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Ice Poseidon’s Lucrative, Stressful Life as a Live Streamer
- arcsin 8y agoThere was an interesting event recently that happened to another live-streamer named Arab Andy. Arab Andy streams himself walking around with a speaker strapped on that plays text-to-speech and audio clips of whatever his viewers send him in their twitch donations. One viewer sent him a sound clip of a bomb countdown and detonation, and Arab Andy was subsequently arrested and last I heard was possibly facing prison time on a felony charge. Personally I don't think he should have to go to prison, but it's an interesting question what, if anything, should happen in cases like this. Here's a video of the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVWX7r1WQLg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVWX7r1WQLg
- canardlaquay 8y ago"Arab Andy" cared more about the donation than his own life. He clearly let the bomb sound happen on purpose for the sake of fame. He didn't even bother muting it or at least muffling it. Weakly moaning "It's TTS!" (Text-to-speech) as an excuse to the officer that arrested him not so long later is enough of a proof that this guy was disconnected from reality and just doing that for the money. It doesn't matter where you're coming from, you just don't play a bomb countdown - especially not in a room crowded full of people. You're scaring people on purpose, and that's called terrorism. He deserves that prison sentence.
- mieseratte 8y ago> You're scaring people on purpose, and that's called terrorism. Well, no, that's not terrorism. At least not in terms of criminal charges[0]. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism#Unite...
- icsllaf 8y agoIsn't one of the main caveats of the first amendment that you can't say "Fire" or "Bomb" in a crowded theater? As someone who watches live streams normally, it's weird to see the clashing of the online world with its disdain for social norms and encouragement of casual racism mix in with the normal day to day lives of people. A future where a good chunk of people walking on the streets are disconnected from the people around them and instead are trying to please a faceless mob which demands that life constantly be reality TV is a weird one to think about but I honestly believe that this is a future that is possible.
- mieseratte 8y ago> Isn't one of the main caveats of the first amendment that you can't say "Fire" or "Bomb" in a crowded theater? It's a complicated and, IMO, interesting topic.[0][1] [0] - https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/ https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha... [1] - https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-law/2018/06/fire-in-a-crowded-theater/ https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-law/2018/06/fi...
- notafraudster 8y agoI confess to having read the Popehat link quickly (I do not have audio right now to be able to listen to the podcast) and it is possible I missed some subtext, but the link seems more to speak to that the quote was made in a context many today would find disagreeable as part of a series of bad rulings, and that it has subsequently often been invoked to support restrictions on speech as though the existence of some restriction on speech automatically justifies others. Both points are well taken. But this is quite literally a situation where a person shouts about a fake threat so as to cause alarm in a crowded fora -- the article does not seem to argue that doing so would be legal or that it would not be a permissible restriction on speech. So I defer to anyone who knows more than I do about speech law -- to be clear, it is still impermissible to (falsely) shout fire in a crowded theater, right?
- mieseratte 8y ago
- LgWoodenBadger 8y agoWhat do you think would (or for you, should) happen if Orson Welles performed War of the Worlds today?
- digi_owl 8y agoThe device would show a "radio play" notice for the duration of the performance?
- hackerman12345 8y agoSo if someone calls you and you're using speakerphone and they say something bad you should be arrested?
- ManFromUranus 8y agoI saw another one where somebody sent arab andy a clip of the n-word being repeated over and over 50 times while he is on the bus. A very liberal looking white guy in his 40s threatened to stab andy so he got off the bus immediately.
- QuotedForTruth 8y agoHow does one look very liberal? Ive seen that clip. The guy was either super unstable or just trying to "out crazy" the streamer and scare him away.
- ManFromUranus 8y agoThe guy was unstable yes, but he also looked super liberal. It's tough to articulate, but it exists nonetheless, it's like asking what strawberries taste like. Perhaps I can't articulate it but that doesn't mean nobody can taste them or the taste doesn't exist. Some facets about him that I don't care to enumerate gave me that impression. He was trying to appear crazy yes and he did brandish a knife as well. You are being far too charitable with him. He essentially committed assault by creating the impression that andy was not physically safe and that he may use a knife against him.
- lovich 8y agoHaving a machine repeat slurs constantly also makes people feel unsafe. It doesn't sound clear cut
- ManFromUranus 8y agoInteresting that you don't cite brandishing a knife as unsafe, it's a text to speech voice that's the REAL problem.
- ferongr 8y agoThe absolute state of USians
- janlaureys 8y agoI once posted a timelapse video of my commute on facebook and people were calling me out for not blurring license plates. This guy just walks around all day live streaming the life of random people ? How is that not a clear violation of privacy rules ? Disclaimer: Am European.
