we're living in a world of panopticontent
on turning 'NPCs' into 'main characters' and ruining their lives while we're at it
In 2014, when I was 16 years old, Prince William and Kate Middleton came to my hometown, Blenheim. It was crazy to us that they were coming to our small wee town, so Rubes and I (and some of our other besties) skipped school to go and stand in the town square in the hopes of - I’m not really sure - meeting them I guess? When the time came for them to do their loop, they split up, Wills on one side, Kate on the other, and she came right up to us. She shook our hands (I think?) and we had a little chat (I def remember cracking a semi-inappropriate joke about something), and at some point during this interaction, a photo was taken.
Even though we didn’t know who took it (or that it had even been taken) the photo ended up in our local newspaper, and across a bunch of UK media too, which at the time I remember thinking was really cool. It was cool, because the furthest it could go was some print and digital destinations (that after a few years no one would visit), and my brother’s Facebook page.
If this happened today, when things like TikTok and Twitter and Reddit exist and the internet is constantly looking for their next main character, Rubes and I would have probably been recorded freaking out/ doing something weird/ or even worse - someone may have captured my attempt at a ‘joke,’ and rather than us just being NPC’s (Non-Playing Characters) in a photo with Kate Middleton, we may have gone viral *shudders* and become the internet’s punching bag for the day.
Welcome to the age of ‘panopticontent.’
Panopticontent is a portmanteau that I stumbled across on (the soon-to-be-defunct site) Twitter, which first appeared in (the soon-to-be-defunct site) Buzzfeed News, and it describes the way that not only are we keeping each other under constant surveillance by watching each other, but we’re recording it and turning it into content too. Love that for us!
First, the panopticon
For you to fully understand ‘panopticontent’ you need to understand what the hell the ’panopticon’ is, which - thanks to the criminology paper I took at uni - I can explain to you. It’s essentially a disciplinary concept, thought up by philosopher Jeremy Bentham, where there is a central observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells.
The goal of this concept is that the prisoners can’t see when there is a guard in the tower, so they assume that they could be watched at any moment (or are being watched all the time) and act accordingly. The idea of constant surveillance is the point of the panopticon - and the idea of constantly being made into content that could be seen by ‘everyone’ is the point of ‘panopticontent.’
Panopticontent, in action
The latest *viral moment* that screamed ‘panopticontent’ was courtesy of TikToker Jackie La Bonita. Jackie was at a baseball game and was feeling herself, so naturally, got her friend to take a photo of her. In the background, two women (who’ve noticed that Jackie is filming) proceed to give her the middle finger, at one point are audibly calling her ‘lame,’ and are just being… rude.
Jackie uploaded the video to TikTok, overlaying captions, zooming in on the women, and titling the video: “Watch my confidence disappear after these random girls make fun of me for taking pics.” This wasn’t a byproduct of ‘panopticontent’ where someone in the background of a video goes viral ‘by accident’ - this was very much the point.
Since being released, the two women in the background have been doxxed (the TikTok search bar gave me their names without me searching at all) and people have found out where they allegedly worked and have been leaving incredibly negative reviews for them, forcing the company to label itself as ‘permanently closed’ online. People also tracked down one of their boyfriends and he’s come out to say his family are now being “attacked online.” It very much feels like the punishment here doesn't fit the crime (if we’re still running with my one-semester of criminology expertise) because yes, they were bullying this girl (which is bad), but should they have potentially lost their employment, had TikTok give EVERYONE who opens the comment section their names, and have their loved ones be attacked for it?
Panopticontent isn’t new, but this level of it is
When I was growing up we had things that relied on people in the background, or people that didn’t know they were being used for content (until afterwards), sure! Lots of ‘People Of New York’ type of Instagrams/ blogs, ‘overheard in ____’ accounts, ‘random acts of kindness’ videos, even ‘public disturbance’ videos relied on the reactions from those being disturbed. But today when it feels like every second person on a college campus or busy sidewalk is wanting to stop and ask you what song is playing in your headphones, what your take is on X issue is, what your ‘type’ is, what your salary is, how much your apartment costs (and what it looks like)- the idea that you could end up in a video seems hard to avoid.
And at least with these types of videos you mostly know you’re being recorded. What about the style of video where someone is saying “hey - if your name is X and your friends were at X location today, they were talking about you, and they do NOT want you to come to X’s birthday party” sending the comment section into total sleuth mode. Maybe you’re the ‘hot stranger reading on the Subway’ and someone has posted a video of you hoping that you’ll stumble across it when it goes viral and fall in love with them (and not think it’s incredibly invasive, actually.) Maybe you’re in the background while someone is filming their workout. Maybe you’re trying to break up with someone because it’s not working out and they decide to make a video about it.
There are a million other examples I could give of this, but I encourage you, next time you’re scrolling through your social media feed, to think about the people in the videos. Did they know they were being filmed? Do you think they gave consent to be in the video? Before or after it was shot? Was the point of the video to have a ‘gotcha’ moment of someone doing something weird in the background? How would you feel is someone filmed you as an “NPC” in an attempt to turn you into the main character so they could rack up a few likes?
In this age of panopticontent, we could all be Truman, and this could all be the show. I guess we just have to wait until we go viral to find out.
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