We are always watching
On surveillance, observation, social media groups and what makes the grade as a story
Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend with Anna Rawhiti-Connell, in partnership with Kiwi Property.
My husband and I frequently discuss getting cameras installed at home so we can keep an eye on our dogs when we’re out. We inevitably realise we’d just be watching them chew on the couch from a distance rather than discovering that when we get home. There’s a kind of enhanced impotence and anxiety that comes with being able to do something for the sake of it rather than solving a problem.
Gabi Lardies has unravelled that feeling and so much much more in her Cover Story this week: Selling security, delivering anxiety: The rise of home surveillance cameras. We publish these during the week, but in many ways, they’re also perfect weekend long reads.
I talked with her about this more in this week’s episode of Behind the Story, but the idea came from her simply observing something that was happening in local Facebook groups.
It takes skill, instinct, curiosity and research to figure out whether something you see on social media is a story. As we both realised, it also weirdly positions journalists as observers in online environments where most people are just living their lives. In many ways, we are always at a distance, always watching.
Gabi’s feature made me very grateful that the social-media-to-homepage pipeline has thankfully become a lot longer than it used to be, and “people doing things on social media” isn’t a novelty in and of itself. To become a story, it needs longer legs, and unlike the unregulated and unfettered posting of security camera footage online, taking a social media spark to fully-fledged story requires craft, work, no judgment and integrity.
Behind the Story
Gabi joins me in this week’s episode of Behind the Story to discuss her observational instinct as a journalist, how she substantiates those observations, and how she balances empathetic and human storytelling with very big and often morally questionable forces on a topic like this.
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The Sunday Essay: Are you there, Grandma?
Lou Annabell went looking for her Grandma Stefania and the journey took her from the bloodlands to the Polish Children’s Camp in Pahiatua.
“Grandma Stefania was a complicated character, I am told. The only memory I have of her is either mine or from a photograph: her feeding me chocolate cake in a high chair. I was only three when she died. What I know of grandma is made of fractures, remembered by my siblings and mama. Grandma could play piano. Grandma liked to feed people. Grandma was a hoarder; she had multiple chest freezers full of frozen meals, stacks of toilet paper, nappies, clothes, anything you could think of.”
‘A perfect storm’: How the pandemic impacted eating disorders across Aotearoa
A new study has found that the pandemic saw a significant increase in eating disorders across Aotearoa. Alex Casey talks to those who experienced it first hand.
“It was Te Uru’s dad who first raised the alarm with her GP. The teenager was in year 11 in 2020, had become fixated on “good” and “bad” foods, and convinced herself she couldn’t keep food down, which frequently resulted in vomiting after eating. She wasn’t able to concentrate at work or school, and had lost a significant amount of weight. “I was trying my best to live a normal life,” she says. “But not very successfully.”
“The Industrial Revolution was kicked off through textiles, but what textiles have been for us historically is about ancestry, meaning, who we are, where we come from, how we relate to each other. Clothing was very, very meaningful.” In this piece for Art Work, Sam Brooks speaks with Steven Junil Park (6x4) about his creative practice making functional objects and textiles. Read it, here (sponsored).
‘The best thing was going home’: Rachel Griffiths on attending the Oscars
I adore Rachel Griffiths and have done so since she starred in Muriel’s Wedding and Six Feet Under. Griffiths is now starring in Madam on Three and is this week’s guest for My Life in TV. No disagreement from me on her choice for earliest TV crush.
The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week
Bulletin editor, Stewart Sowman-Lund, looks into what’s going on at The Warehouse.
Joel MacManus outlines why the internet’s favourite tax could soon be coming to the capital in his weekly Windbag column.
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith unpacks the ‘Magic handjob’ remark made by commentators during last week’s All Blacks match and reflects on the return of “lad banter”.
As featured above, Gabi Lardies’s Cover Story: Selling security, delivering anxiety: The rise of home surveillance cameras
In our ever-popular Cost of Being series, a coffee-loving law student living in a freezing Wellington flat reveals how they spend their money.
More recommended reads (and listens) for your weekend
Liam Rātana profiles the most popular Māori on TikTok
Joseph Trinidad pens a beautiful tribute to the girls in high school that made it possible for a closeted gay guy to survive.
We were all blown away when Alex Casey revealed this shocking new information about Mitre 10’s Bring on the Weekend jingle on Slack last week. Prepare yourselves.
Christchurch’s secondhand bookshops, ranked and reviewed by Simon Palenski.
The very last episode of Juggernaut has dropped.
Reader feedback of the week
“What an excellent article and I do love a good sammy or is it a sammie. One thing I do find awkward is when I can't actually fit the sammy into my mouth. That many are just too big and that their contents spill out and over onto my face and clothes and I have to use multiple serviettes to take evasive actions. I long for the old fashioned club sandwich, with a layer of egg salad, a layer of crisp cos lettuce and a layer of staunch cheese. I found a delightful one at Martha's pantry last time I was in Welly: cream cheese with dill and cucumber. Simplicity itself but divine.”
— Kathycooks
On Hera Lindsay Bird’s Hear Me Out: Ban all celebrities from reality TV game shows
“This is unbelievably accurate, and the only thing I find worse than full celebrity casts, is half celebrity casts. The first season of The Traitors US was half tv celebrities, and half normal people, which resulted in the kind of David vs Goliath gameplay that just made me feel sad for the normies. Nothing is worse than seeing a Below Deck castmate roasting an ER nurse for sport....”
Thanks for reading. I know I said this last week, but Madeleine will be back with you next week,
— Anna Rawhiti-Connell
