Jackson Hole Live

Jackson Hole Live, by Liam Sweeny.

I will admit to you that my hunt for weird news everyday is a hunt. Oddly enough, the same urgency the news media gives to a strike, air or auto, is not the same urgency they give to a giraffe that is nursing three wolf cubs in some backwater zoo. Sometimes, therefore, weird news might be old news. But it’s still worth stalking about.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming. No, this is not a backwater town, but it is a town, and they had the epiphany that maybe if they put cameras up and showed them livestream, it would encourage people to visit with their satchels of tourist dollars.

They did catch the eye of one guy, maybe a girl, maybe neither nor, who took the livestream link to the social media site 4chan, with the intention of discussing the things he would do in the main intersection of Jackson Hole, which is one of the camera.

But a strange thing happened. People just started watching it. The intersection. Just the intersection. Commenting, ‘Bus,” “car,” “Look at that dude.” People were hooked, so many that the Jackson Hole livestream was the front page video of YouTube for a little while. Thousands of people were watching the intersection, many of them openly noting that that was where they were in their lives. Absurdism at its apex.

I can one-hundred-percent get this. I used to have cameras on my house, allowing me to see up and down my street, and I would always catch myself just staring at the screen, watching my neighbors park, watching the roofers slack off while looking like they were planning the big job ahead. It’s hypnotic to watch basic s**t.

I’ll leave you with the link. Watch it, don’t watch it, but if you watch it, for God’s sake don’t answer the phone… it’ll be the Jackson Hole Tourism Board.

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