- mieseratte 8y agoIANAL but in the US, you have no (legal) expectation of privacy when you're in a public place / visible from a public place.
- Semaphor 8y agoNot sure about license plates, but when Awkwards Travels (much smaller channel, a couple live streaming traveling, mostly SEA) were here in Germany, they had to be way more careful about what they showed.
- chadmeister 8y agoYelling "fire!" in a crowded theatre is not protected free speech, which is exactly what this kid did in the video. I think this is a pretty clear cut case where someone does deserve jail time.
- mieseratte 8y agoI've already posted this in another reply, but the "Fire in a Crowded Theater" bit no where near as clear cut as you've claimed.[0] [0] - https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/ https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- funfunfunction 8y agoThe thing Ice Posidean has going for him is an almost cult like following. Unfortunately the way that plays out is often quite negative who people who aren't a part of the community. I wonder if building a community with this level of dedication is even possible without victimizing people or causing mayhem.
- com2kid 8y agoThere are other streamers who have a cult like following that isn't toxic. Some of the Twitch streamers pull this off, if the streamer has mods who wield the ban hammer hard and earlier, it is possible to shape the community that grows up. All of the cult of personality type of streamers are going to have a viewer base that is a bit odd, but they don't have to be malicious. As an example, one community I'm part of decided one day that we were going to play punk music on stream. Since on Twitch, $=free speech, music requests are $3 a minute or so. It (de?)volved into a battle of the bands as fans of different bands went back and forth.
- uremog 8y agoYou definitely need something to channel that dedication into. Political groups use it for change in their favor, companies use it for work, terrorist groups use it for terrorism.
- jxub 8y agoNewspaper headlines sound like taken from a Black Mirror episode by the day.
- vortico 8y ago>Denino often lands at the top of a message board called LivestreamFails This is no longer true. His stream has been banned on that subreddit for producing scripted content. https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/8p7sib/ice_poseidon_is_now_banned_from_rlivestreamfail/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/8p7sib/ice_...
- musage 8y agoNothing changed. More people are sick, but the sickness is not new.
- treis 8y agoThat was a really interesting piece. All I can think of after reading it is Grandpa's quote from the Simpsons: I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV0wTtiJygY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV0wTtiJygY
- sushid 8y agoIf you don't get the whole Twitch/YouTube live streaming concept, then sure, but don't mistakenly think that Ice Poseidon is what's mainstream and "it." This is essentially social media 2.0 for 4channer.
- yedava 8y agoThe dystopian literature of the last century tended to view the TV as a device that enslaved the masses, turning them into obsessive, entertainment consuming automatons. I feel like we're living in that dystopia, only with the Internet taking over TV.
- yifanl 8y agoWorse than that, it's faceless people taking willing participants and turning them into amusement bots.
- digi_owl 8y agoTwo things comes to mind: First of all, Max Headroom. I think there it was a felony to turn your TV off or some such. Second, Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It is a anime tv series that involves an undercover security force in future Japan.
- samfriedman 8y agoMan, Adrien Chen has done some really interesting pieces while at the New Yorker. I'm constantly impressed by his ability to cover niche parts of web culture and technology in a way that is always engaging and at least close to topical. Other recommended reads: A "Daily Show" style satirical program tries to get off the ground in Nigeria: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/22/using-comedy-to-strengthen-nigerias-democracy https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/22/using-comedy-t... Making ironic, absurd art and gaining an internet following: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/brad-troemel-the-troll-of-internet-art https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/brad-troemel-t... Lessons from the radio era for the "fake news" era: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/04/the-fake-news-fallacy https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/04/the-fake-news-...
- TarpitCarnivore 8y agoHe also wrote about Russian troll farms back in 2015: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html
- Bartweiss 8y ago> The restaurant starts getting a lot of unusual phone calls... An employee asks the man if he is Paul Denino. He says yes, but then explains that the callers are pranking him. He is live-streaming through the camera on the stick, and some of the thousands of people watching are trying to fuck with him. The calls grow more disturbing... The restaurant manager asks Denino to leave. Almost immediately, the restaurant’s rating on Yelp begins to plummet. Dozens of one-star reviews flood the page within seconds. It's hard for me to see things like Ice Poseidon's stream as media or entertainment, really. If this is a predictable consequence of streaming which restaurant he's going to, then Denino is basically just ruining someone's day (and possibly much more) because he thinks he'll make money off of it. Nor is this anywhere near the bottom of the pile. Trollstation has picked up jail time over three different 'pranks' - a bomb threat, a fake armed robbery, and a fake kidnapping. Which puts "fire in a crowded theater" to shame, honestly - waving a fake gun around specifically to frighten people isn't even something that gets considered in most free speech debates, and rightly so. (I shudder to think how that prank might have ended in the US.) My favorite example, though, is still RossCreations. Whose idea of a prank was... taking down stopsigns. Just that, going to an intersection and taking away stopsigns so maybe some people would get in a car accident. He was apparently charged with felony grand theft (stop signs aren't cheap), but I'm a bit surprised no one threw in a public endangerment charge alongside it. I guess I don't understand how we got here. I know people doing stupid stuff and misjudging pranks is nothing new, this isn't a "kids these days" complaint, but where did people get the idea that "it's for my channel" changes the ethics or legality of things they know will go wrong?
