A while ago, I wrote a blog post explaining why Ring doorbells are awful. If you haven’t seen it, do give it a read (it’s jolly good). Since then, our obsession with filming everyone that comes anywhere close to us has exploded, and we now feel compelled to capture footage of anyone who walks down a public street, enters a building, or drives a car on the same road as us.
Photo by Kate Trysh
It's actually much worse than this. If you were to say to someone at the turn of the millennium that, in twenty-odd years time, everyone would have a high-quality camera in their pocket which they could whip at any moment and use to broadcast a video of you to everyone in the world immediately without your consent, you'd have collapsed in disbelief.
When you regained consciousness, you would have responded by saying that, obviously, we can never allow that to happen. Here we are, though, and this is now the world we’re living in. You could accidentally slip on a road outside someone’s house and find doorbell footage of you passed around on Facebook like currency. You could accidentally stall your car at a roundabout and find yourself posted on a "m0st stopid drivers lolz" Instagram reel.
If you’re an introvert, suffer with anxiety, or simply have a shred of dignity, you’re probably going to have a hard time digesting that. However, your reputation pales in comparison to a much greater force: giving a cheap laugh to someone who has their face stuck to their phone and needs another reason to ignore everyone they're sitting with at a restaurant.
If lawgivers had spent any time thinking about this, they would have drafted some legislation years ago stating that, if you circulate a defamation video of someone publicly without their say-so, you may well find yourself in receipt of a hefty fine, or - if I were in charge - a harpoon in your spine. The fact is, the law cannot keep up with technology, and now we're stuck with it.
You’re not even safe in your own home. Anyone could buy a drone and fly it over your garden or the skylights in your roof and capture any footage of you they fancy. Happily, you could report the pilot to the police or the Information Commission Officer, except that you have absolutely no idea who they are, and it's rather difficult to get the serial number of a drone when it's buzzing 50m above you.
Really, it's impossible to predict when footage of someone will get trawled across the internet. At a recent Coldplay concert, Chris Martin took a break from his melodic whining to comment on any unsuspecting victims caught on his voyeuristic "kiss cam". As you probably know, he struck gold when the camera focused on a couple having an affair. Omg lolz.
I wouldn't encourage anyone to have an affair - I would imagine it's far too much hassle - but being publicly humiliated in front of 60 000 people, save for the video of you burning through the internet and cheap media outlets like wildfire, feels like giving someone the death penalty for shoplifting a Freddo.
However, that still wasn't enough. The general public decided that this was now their business and took it upon themselves to decide how much the man's company share price should now be worth, how attractive his wife was on her Facebook profile, and who should get the dog in the divorce.
This is exactly what the glorification of public filming does. It ushers people into a glass house and hands them a platter full of rocks. Everyone has a whale of a time sabotaging other people's lives, sitting on their throne hoisted up by their social media sycophants, blissfully unaware that they hold roughly the same rock-bottom morals as a British tabloid journalist.
Is that the rule now? Can I not go to a concert without the risk of having my image splashed across the internet if I'm caught doing something the web thinks is comment-worthy!? Sometimes I check my teeth unflatteringly in a mirror, or scratch my bottom. I've even been known to pick my nose. I'm a category five risk.
If that's the case, then I will now have to make a choice about whether I go to a concert. If there's any chance at all that the internet will select me as its next public-shaming target, then I simply won't go. This is the same reason I won't sit in the front row of a Jimmy Carr gig. I don't fancy my chances of waking away from that with my head held high.
And I'm a nobody. If I'm a politician, I'm not allowed to eat a bacon sandwich because, if I do, people will lose their minds about it. I also cannot shed a tear because then, instead of people expressing sympathy, they'll say I'm incompetent and must be sacked. When someone does something that suggests any form of weakness, people will take time out of their busy schedules of banging rocks together to turn them into a effigy of public humiliation.
Clearly, we need to do something about this, but I fear that it's too little too late. Telling people they cannot do something after years of telling they can is remarkably difficult. In the 60s, the governmnet was telling everyone merrily that they should smoke tobacco because it would increase their life expectancy and street cred. However, when we found that it wouldn't, we didn't stop it immediately, we gave people a nice 60-year cooling off period so they could stop destroying themselves in their own good time.
So, while I don't expect the laws on public filming to change anytime soon, there are other things we can do. If someone posts a video of someone else online and you suspect they've done so without their consent, report them. You could also flag it as "inappropriate" or "uninteresting". That's what I do, because it is. Better still, leave a comment asking why they've decided to post a video of someone without their consent, or link them to this blog post. That would really show them.
Even better still, take yourself off your phone and focus on making yourself the best person you can be so you don't have to revel in other people's social faux pas to feel better about yours.