On Monday night, after 10 days of nonstop streaming, 46 year old Jean fell asleep on camera and never woke up. Viewers watched as his body was shaken by his companions, who only realized minutes later that he was gone. A live video, now widely shared, reportedly shows him inanimate under a duvet, with two men nearby, one tossing a small plastic bottle of water at him.
Those 10 days weren’t just harmless gaming or chatting. They were ten days and nights of humiliation: extreme physical violence, sleep deprivation, even being made to swallow toxic products. All live and fully monetized for donations.
The channel behind this is called Le Lokal, run by streamers known as Narutovie and Safine. Mediapart exposed them last year for “live humiliation and violence for audience shares.” They were detained, then released and the channel kept going.
There’s a clip from weeks ago that’s especially haunting: his “friends” laugh about what would happen if he died live. One insists he should say on camera that if he ever dies, it’ll be because of his health, not them. Under pressure, Jean said it.
Some people are now arguing he was a consenting adult, fully aware of what he signed up for. But in reality in a message to his mother, Jean wrote: “It’s going too far. I feel like I’m being sequestered with their shitty concept.”
Thread on french tht goes more in depth
I'd say this is an evolution of "lolcow" content, because traditionally it's based on an "audience" torturing someone, but here the torturers are part of their act, part of their life and living conditions. This is what the braver channers dreamed of, being able to personally torture someone who calls you a friend and broadcast it to your sick friends and a broader audience for money.
Fundamentally they are both based on cruelty and voyeurism, though