When I was a young lad, we used to watch America’s Funniest Home Videos. I think this show still exists.

When I was younger, we didn’t have social media, TikTok, etc. So, the closest we came to seeing other people living their lives caught on camera was this show, and it always showed funny things and fails and so on.

These days, of course, everyone’s got a phone and they got a tripod: you see every single moment of their fucking lives. And there’s a trend.

Now, I’m seeing on social media people filming themselves crying about something, clearly distraught about some abuse or some bad result. It’s easy for us to forget that they’ve actually set the camera up.

Its one of the things that came up when we used to watch America’s Funniest Home Videos: was it all real, like spontaneously caught on camera, or did they set it up?

These days it’s almost entirely set up.

So, when you’re watching people living their lives on social media, remember they filmed this. How did they manage to get it on camera?

Was it a setup?

Probably.