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The girl who just live-streamed her sister’s death isn’t the first violent broadcast, and won’t be the last
We place more value in followers than we think
Obdulia Sanchez, 18, is in custody after allegedly live-streaming her 14-year-old sister’s death on Instagram.
The California teen was allegedly driving drunk she crashed her car, launching both her sister and another girl out of the car. The other passenger sustained injuries but survived, while Sanchez’s sister was killed at the scene.
“I fucking killed my sister, OK?” she says in the video. “I know I’m going to jail for life. This is the last thing I wanted to happen, OK? I don’t fucking care though, I’m going to hold it down. Rest in peace, sweetie. If you don’t survive, I am so fucking sorry.”
Sanchez, has more than 7,400 followers on Facebook and Instagram, and over the past few years has worked consistently to grow her personal following through live streams — one of the quickest way to grow pages and followings on social media. It’s more interactive than photos or pre-recorded video, and allows users to engage with one another in real time.
Police say when the car veered onto the right shoulder of the road, Sanches over-corrected, causing the vehicle to veer across the lanes in the other direction and overturn onto the side of the road after crashing through a fence.
The 18-year-old faces vehicular manslaughter and DUI charges.
“What I think is she knows she’s done something wrong,” Sanchez’ father said, “Because she knows, and that’s what I feel. . . She killed her own sister.”
But this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a death similar to this one live-streamed on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and if history proves anything, it isn’t likely to be the last.
Everyone remembers the “Facebook Killer,” who was on the run this past April after uploading a Facebook video of himself killing Robert Godwin Sr. in Cleveland, Ohio.
A few months ago, a 19-year-old French woman live-streamed her suicide on Periscope. The video shows her describing her rape by a close friend, and then turning the camera to herself before jumping in front of a commuter train.
Even after her death, comments continued to pour in.
In June of last year, Antonio Perkins, 28, was shot and killed in Chicago while live-streaming himself on Facebook. That was the second time in the few months someone live-streaming themselves was shot and killed in Chicago.
After being viewed nearly 350,000 times on Facebook, the video was finally taken down — but not before the damage was done.
“This is a horrific crime and we do not allow this kind of content,” Facebook said in a statement following the event. But when it takes an hour or so for a video to be flagged and noticed by Facebook, it’s already spread the way viral content does.
A screenshot of the YouTube videoLike Perkins’, deaths while live-streaming are often accidents. But that doesn’t change the fact that the “Facebook killer” opened the floor to using live stream as a means of broadcasting hate crimes.
“We are deeply saddened by this tragedy,” Instagram said in a statement today, “We urge people to use our reporting tools if they see any content that puts anyone’s safety at risk.”
But perhaps we should be less fixated on the people viewing live streams, and more fixated on a society that places such intrinsic value on personal followers, and the unsustainable relationships we foster with them.