- yebyen 8y agoI never even heard of this guy until I was in a bar in Phoenix Arizona and listening to a flight attendant tell the story about how her plane was raided by SWAT armed response earlier that day, because of him. It looks like that was April 28 last year. She was absolutely terrified and all of the passengers were asked to keep their window covers shut while armed personnel surrounded the plane and prepared to board from the rear entrance and take him out of there. It's a predictable consequence of him going places and streaming. He'll even say things like "I hope nobody figures out what plane I'm on and calls in a bomb threat" but honestly what actual law is being violated and by whom in this situation? I mean I can personally see he knows he has antagonists and he is specifically egging them on, and he is profiting from it, but I don't know the specific actual law that he'd be breaking in this case, as much as I'd like for there to be one. Ruining dozens of peoples' day just isn't a violation of the law in and of itself.
- __flo 8y agoThat was a disturbing read. That guy is practically a slave to his followers. There may be money in it, but I have the impression he is beyond the point of no return. Even if he would want to stop streaming, the more sociopathic lot of his "community" will probably sniff him out and expose him. > “It was just easier to break up with her than to deal with it.” I don't know whom I find more pathetic, him or his followers. This is just sick.
- wpietri 8y agoA while back I had the chance to watch user research interviews of streamers. People clearly loved doing it, but also struggled to find a healthy balance. Being on camera that much, especially with the expectation of continuous engagement with lots of followers, is an extraordinarily intense situation. Long ago I was an exchange student in Ecuador, where some workers would still chew coca as they worked, basically the same way people consume coffee. It was normal and boring for locals. Refine that same leaf, though, to cocaine and crack, and you get something so compelling that it becomes dangerous. I sort of think of streaming as a similar thing: it takes normal human sociality and refines is to a degree previously never seen. I'm sure some people will find healthy ways to deal with it, but I'm not shocked at all that it breaks people.
- rasz 8y agoThe problem I keep hearing from gamer streamers is searching for your niche, and stumbling into something you dont enjoy, but suddenly you start making real $$. Jump from streaming for 20-50 people to 2000-3000 does things to you.
- qplex 8y agoI'm pretty sure if he stopped streaming the followers would eventually move on. Also it's later stated in the article that he didn't actually break up with the girl, it was just a smokescreen to get the community off his back about it.
- minimaxir 8y agoIce Poseidon's subreddit is also drawing absurd engagement numbers for a subreddit devoted to a single person: https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1004387299273027584 https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1004387299273027584
- wgerard 8y agoWhat an oddly modern version of The Truman Show (I guess?). > Denino resisted for months—Caroline made him happy—but eventually he relented. “It just got too much, dude,” he told me. “It was just easier to break up with her than to deal with it. There's something really deeply somber about that. I'm always curious what happens to these people in twenty (or even ten) years. I imagine this isn't a long-term career, but obviously I could be 100% wrong about that (e.g. Reality TV doesn't just star young adults anymore). Of course some of these people are also earning (maybe just near) pro-athlete levels of income, so I guess with some foresight maybe they don't have to work ever again after retiring, really.
- heavenlyblue 8y agoCome on: > Yet he felt that he had to act as if he didn’t care, or his viewers might suspect that he and Caroline hadn’t actually broken up. There's some hope for humanity, isn't there?
- digi_owl 8y agoI find myself thinking of how for a few years the local TV channels offered night time SMS driven chat services. The thing was that said chat had a 30 second delay, because every message was read by channel staff before being allowed on the air. On a different note, i can't shake the thought that there was an uptick of "pranksters" online after the whole Anonymous circus hit the airwaves...
- ghostbrainalpha 8y agoI've never understood what "Ice Poseidon" was, but I notice at any given point on Reddit if you search by "NEW" posts basically 25% of posts will be in the Ice Poseidon subbreddit. It's really the only community that keeps pace with r/The_Donald.
