already had questionable taste in tv and film (Lifetime thrillers and B-horror movies are my go-to), but I’ve since resorted to watching nostalgic reality shows that speak to my desire for simpler times.

Early on in the pandemic, I watched Rock of Love with Bret Michaels (including the spin-off series), and from there I turned to Flavour of Love, and other MTV classics like Pimp My Ride and Teen Mom. Of course, in between all these, I watched a slew of other shows — far too many to name. These shows had all the necessary components for providing a much-needed pandemic distraction: crude humour, dated jargon (and fashion), B-list celebrities (if I’m being generous), and all-around absurdity, all tied together by a low-budget production. I felt fulfilled from early 2000s television, but eventually it was time to bid adieu.

A New Era of Watching Has Arisen

Passive TV watching was no longer able to whet my appetite. I shifted gears and turned my attention to YouTube — primarily because it was free and easily accessible. The options seemed endless: I’d watch reaction videos; tiny home builds; mukbangs; grocery hauls — it was like reality TV, but arguably less scripted. YouTube quickly became my go-to. I’d watch different vloggers to suit my different interests — some channels I watched for pure passive entertainment, others when I wanted to learn something, and others when I wanted to wind down after a long day.

Naturally my YouTube viewing escalated. I’d memorize some of my favorite’s vloggers’ uploading schedules — one vlogger I subscribed to would upload a video every Saturday, and every Saturday morning, I’d tune in. This continued for months on end. Naturally, I felt like I had come to know this vlogger on a personal level, like she was a close but distant friend. I knew her so well, that one time I was confronted with a new persona that didn’t align with this person I had come to know — and because I had invested so much time in her life, I took this as a personal affront. I was so taken aback by this juxtaposition that in some way, I felt entitled to say something (a far cry from passive tv watching). So, for the first time, I scrolled down to the comments section and made a comment, as if I was a disappointed mother scolding my child. And in that moment, I no longer became a passive viewer but an active participant in someone else’s life.

I closed the video, and instantly felt like I had outed myself as a voyeur — an intruder in someone else’s life. I was criticizing this person for not adhering to my own image I had of them. The lines of reality and entertainment blurred.

The Normalization of Modern-Day Surveillance

In many ways, my foray into YouTube seemed inevitable based on my tv viewing habits. But this venture went deeper; it represented a new kind of ‘watching.’ This trajectory reminded me of the 2013 dystopian novel The Circle, which centers around the culture of surveillance. In it, the protagonist, Mae Holland, initially critical of social networking, is slowly absorbed into the tech cult. By the end of the novel, she concludes that she is a true believer in surveillance by way of technology:

‘I think everything and everyone should be seen. And to be seen, we need to be watched. The two go hand in hand.’ ‘But who wants to be watched all the time?’ ‘I do. I want to be seen. I want proof I existed.’ (Eggers, 2013, p. 485)

While my sources of entertainment seemed innocuous at first glance — it is precisely this innocuousness that normalizes the practice of modern-day surveillance. These acts of participatory surveillance are a common feature today: we invest in these watcher relationships online for entertainment, convenience, social capital, comfort, etc. They have become part of our embodied selves. These voyeuristic tendencies (i.e. surveillance practices) are no longer relegated to society’s deviants; all of us are susceptible.

Beyond a Hierarchy of Surveillance

This rise of user-generated surveillance is best explained in Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson’s article on the surveillant assemblage. In it, Haggerty and Ericson criticize the notion that surveillance is conducted only through top-down, centrally organized systems. It is not, as many believe, a one-way information highway, nor can it be reduced to George Orwell’s Big Brother metaphor or Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon. While these comparisons still dominate contemporary surveillance discourse, they are simply not adequate enough to explain the current intersecting levels of surveillance at play. The concept of the ‘surveillant assemblage’ seeks to describe these complex surveillance systems, in which “seeing” technologies work together to create a larger, integrated whole, reaching all forms of society.

By abstracting human bodies from their territorial settings, and then separating and reassembling them into distinct flows, the surveillant assemblage in effect “transforms the purposes of surveillance and the hierarchies of surveillance, as well as the institution of privacy.”

TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. and user-generated sites like Reddit and YouTube, illustrate how the hierarchies of surveillance have been restructured, and much of this restructuring depends on active viewer participation. Where surveillance was once referred to as the ‘unwanted eye’ has now turned into ‘welcome watching’ — the desire to be seen, eventually became the new normal — so people like myself, who were once critical of surveillance culture, effectively shed these principles in exchange for cheap, escapist entertainment. The additional element of getting paid per view further normalizes this structure and incentivizes the creator to probe deeper inward and reveal more of themselves.

This new form of reassembling abstract bodies means that no one is immune from the gaze — including the watcher. But the bodies that watch the watcher are equally as insidious, as they often comprise of private companies, governments, and other third parties who collect and exploit our digital footprint without our knowledge.

A Digital Legacy For All To View

Boundaries crumbled. Privacy eroded. And it is us, the consumers, who demand it. Concurrently, online creators come to define and carve out their existence by way of their online personas. Their online presence will provide proof that they once existed — a digital legacy for all to view. They desire the recognition of having a distinct identity — and make a living doing it, thus creating a self-sustaining, perverse relationship in which both parties stand to gain.

For so long celebrity culture preyed on our voyeuristic perversions — and made them socially acceptable (it’s no accident that tabloid magazines are displayed near the check-out counter). And now, these perversions are made acceptable through user-generated sites. And they are far more immersive. While most of us are unable to escape the gaze, we can still make concerted efforts to humanize the person behind the screen.