(New York Times Magazine) – Ours is a hyperconnected world, a place where it’s strange not to walk around with an internet-connected recording device in your pocket. When something big or new or scary happens — something like the natural disasters that are becoming more frequent and intense as the global climate is disrupted — the videos of people living through it follow shortly thereafter. They drop anyone who watches right into the drama, as if the world were a Twitch stream of some apocalyptic first-person video game.

Suddenly, some experience that previously seemed distant or impossible becomes something we’ve watched happen — not with distance or solemnity on the evening news, but mixed into the jumble of images of everyday life that scroll across our feeds. (Read More)