The revolution will be livestreamed on Twitch
On 6th January, 2021, a few days after the year we had pretended was the problem, the revolution was livestreamed on Twitch. Along with 225k other viewers, I tuned in to coverage of the Capitol coup attempt from @HasanAbi - aka leftist ex-Young Turks YouTuber Hasan Piker - who had grown his political commentary channel to 954K followers on a platform more traditionally used for streaming video games. By the time the protest had become a riot, it was dark outside in London, and from my position slumped on the sofa my laptop screen glowed red and blue as my internet connection struggled to buffer a sudden influx in online horror.
Hasan narrated his shared computer screen in real time, flipping between right wing livestreams, official news networks, viral tweets, and updates from @POTUS. The Twitch chat hummed with memes, political hot takes, news links, PogChamp emotes and professions of love for the viewers’ himbo king. Audio clashed and video glitched; updates came through in fifteen second mobile clips and ‘BREAKING’ tweets: government computers had been abandoned with programmes still up and running, guns were drawn, someone had been shot. Hasan’s multi-media remixing mirrored my own overtabulated brain; flipping restlessly between Discord servers, Twitter feeds, BBC Reality Check explainers and bewildered WhatsApp group chats with my friends and colleagues, compulsively stabbing the home button for a fresh hit of disbelief.
Like any gamer offering running commentary over Minecraft or Among Us, Hasan responded to politicians, tweets and talking heads with his own acerbic analysis: ‘Really dude, is it un-American dude?’ he retorted to house minority leader Kevin McCarthy, breaking down whilst being interviewed on CBS, ‘What the fuck did you guys think was going to happen? Y’all did this shit. Oh no, I can’t believe all our racial agitation ultimately ended with those sick hogs acting out on the desires we placed there for them!’ After breaking into the Capitol Building, the rioters didn’t appear to have a plan; they left notes for Nancy Pelosi, dangled from the dais, adorned bronze statues with MAGA caps, took turns to sit in Pence’s chamber chair.
The supposed coup began to take on the appearance of a perverse revolutionary pantomime. News anchors from MSNBC and CNN - embedding the same social media clips we had already seen a hundred times - wondered that the protestors willingly showed their faces, that they were bold enough to livestream an uprising. What was the end game, the Twitch chat asked: surely a ragtag group of freaks and geriatrics couldn’t actually occupy anything for long? Why did it feel like, as Hasan pulled up image after image of them waving for Getty photojournalists and sporting Viking costumes (‘cultural appropriation!’ someone cracked), rioters were playing the whole thing for entertainment?
The answer: influencers. The coup was nothing more than a social media stunt engineered to generate engagement and impressions. The crowd united Proud Boys and Stop the Steal supporters with far right personalities and streamers from several platforms, including banned YouTubers Nick Fuentes and Tim Gionet, known as Baked Alaska; and Jake Angeli, a popular Q Anon figure known as the ‘Q Shaman,’ who was clad in fur and skulls as if the task was to siege Valhalla, not the US Senate. Others rocked up in branded merch; hoodies declaring ‘6th Jan 2021: CIVIL WAR’, Pepe meme paraphernalia, body rigs and selfie sticks to document the chaos as it unfolded. Attendees took selfies with police and live-streamed from inside the speakers’ offices, videos uploading direct to YouTube, Twitch and blockchain streaming site DLive, during which they reminded viewers ‘don’t forget to like and subscribe!.’
They used the coup as a collaboration opportunity, offering shoutouts and promoting others’ channels. DLive streamer Zykotic, describing himself as ‘the real news media’ in front of the battered remains of a professional news crew’s recording equipment, invited shoutouts from those filming near him. ‘Everybody go follow him!’ Zygotic shouted, after one YouTuber identified himself by name and handle, ‘I’ve got three thousand people [watching], go follow!’ Rioters made off with ‘hauls’ and posed for content: clutching letters addressed to Nancy Pelosi, wooden nameplates, a five foot wooden podium stolen from the Senate. It was difficult to view the coup as anything other than a collective content creation activity, a right-wing influencer meet-up, a fascist Fyre Festival.
YouTuber Stephen Ignoramus streamed for 8 hours to a total of 331,493 viewers. ‘What’s up everybody, Stephen Ignoramus here!’ he had announced as he started his stream on the long walk through the landscaped grounds towards the building: ‘we’re going to the Capitol to do some Minecraft shit.’ As he and his friend trudged in the direction of the protest, the sound of Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger’ had blared from a speaker in the background. ‘I wonder if they’ll give me a strike,’ Stephen said, referring to YouTube’s automatic identification of unlicensed music: apparently more threatened by a copyright strike than the seditious activity he was about to broadcast live under a personally identifiable handle. ‘No, they’ll give you a demonetisation,’ his friend off-camera chipped in. ‘They’re all homos over there at YouTube, man’ Stephen complained. Three and a half hours into his stream the camera surged forwards as the crowd rushed up the Capitol steps. He panned to show the crush of bodies, waving flags, a screaming sea of red white and blue. In the background, shouts of ‘we’re taking back our country’ and ‘we want Trump’ flattened into a static roar. ‘Share this out, link this shit, love you all’ Stephen yelled. A few seconds later, a shot was fired.Â
The platforms were thrown into a sudden state of emergency, scrambling to restrict and demote coup content and Trump’s incendiary video urging ‘very special’ protestors to ‘go home.’ YouTube didn’t remove Stephen’s video, but they did add content warnings in front of many DC livestreams and removed others that included weapons and incitement of violence, whilst Facebook and Twitter scrambled to restrict Trump content and take down videos. Twitch announced they would remove the PogChamp emote, after Gootecks expressed support for the insurrection.
But amidst a social media uproar laying responsibility for the violence at Trump’s feet was the culpability of the host platforms too. If inciting civil war got you a 24 hour suspension, what would it take to introduce a ban? Tech industry figures began tagging social media CEOs and declaring that platforms had blood on their hands. ‘[We] told them to do the right thing. They didn’t. And here we are,’ said Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit. ‘A rubicon has been crossed’ declared tech reporter Casey Newton. Within 48 hours, most platforms had suspended or banned @RealDonaldTrump.
I had been searching for an ending, and this felt like it. If the coup was the result of 4 years of progressive political escalation, it was also the culmination of a decade of social media and influencer culture as well. I, along with my colleagues and contemporaries in the smooth, sanitised environment of Instagram stars and lucrative merch lines and brand partnerships, had been able - and even willing - to ignore the truth: that polished commercial influencers and facist streaming hogs were two sides of the same algorithm. It was no surprise a reality star and social media influencer President had summoned an army of selfie-takers and streamers, breaking into the Capitol building simply in order to post to social media that they had done so.
Protestors had ostensibly turned up to investigate the political ‘cabal’ draining trafficked children for adrenochrome or reclaim ‘stolen’ or ‘miscounted’ votes: boxes of which had been duly whisked away by evacuated employees. But it was never about votes: it was about views. Once inside the Capitol, the rioters gained full control: seizing the seat of power of the most powerful nation on earth for a two hour window. But once inside the sacred halls of American democracy - faced with infinite possibility and potential discovery - what rioters chose to do instead was nothing at all; capturing content, forgoing action for the curated likeness of it. The act was purely performative, an event without a center, a simulacra familiar to any influencer accustomed to sharing their life via an iPhone. The coup - if you could even call it that - was both real and not real simultaneously. When the rioters arrived at the Capitol; there was nothing there to be taken. The true nexus of power was not within the Senate walls: it was online, in the audience, in the engagement, in the algorithms. The real spoils of the coup, it turned out, were the followers we made along the way.
