At risk of sounding like a boring old fart, I read the above phrase and it struck a nerve. These days, very little of life is actually lived. It is performed, recorded, judged, and so on. How many of us know people (usually female) who can't eat or drink anything before taking its picture, from multiple angles, and uploading them? Who need to document every little thing they do in life, without realizing that actually nobody cares.

You can see it in the protest movements happening as well. Everyone has a smartphone out, eagerly "documenting" the scene. Shoving cameras in everyone's face, either cop or participant. Everyone is both voyeur and narcissist. Endless angry/weepy/ raging rants on Tiktok, vomiting faux emotion and betting for attention.

Not sure what else to say, just my morning coffee rant.

29 minutes ago, Hanaguma said:

You can see it in the protest movements happening as well. Everyone has a smartphone out, eagerly "documenting" the scene. Shoving cameras in everyone's face, either cop or participant. Everyone is both voyeur and narcissist. Endless angry/weepy/ raging rants on Tiktok, vomiting faux emotion and betting for attention.

Mind you, if the "scene" was not documented, I rather suspect that many abuses of power would go unknown and unseen - as happened for example in the southern United States in the 1960's, or closer to home (for me at least), parts of Northern Ireland in the 1960s - and look what that led to...

Just now, JAG said:

Mind you, if the "scene" was not documented, I rather suspect that many abuses of power would go unknown and unseen - as happened for example in the southern United States in the 1960's, or closer to home (for me at least), parts of Northern Ireland in the 1960s - and look what that led to...

I know what you mean. I think governmnet especiallly needs to be documented, just to keep them honest. As long as it doesn't devolve into interference or harassment. IMHO every LEO should have a body worn camera, turned on for their entire shift, with no way to mute or turn it off. But that's just paranoid me.

11 minutes ago, Hanaguma said:

I know what you mean. I think governmnet especiallly needs to be documented, just to keep them honest. As long as it doesn't devolve into interference or harassment. IMHO every LEO should have a body worn camera, turned on for their entire shift, with no way to mute or turn it off. But that's just paranoid me.

I think it is more a function of increased access to technology for "everyman", and authority's inate wish to suppress dissent. In the last 100 years we have seen newspaper journalism, and there were some very good reports and exposés, then we had radio and television (that has been pretty well suppressed recently by economic methods) but now we are in the era of almost universal connectivity, which enables many many more people to get involved and broadcast. To be sure a lot of what we see on the Internet is garbage, often groundless sensationalism, but there is also matter which should be seen, and would never have been in the past.

The problem with your very sensible suggestion of "always on bodycams" is that if the agency which controls that footage also has malign intent, then the

footage will simply never see the light of day. Whilst the "independent documenters" can be annoying, their "evidence" can at least be considered, and forms a record not controlled by those who may be perpetuating abuse.