Violence on Demand: Commodification of Digital Violence in Trash Streaming

Abstract

Abstract: This article examines how representations of violence in a range of transgressive autobiographical narratives streamed online have become objects of (financial, social, communicative) transactions in which the aesthetic and moral status of acts of violence (understood as radical instances of norm-breaking) contributes to audience engagement and results in a voluntary servitude relationship between creators and their viewers. The argumentation I offer here analyzes the connection of audience engagement with gratification mechanisms based on high eventfulness of the violations presented, on the one hand, and participation models based on an illusory sense of agency, on the other. In this conjunction of participation and gratification, performative aspects of online streaming are discussed to show that violence is not merely an event represented on-screen but also a performative product of the power regimes that are established between authors and audiences. Essential for contemporary narrative theory in general, the notion of eventfulness is discussed here for two reasons: to indicate the reliance of digital culture on event as an organizing compositional principle, and to observe the potential effect this reliance might have on the endorsing of violent acts by internet communities. The com-modification of violence that results from the nexus of eventfulness, gratification, and participation is illustrated in a case study of the so-called "trash streams," a subgenre of online broadcasts in which authors present radically violent, odd, transgressive content to attract the attention of viewers, solicit financial support, and obtain reputational benefits.