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Notes -
Two screens, more literally than usual
There was a thread a few weeks back about Hasan Piker supposedly using a shock collar on his dog. I didn't think too much of it at the time, not knowing who Hasan Piker even was (I had heard the name, but couldn't tell you anything else). But a little later I ran across Taylor Lorenz's podcast episode on it "Hasan Piker and the Future No One Is Ready For" (link to YouTube and therefore auto-transcript, since I follow via podcast, I have not seen the video).
In the episode, she describes the shock collar claim as obvious nonsense that anyone watching the video can see for themselves, in addition to her having met Hasan and the dog in person and therefore she is sure the claim is false.
In comparison, in the Culture War thread post I linked above, /u/crushedoranages says
I have not gone down the rabbit hole of analysis of the video, so I'm not going to try to defend Taylor's interpretation. But I was struck by seeing a case where both sides are telling me to watch the exact same video clip since in it is plain to see the events transpired as they claim. The "two screens" concept comes up here a lot, but it's usually about seeing different subsets of a population, often whatever your social media algorithm surfaces, or different interpretations of the same utterance (see: taking Trump literally vs. seriously or, more recently, the Young Republicans group chat). This seems like a whole new level of disagreement about reality.
Taylor's thesis is mainly one of anti-surveillance (a major theme of her work), which is pretty well covered by this quote from the YouTube auto-transcript:
Its worse than just that, since the "he's clearly an animal abuser" crowd then pored over every single hour of footage involving Hasan and any dogs (there's gotta be thousands) to find other bits of evidence scattered about that sort of support the thesis that he is constantly shocking his dog.
People aren't just watching two different screens, they're able to custom-build their post-hoc interpretation of everything from scratch, if they want.
Straight up confirmation bias, rather than trying to find something that was convincingly exonerating/falsify their hypothesis. We know from the "WE DID IT, REDDIT!" days how well this usually goes.
Of course, the guy has gone about defending himself as sketchily as possible.
Applying some epistemic hygiene, I don't think the original video is strong proof of him actually shocking the dog. That said, the specific set of events that the camera did capture requires a more complex coincidence to explain than the pretty dead simple "the dog left its spot, he reached over to hit a button to correct the dog, the dog reacted to the correction" one.
Given what I know of Hasan, given the fact that the dog did have that particular style of collar on, given the aforementioned set of events, given the fact that the dog does seem trained to stay on that little bed for hours on end, I think it is more likely than not (call it 55%) that he shocked the dog on stream. How much weight you give that conclusion probably hinges on how much you care about streamer drama in general.
And I am willing to believe that Hasan is 'abusive' to the animal in that he cares way more for his own image than said dog's comfort and happiness. And I would judge him pretty harshly for that... but it doesn't budge my opinion much, given how low said opinion already is.
Everything about the situation is pretty well explained by the apparent motives of the people involved. There's nothing 'interesting' here its all just precisely what you'd expect from every single person who has touched it.
The Livestreamer world has been in utter shambles lately, if you ask me. If you are paying too much attention to it you're participating in a circus of self-harm, in my absolute honest opinion. There are some 'decent' people in there that you can give attention to but obviously its the nature of the whole platform to elevate some of the worst, most narcissistic, poorly-adjusted personalities to the fore and inflict their behavior on the viewers. And then rewards them for generating outrage, sometimes to the tune of millions of dollars, so of course they will follow the incentive gradient.
We're a LONG way from the wholesome days of "Twitch Plays Pokemon." The current state of it reads more as "Gen Z Jerry Springer Show." Not that I want to exonerate Millenials.
The 'good' people who make it big either get pulled into the mire of degeneracy or make their bag and escape. Likewise, you can usually tell the 'good' people as the ones who had their lives in order, solid relationships, and a tendency to avoid drama before they came in, and maintained those while they were active.
Hey, remember that time Ninja caught flack for stating his general refusal to co-stream with females other than his wife?
Given what just came to light with Mizkif (and he's far from the first) this just seemed like a smart move.
If you don't recognize any of these names, congratulations, you are winning at life, please avoid contaminating your brain by gaining awareness of their existence.
I think I said it before, probably YEARS ago, but if Twitch had made a serious effort to stick to its core model of "person records and broadcasts themselves as they play a video game on their computer" they'd be having an easier time avoiding scandal. That would also mean nuking gambling, prostitution ads (I'd literally say the policy should be "if you have any presence on an e-prostitution site where you appear to engage in any sex acts we ban you instantly"), political commentary, most 'real life' type streams, or active drama farming. When in doubt, make the rules more strict rather than less.
Of course, that would have risked them losing out to a competitor, such as Kick, with a more 'anything goes' ethos.
Sorry for the tangent. I really just despise that most of these people exist while having any kind of mainstream sway.
i'm actually wondering whether if a lot of these drama events are actually real or if they have are wholly faked or pre-planned to generate content. one hot tub streamer Amouranth appears to have generated a fake abuse story with the co-operation of her husband.
Amouranth is an apex predator in this environment, its more likely that most of her drama is planned out in advance, since I've yet to see her make any moves that would be very likely to result in legal consequences if they were faked. I.e. there's no 'cost' to faking this stuff, so they probably do fake it.
But I also would be willing to believe that she is instinctively willing to convert ANY source of drama, authentic or no, into further attention, and thus the dysfunction of her and those around her is actually adaptive?
Was curious as to why, Googled it, saw her images, and closed out the tab as my question was answered.
She's a lot more than a pretty face. Consider her early photos. People may think looking good can get a girl far, but unless her ambition is being a trophy wife, that's not true at all. Lot of hard work and scheming involved.
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I giggled. Yes, that's about the only impression you need.
Okay, maybe this one, too. (Very SFW, but will induce extreme cringe).
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I'd bet a lot of the time it's just a matter of individuals following their incentives. Get into some scandal or high profile beef with someone, create a large sink of free attention, and then that sink of attention gets divvied out to the participants, using whatever eldritch rules determine such things.
How consciously faked it is is almost besides the point--it's 100% fake parasocial engagement through and through, and probably the best adapted parasites are the ones that're able to convince even themselves that it's real.
Safest bet imaginable. Identify the incentives, I'll explain and predict the behavior.
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