A moment in the sunset

It is a small gift to come loose from your perspective, to find some strange delight in two minutes of someone else’s, someone sitting alone on a bench and silently smoking while pointing his camera at a heart-rendingly beautiful English sunset, at vivid golden colours slowly changing into a darkening sky, because he wants you to like the sunset as much as he does, or because he doesn’t want to watch it by himself, because it brings back memories of bygone days, of weird outfits relentlessly made fun of in school, of consistent (and creative) insults throughout school, and of public ridicule at university. 

A large number of people use Periscope this way, anchoring themselves to live audience when it all floods back. I don’t know if this trend is healthy or safe, but when I discovered this livestreaming app owned by Twitter, it felt comforting to watch real-time videos from other people’s phones. Here I was, on Couch Mode, an offshoot of Periscope, that drops you directly into a new random livestream, each time you click “next”. And unlike Omegle and Chatroulette, which livestream users on both ends, Couch Mode gets more one-sided, with streaming only at one end, and viewers releasing heart-shaped balloons at the other. Also, the little nakedness on the site, although deeply perplexing, offers sanity and contrast to the nudity and madness at Omegle and Chatroulette.

Please note that the relative sanity on the site may have nothing to do with a moral awakening of its users, but something to do with the fact that a user’s Periscope account is directly linked to his Twitter profile or his phone number, or there are better places to peel off on the internet, such as Omegle and Chatroulette, places that practically offer the nudist beach but no hinterland to withdraw into and recover strength.

This brings me back to our man recuperating in the sunset, wrapped in a Persicope community of viewers helping him process his scars and the sunset. “Bullying can be a horrendous thing to go through, and is not something I would wish on anyone,” goes one viewer in the dialogue box, adding: “If you’re being bullied, it’s important to talk to someone, just like you are doing now on Periscope.” “Okay,” the man says, getting up with determination, “now let’s pull out of here.” A few seconds later, we watch a feed shot from the perspective of the man driving mad through an empty field, as if he were out to mow down his enemies, his demons, his bullies. The growling engine, the SUV bouncing, and the wind whistling past his camera’s microphone are all that are heard. According to the counter in the corner, I am the only person left watching this Mad Max, until I click away. 

Feeds like this invite you into the lives of people who are wonderfully strange. Call it the Sunset Effect. The more you suffer, the more attention you get. In November 2013, this incentive to perform for attention and sympathy was taken to a terrifying conclusion by a 21-year-old called Dakota Moore. His comment on 4chan website quickly drew a captive audience: “Tonight I will be ending my own life. I’ve been spending the last hour making preparations and I’m ready to go through with it. All that I request is for you guys to link me to a site where I am able to stream it.” Someone duly created a private chat room for Dakota to stream his suicide for the 200 or so 4chan users who had eagerly gathered to watch the Sunset Effect. Dakota swallowed pills, downed vodka, then set fire to his room using a toaster, and crawled under his bed. One user proposed a moment of silence.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light. Firefighters burst in, pulled the unconscious Dakota from under his bed, unaware they were being filmed. “Op delivered. He’s dead. It’s over,” said one 4chan user. Op had delivered, but he had survived.

ashish.sharma@bsmail.in