On May 14 Payton Gendron opened fire in a supermarket in the city of Buffalo with the specific aim of hitting and killing people belonging to the black community. He killed ten people and broadcast the video of the massacre live on Twitch. At the same time Gendron, who called himself on the internet with the nickname “jimboboiii”, released a 180-page racist and anti-Semitic manifesto in which he explained in great detail that he had radicalized himself on forums such as 4chan and that he had done his act because he was a supporter of the theory according to which the white American population would be the victim of an ethnic substitution, a thesis widely married and resumed on the main networks of the American right.
The ranking
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by Vincenzo Cosenza
10 December 2021
It is not the first time that this modus operandi has been used, indeed, it has now become the practice of a certain type of white supremacist massacre that uses social networks to show what is happening. Obviously this is not new in the field of terrorist actions that have always exploited the mechanisms of the media to amplify their message and make it a spectacle. Indeed, streaming is the reason that pushes some people to do what they do, the possibility that someone sees, that someone passes on.
The red thread
And if the show is not a set of images, but the social relationship between people mediated by images, as Debord said, what has gone on stage is just the umpteenth connection of a red thread, of a sort of great international less disorganized than the supremacist terrorism that each time mentions the previous episodes and follows their tracks. Each of these characters mentions the previous one. The distorted and terrible version of a viral challenge. But if Debord was talking about the society of the spectacle, today we often hear about the society of performance, which in some ways is the same thing, but also not. Because if once the sensational gestures were made to get the attention of the media and eventually convey their political messages, today the disintermediation that has changed the rules of social communication has also changed those of the horrors broadcast live.
Rewind
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by Lorenzo Fantoni
04 January 2022
Gestures like those of Buffalo or mosques in Germany and New Zealand are not done to attract attention, they are already attention. They are horrors that simmer in the ravines of a society that neither knows nor can manage their existence. Actually, let’s be honest, when the absurd theories on ethnic substitution arrive in prime time can we still say that it is the fault of the internet and its worst forums? And not because the internet is a priori a horrible place, but because in certain contexts the awareness of being watched and the desire to be are the engines of a lot of gestures that otherwise we would not do.
Documenting every moment of our life for others, taking sides publicly for a cause, videos or stories, showing purchases, meals, outings, are automatic and normal gestures, in some ways also beautiful, because everyone has the right to show a little bit of happiness when they manage to hold it in their hands. Also because if we share for a few minutes we may not be the ones who enjoy it, not be the ones who must accept the images of others and recognize their own need within them, we are the ones who dictate the need to others. None of us want to be the infamous tree in the falling forest without anyone hearing the sound of it. Payton Gendron didn’t want it either and so he used the language he probably knew best, that of direct disintermediated contact, of direct contact with his audience, with his possible followers on Twitch, which has become the involuntary spectacle of a horror that once upon a time. it would have been exclusively mediated by television and instead today it can reach an audience directly who will consume it as if it were the video of an animal doing funny things, with just a hint of morbidity.
Someone to cheer for us
And the craziest thing is Gendron shared the shooting for the same reason that prompts me to put a selfie of me trying to get fit or me setting up, yep, my studio for Twitch: having someone cheer. for him. I know, it is horrible put in these terms but it is also perfectly normal, because in the end the great coin of our years is the attention and as often happens with some riches you just have to understand how far you are willing to push yourself for the famous 15 minutes of fame theorized by Warhol.
Do you want a symbolic phrase for these years? A phrase that obviously does not want to have any justificatory intent towards a crazy racist killer, but which perfectly shows the zero degree of performance culture? “I think the chance to go live gave me some motivation, at least I knew that someone was cheering for me”, said a sportsman who seeks courage to train, nor a person facing a path of physical recovery. or a designer looking for inspiration: Payton Gendron himself. I can only get closer to the edge of the horror that this speech brings with it, luckily it is an edge of loneliness, racist radicalization and places I wouldn’t even go to for research, but it throws a very bad light on any form of performativism. Perhaps, even that done for a good purpose, which is often nothing more than positioning oneself on the side of the fence in which one believes, but in which one also hopes to speak to one’s loyal public.
And even though Twitch removed the footage in record time and blocked jimboboiii’s account, we all know very well that in these cases it’s like trying to fix the Hoover Dam using only your hands. The platforms will always be a step backwards because, once you have reached a certain level of users, control is impossible and brings with it a series of risks that are already evident today, as anyone who has jokingly told a friend “I’ll kill you” knows well. and found himself banned from Facebook for three days. Ah, there is an interesting solution if you want: to make weapons globally less accessible, especially military rifles.