The Internet Runs on Voyeurism

How social media turns private crises into public entertainment

Sometimes, while scrolling TikTok, I’ll come across a video of a schizophrenic person explaining their “gangstalking” situation. I would show you, but I deleted TikTok, and it’s currently unavailable in the Apple store, so… It’s usually a person who looks dishevelled and strung out fretting about how the government is watching them. They evidence their paranoia by showing cars with tinted windows parked outside their apartment or someone looking at them weirdly in a Walmart. Their comments are flooded with onlookers egging them on like a circus animal – they’re watching you, don’t trust them. This type of content has become so popular that there’s a word for it: schizo-posting.

I scroll through the videos with a mixture of sympathy and perplexity. I know it’s wrong – It feels invasive to watch someone lose their shit from the comfort of my bed like a black mirror episode. But I am also fascinated at the glimpse into the mind of someone on the edge of insanity. I can go through their entire profile, watching their descent into psychosis like a VHS tape on rewind.

Tweakers at Motel 6 painting

I see people talking to themselves or giving incoherent stump speeches to whoever will listen nearly every day in New York City. I rarely look and never stare. I avert my eyes and hide behind a book or within the confines of my noise-cancelling headphones. Sure, I partially do that for my safety, but also because people in crisis are not something to gawk at. It’s sad. They need help. So why do I feel comfortable doing it from behind my phone screen?

The internet runs of voyeurism, and that’s been true since Two Girls One Cup. We love seeing things we are not supposed to see, and online anonymity lets us peer into the keyhole with little consequences. There is an entire genre of shock sites dedicated to content that is so violent, gruesome, and sadistic that no morally upstanding person should ever want to watch: ISIS decapitations, school shootings, snuff films, animal abuse, cannibalism; the list goes on. And yet, these sites raked in millions of views and developed cult followings.

Shock sites proliferated in the 2000s on a corner of the internet handcrafted for middle school boys and adult incels. As someone who began middle school in 2009, I marvelled at how raw and uncensored the internet was, how it felt sticky with deviance. But I rarely went on shock sites because I was afraid that someone – I’m not sure who – would punish me. Every time I did, I’d quickly exit like there was a 5-second rule. Maybe God went for a smoke break and didn’t notice. But I trepidatiously explored other passages into the digital underworld, spending nights being groomed by older men on Kik and reading 4Chan threads advocating for gay people to be put in gulags. It was thrilling, like a release valve for my pent-up guilt and shame.

Most shock sites shut down as platforms caught up to the enormous liability sitting on their web servers. But even after one of their creators was arrested, the website remnants of two of the most popular shock sites, BestGore.com and LiveLeak.com, are unapologetic manifestos to free expression. Apparently, “BestGore was built on a foundation of providing life-affirming, empowering content that has a profound impact on the wellbeing of countless individuals.”

It’s easy to scrunch our faces in disgust and abhor these ugly vestiges of the internet, to dismiss them as criminal, inhumane, sick, and disgusting. I wouldn’t even argue with you. But I don’t see shock sites as isolated lone wolves in their depravity. They are a natural extension of an internet culture that is fundamentally voyeuristic. From scrolling TikTok to rubbernecking Instagram drama, our hunger for schadenfreude has only evolved into something slicker and more sanitized.

It’s ubiquitous – from Caroline Calloway being brought near suicide to Trisha Paytas’ struggles with Borderline Personality Disorder and substance abuse issues. The most disturbing version of this trope can be found in Joshua Block, known as @worldoftshirts on TikTok. Joshua is a young man with an intellectual disability who has gained 3.7M followers by publicizing his alcoholism, making several videos a day, every day, showing his drink of choice. Despite him clearly on a self-destructive and unsustainable path, the internet has made a meme of him – what some might call a Lolcow.

His comments sections joke about how he hasn’t changed clothes in weeks, tally the amount of alcohol he’s had in the last 24 hours, and goad him into going live because he “needs the funds” (Josh isn’t able to keep a job, so live streaming is presumably his primary source of income.) His trolls have started harassing him in public, provoking him to scream and bite himself out of anxiety and frustration. Without exaggeration, a man without the mental faculty to defend himself is being lured to his death for the sake of memes.

Already in an incredibly vulnerable position, Josh recently began posting with a streamer who goes by Mr. Based (not to be confused with Mr. Beast.) Mr Based’s real name is Jason Itzler, a man, formerly known as the “King of All Pimps,” who was implicated in the drug-related death of a woman in 2011. Now, Itlzer is doing a different type of pimping – taking advantage of Josh for views and streaming revenue by feeding him alcohol and feigning a genuine connection. Despite this obviously abusive relationship, Josh’s comments are none the wiser – wondering when he’s going live with Mr. Based again.

Josh’s story shows how the internet’s impulse for voyeurism has metastasized into something more invasive and calculating – a feedback loop of misery monetized for consumption. Shock sites may have been gruesome, but there was a clear separation between the subject and the viewer. Social media shattered the fourth wall, allowing the viewer to poke and prod at the subject, pushing them further into disarray. We are no longer sitting in the Colosseum stands, watching a bull writhe in agony. We now hold millions of javelins aimed at a singular wounded animal. Its humanity, and ours, bleeding out for the sake of the spectacle.