• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, July 8, 2016

As America spins out of control, the helpless plaything of psychopaths, bigots and know-nothings, it seems we’re all going to have front row seats thanks to social media, which allows ordinary people to broadcast the unfolding mayhem via live streaming video. Quite what all this means for marketers and advertisers I don’t know, but I also don’t really care, as we clearly have bigger problems to deal with.

In the latest live streaming horror show, the shooting of twelve Dallas police officers by snipers during a protest, leaving at least five dead, was live streamed on social media sites Thursday evening. The shootings came towards the end of a march protesting the deaths of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, who were killed by police earlier this week in separate incidents that were also widely circulated on social media.

As the live streaming video posted to Facebook by march participant Michael Kevin Bautista shows, as the march began to break up dozens of shots rang out, triggering a panicked stampede by protesters and onlookers screaming in terror. Bautista, hiding behind a tree, narrates the action: “They’re shooting right now and there’s an officer down. They just dragged one of the police officers into this police car over here to give him some attention and there's somebody else down over there.”

A number of other videos of the shooting aftermath were posted to Twitter, including one in which a woman is heard saying: “Oh my god, there are people laying on the ground, I hope they're just hiding.”

One issue that may be raised by the growing prevalence of live streaming video showing violence as it unfolds is whether assailants are exploiting it to determine the locations of potential victims or gather information about law enforcement responses. For example, in Bautista’s live stream of the Dallas sniper attack he turns the video to show police sheltering behind vehicles as the confrontation continues. If the snipers had cohorts in the crowd, or simply knew that participants like Bautista would be present and live streaming the video, all they would need is a smartphone to gather this kind of intelligence.