Everybody Wants to Watch
Imagine the distant future a century from now: 21XX.
The phenomenon of livestreaming and self documentary has risen to new heights. The sanctity of personal privacy has shriveled to sheer nonexistence. The general population has an ever growing hunger to consume even more media. It’s becoming a cultural shift where the need to be entertained and be related to is equalizing to hunger. The flow of information has grown to such an immeasurable and vast ocean, it’s the new generation’s obsession to unearth every facet of life. It’s impossible to go to out into a public without the whole world’s eyes on you. Half the people shopping for groceries have GoPro nano-cameras attached to them, vlogging their everyday life to whoever wants to watch. The world wants to become its own reality show.
This is where a certain tech company comes in, asking to establish a new service.
Little Mother Inc. wants to offer you an opportunity to become part of something bigger than yourself, your city, and even your country. Their mission statement is quite simple: broadcast the everyday life of everyday citizens to the world! All public access to the world.
Now of course to do this, all users subscribed to Little Mother must forfeit all privacy to the corporation. All personal information, any sense of alone time, and any chance of being off the grid would be in the hands of Little Mother. It meant almost daily house surveillance across the globe, for the globe. A generation ago, a proposal like this would’ve never even gone through. In fact it probably would’ve been scandalized and drug through the mud. But now, all defenders of privacy have folded. It is just simply impossible to escape surveillance in this age. Conspirators against this new generational shift were eventually outed and ridiculed for being against progress. Any opposition to this new service coming to the world had been marginalized half a century ago.
The need to be televised has consumed the thought process of the average human.
Little Mother starts its business up all over the world. Upon subscription, a LM provider is to arrive at the user’s house and install micro sized cameras across the perimeter of every room in the user’s house. The idea is to capture every possible angle of a room depending on the situation. The cameras themselves are designed to broadcast when it detects important moments. The priority on it is raised when there are more people detected in a room at once. It wants to capture daily activities and interactions at the most favorable light. To create that true TV moment, in every home in the world. The first few weeks of the show roll out. You can tune into the LM channel on the public broadcast that is aired out onto every type of possible media. Immediately the impact of it is felt.
Pain, starvation, abuse. It all gets aired out.
Suddenly, the everyday problems of the everyday person in the everyday family are broadcast for all the world to see. Complete, unabashed openness. For the first few weeks, it felt like chaos.
You had people who became fans and superfans of certain families who were broadcast. They saw all that real struggle and strife and connected to these “characters.” It radicalized them, they needed justice for their favorites. You had fundraisers and campaigns made to get younger kids out of abusive households. Helping disenfranchised families dig themselves out of poverty. Even seeking out abusive partners just through seeking out clues in freeze frames. This new viewing experience has ignited a vindictive spirit in the general public.
At first, the reactions have been very positive to the company, Little Mother. Social climate and positivity is at an all time high. A lot of good deeds are done by this program. But soon, this all takes a turn down south. Political figures and other wealthy leaders of the world begin enlisting into Little Mother. They put in money to the company to request more airtime. The future broadcasts of the program are edited in such a way to include as many positive moments of these leaders. This did not settle well with the public.
Not only did this cut into time of favorited families, the recent broadcasts were very obviously edited around much more. It was the first time censors were used and they became quite hard to ignore. Important documents would flash onto the screen and immediately distortions arose on the screen. Discussions of war would be cut short or would be swapped to another screencast. Needless to say, the public was outraged.
If we get our dirty laundry aired, why don’t they?
Riots began to fill up in every part of the world like a domino effect. It was like the realization that the people were on a lesser playing field was dawning with each revolution of the Earth. Officials had to be placed on high lockdown with ample security. Because outside their offices was chaos. You have hordes of people screaming and clawing outside every government in the world. The act of keeping themselves secretive has driven everyone mad. Suddenly the eyes are all on Little Mother, the instigators of this service. Throughout all of this, they have remained relatively quiet. As a last ditch effort, the political powers of the world put the burden of guilt onto them.
Little Mother puts out a statement.
“We are not responsible for any action taken by individuals involved or uninvolved in our program.”
And it seems that this statement came at a convenient time…because the first assassination plot was completed.
