Why You Don’t Have To Get Naked To Have A Popular Livestream On Periscope
By Alex Pitti
When Twitter was first launched early adopters had to ask themselves what to tweet. Are you supposed to provide minute to minute updates of your life? Are you supposed to make political statements? I think some of these questions have been answered by now, although some still haven’t figured out what a tweet is supposed to contain.
We are now entering a new digital age as livestreams are gaining popular as our phones have the chip speed and the camera specs to film our lives. We now have the similar questions to ask. What do you ‘scope?’ Are you supposed to entertain people or inform people? I will attempt to provide you with some color on this topic.
I don’t have the magic formula for gaining instant fame on Periscope. I just want to provide you with a standard way of approaching the app, so you don’t become one of those people who first started using Twitter by telling us what was on your sandwich or how many times you peed that day.
The problems with Periscopes today are growing pains. While it is understandable that these are occurring, I think it is time they stop for the betterment of the community.
The worst ‘scopes’ are the ones of women/girls where the broadcaster just sits there while hundreds of fawning viewers make inappropriate comments such as the now infamous ‘open bobs’, which is a foreigner’s failed attempt to get the broadcaster to get naked. The obvious and truly disgusting problem with this is that users are anonymously treating normal women/girls as if they are porn stars. When did that become the norm of our society? Popular social apps always have an influx of teenage and sometimes younger kids using them. More should be done to stop this. This makes the typical cyber bulling hate look like child’s play.
The other problem with the way these scopes go is the broadcast itself. I don’t see the benefit of putting a livestream of yourself on the internet while providing no value in terms of entertainment or information. If you decide to get in bed and stare at a screen, you are going to get creepy responses. This is not victim blaming. This is being smart about how you portray yourself on the internet.
A great example of this realization was a Periscope I was watching yesterday. A guy posted a Periscope with the title “one minute with a hot girl” (or something along those lines). The goal of the scope was probably a joke. He wanted to make him and his friend laugh. This isn’t exactly what happened. He ended up having about 900 people watching a beautiful girl in her bed. Somehow he became a filmmaker of a porn when he was attempting to try to get a laugh. He knew in his head and from the comments that these viewers weren’t here for a joke. They wanted to see more. In my own defense, this was the most popular Periscope at the moment, so I just tapped on it without reading the title.
After realizing he turned his friend into a cam girl, he immediately shut off the ‘scope’ and said “let’s all pretend that didn’t happen.” The situation gets serious when almost one thousand people are watching you. This recognition in his head is what all broadcasters have to do when they are about to begin ‘scoping.’ Stop for a moment and think to yourself whether this will provide value to your viewers. You don’t want to turn into a porn star in an instant.
Periscope is partially to blame for this happening. You can tell from the titles of some scopes that the broadcaster is trying to do something inappropriate. These ‘scopes’ need to be banned quicker to prevent the culture of Periscope from turning it into a pornographic app.
The media is also partially to blame. Who cares if some idiot is livestreaming the ‘Game of Thrones’ illegally? We have borderline sexual offenders on the prowl targeting little girls! I think getting rid of those should be covered more than whether some rich guy didn’t get millions for a show he produced.
To end this article, let’s discuss what needs to be in a Periscope to provide a better experience. Periscope is a creative platform for you to share your talents such as how Amanda Oleander films herself painting. You can have a political discussion, a religious discussion, or do impressions. As long as you are providing value, it doesn’t matter what you do. Recognize that if you put a provocative title, you will get some blowback which isn’t worth the instant fame. When you block someone, the message it sends is “I respect myself. I don’t need to objectify myself to gain followers. I can do it by showing off my talents.”
The best Periscopes are the ones where a citizen reporter is on the ground showing the viewers something not reported on in the news such as the ‘scope’ showing us the refugee crisis in the Middle East. This is what Kayvon Beykpour envisioned when he invented the app. He wanted to show viewers around the world what it was like in Turkey without the filter the media puts in front of the news. Let’s not sully this great opportunity with inappropriate comments targeting teenage girls.