A bear setting off the motion detector on a Ring surveillance doorbell camera

“Stories from your friends next door, they never told, you might be a star tonight, so let that camera roll.”

The opening lyrics of America’s Funniest Home Videos summed up late 1980s television culture pretty well. Early in the decade, the home video camcorder was invented and by the decade’s end, nearly every sock-and-sandals dad was out videotaping every moment of their family’s lives.

America’s Funniest Home Videos on ABC was based on a Japanese format which let people submit their home videos for a chance to win a cash prize. ABC cast “America’s Dad” Bob Saget, a raunchy comedian-turned-wholesome parent on Full House, to host the show. Saget would add cute voiceovers and quirky quips over the clips in each segment.

AFV, as it was later known, helped develop the model and format of the viral video. The show was filled with captured moments in time, showing just the visual punchline from the recordings of mainly mundane everyday life. The rawness and authenticity were mesmerizing — shaky camera footage of kids falling, non-deadly accidents, animals doing funny tricks, and embarrassing moments filled each episode. It was voyeurism without being creepy. It was private lives network televised. It was perfect for an era of overconsumption that thrived on visual stimulus.

It’s no surprise then that another memorable show from 1989 was COPS, a ride-along reality show that followed real police officers as they made arrests, responded to calls, and performed stings. It was voyeurism for viewers that got off on seeing perpetrators face accountability. Fortunately, it was framed through the lens of law enforcement. The arrests and interactions were part of the legal process.

Both America’s Funniest Videos and COPS are now in their 33rd season. America has surpassed the need for either of these programs, yet they persist. These programs represent Americana at its most decadent. In the three decades since these shows first aired, the reality television genre helped a reality star disrupt US politics; the viral video helped make YouTube the second most visited site in the world; and the desire for voyeuristic media has been perverted by surveillance technologies.

In early August 2022, Deadline reported that comedian Wanda Sykes was going to host “a new twist on the popular clip show genre” featuring “viral videos.” The show, titled Ring Nation, is proposed as a show akin to America’s Funniest Videos and Cops, though it much more resembles a dark plot from an episode of Black Mirror.

Ring Nation doesn’t use camcorder footage, it uses the footage captured by the motion detecting technology of the Ring smart home camera. Ring cameras are embedded in doorbells or surveillance cameras around someone’s house. Unlike AFV and COPS, the footage is always from a skewed angle — mid-body or high-above, not from the shoulder of the camera person or outstretched arm of a mom holding a cellphone filming her kids. It’s the machines’ eye view of television, hosted by a human.

It’s even more grim that Ring Nation and its technology represent two very dark aspects of 2020s America: monopolistic, corporate, surveillance-capitalism that is scaling in real time and the encouragement of paranoia and fear of your neighbors. These are distinct problems, but they are connected by Amazon.

Ring is owned by Amazon. Ring Nation is produced by Big Fish Entertainment, the production company that made the wildly problematic “copaganda” show LivePD. Big Fish Entertainment is owned by MGM Studios. MGM Studios is owned by, you guessed it, Amazon. Amazon, which recently acquired iRobot, the company that makes the Roomba, is obviously interested in human data. Amazon has Ring cameras to watch you, Roombas to measure your room, shopping and deliveries and the touch of your buttons, all tracked by Amazon’s huge servers. It’s surveillance capitalism maxed out — that is until Ring Nation.

Deadline reports that Ring Nation will be a series that “will feature clips such as neighbors saving neighbors, marriage proposals, military reunions and silly animals.” Just like AFV! Except Ring is more complicated than that. Ring has allegedly given footage to police without users’ permission and worked directly with the police. But that’s not the worst of it, Ring’s presence in neighborhoods has increased fear.

Joshua Benton, founder of the Nieman Lab, writes for The Atlantic, “crime has declined enormously over the past 25 years, but people’s perception of how much crime there is has not. A majority of Americans have said that crime is increasing in each of the past 16 years — despite crime in each major category being significantly lower today than it used to be.”

The incursion of Ring technology helps perpetuate a fearful mentality and a wariness of your surroundings. Rather than blindly trust your neighbors, Ring watches them for you. The increase in fear also happens to coincide with the public’s exposure to violent programming, whether online or on television. By installing surveillance onto your house, you are outsourcing your safety while simultaneously believing you may be in danger.

Many people already use the Citizen app (née Vigilante) which allows anyone to report crime. Ring has one too. It’s called Neighbors. And it makes neighbors law enforcement adjacent first responders to perceived criminal acts or suspicion. The fact the app is tied to the smart technology means every alert, every doorbell ring, every movement, results in paranoia and fear. And it goes without saying, but must be repeated, crime reporting and surveillance disproportionately affects Black and Brown people.

From a television perspective, this show seems inevitable. Every week we’re treated to a plot line from Black Mirror become a reality. However, this show is gross even by low-end reality television standards. At first, it’ll seem cute that these machines captured moments no one thought was recording. But the format will get old because it lacks the human interface, the person holding the camera, the human deciding to engage with media production.

Ring Nation wants to sell more Ring products. The show will be a commercial for you to want to get these cameras for your house. It will disguise surveillance in happy moments and silly animals curious enough to come up to your front porch. But it’s really trying to sell you protection against made up fears.

Ring Nation is the end-point of a three-decades long experiment in television media to broadcast user generated content into people’s living rooms. Ring Nation comes with a chance that an all seeing machine within a mega-corporation can win you money and make you feel safer from your imagination!

“America, America, This is You.”