- trgv 8y agoI thought this was a good article. I think the relationship between streamers and their audience is a more extreme form of the relationship between celebrities and their fans (some of whom may tend toward fanatical). It's not surprising that things end up this way. When you remove the music/movies/whatever that the celebrity is producing and give the fans direct, real-time access to the celebrity's life things were bound to get weird. One area where I disagree with the article is this characterization: > [Viewers] are immersed in an online culture that believes that “social-justice warriors” and political correctness are the main obstacles to self-actualization In my opinion this kind of "extreme speech" should rarely be taken literally. Instead, misogny/racism/xenophobia/ranting about "SJWs" on the internet should be viewed as a weird kind of performance art rather than an expression of genuine beliefs. None of that makes it pleasant to an uninitiated spectator, but I'd compare that to how someone might find a dead baby joke terribly offensive. Really, I'd compare the whole thing to an inside joke between friends that would be considered "over the line" if someone else heard it. There's nothing new about that.
- kharms 8y ago>In my opinion this kind of "extreme speech" should rarely be taken literally. Ironic racism/bigotry inevitably attracts people that aren't in on the joke.
- rft34g4e3t 8y ago> In my opinion this kind of "extreme speech" should rarely be taken literally That's what surrogates said about donald trump before the election. The muslim ban was just hyperbole. Then he got elected, and people were getting detained at the airport. Now I'm not naive, and I know that some of the outrageous speech of online trolls is just for show. The problem is, you can't detect sarcasm online. White supremacist groups are actively recruiting on chan boards. You can't say it's all just a joke.
- munificent 8y ago> I think the relationship between streamers and their audience is a more extreme form of the relationship between celebrities and their fans I totally agree. One of the things the Internet has dramatically increased are asymmetric relationships between people. Some amount of asymmetry has always been part of life — the peasants know who the king is but the king doesn't know the peasants. But now that anyone can broadcast to millions, it's easier to have a one-sided relationship that a peer-based one. I believe that's profoundly unhealthy, and a problem society is going to have to confront and learn how to deal with.
- TheBranca18 8y agoMy favorite story about Ice Poseidon was when he and his friends were at a Denny's talking shit about black people and a person comes up to them and calls them out to fight outside for being racist. They backed down so fast. That's the problem with people who grew up streaming their lives, there is no normal life for them. Everything is a meme, etc. Regardless of his political views, they can't be that important to him to back down from his toxicity when called on it.
- psychometry 8y agoWho's more obnoxious, the streamer or the viewers? I really can't decide.
- rft34g4e3t 8y agoHow did we become so lonely and disconnected that watching a stranger's live-stream became a substitute for human contact? It's something I see in all online video. Lets plays, mukbangs, makeup tutorials.. the game, the eyeshadow, the food is not important. It's having someone talk to you about their day. It makes you feel like you're not alone. Take ReviewBra for example. He barely reviews food anymore. He just sits at a table and says comforting things. At least he's trying to use this for good. But why has this content taken off in the first place? So many young people I encounter are practically hikikomori.
- salvar 8y agoI get your point, but aren't you writing this on an online message board that's essentially a slightly different kind of substitute for human contact?
- rft34g4e3t 8y agoDigital communication is not inherently substituting human contact. It can be used to augment our relationships - organizing meetups in real life, and keeping in touch with long distance friends. It can also help you make new friendships in real life, or online-only. Online-only friendships are not a problem, as long as you have IRL friendships also. But read the article. When they talk about this streamers fan base. How some of them felt so depressed, and the stream made them feel like they had a friend. Maybe the stream kept them from ending their life. What makes people so lonely that the stream is the only thing keeping them going? I'm not critiquing online video. There will always be a need for entertainment. What I'm asking is why so much of it, lately, seems designed to comfort lonely people. And why are so many people in need of that?
- lovehashbrowns 8y ago> How some of them felt so depressed, and the stream made them feel like they had a friend. Maybe the stream kept them from ending their life. What makes people so lonely that the stream is the only thing keeping them going? > depressed > Maybe the stream kept them from ending their life. Did you not answer your own question? As someone with a lot of social anxiety (it's hard for me to even comment in forums/here) Twitch streams make it feel like I'm getting human interaction. But it's mainly a distraction from the feeling of loneliness, obviously. Hopefully it gives these people the time they need to deal with their social anxiety/depression rather than progressing further down the spiral.
- tomtimtall 8y agoSo many people Seem to be extrapolating this into something it just isn’t. He could stop tomorrow and live a normal life in a couple of months. This isn’t the trueman show or someone propelled into international fame against their will. It’s the long tail of the network effect. You can sustain yourself by being moderately entertaining to some 50k people but you have to stick to the role. Ice Poseidon has chisen a role of being a huge jackass who runs the border of criminal behavior. That was his choice, not something his fans pushed on him, and honestly I wish serious media like HN and the New Yorker would just ignore him. There are NeoNazi personalities and Scientologist preachers with more followers than him, and we’d don’t give them screen time because they don’t contribute anything to society so why wast your attention on this but?