Ultimate Life Goal: Looking Cool on YouTube

Surveillance is becoming more and more pervasive throughout our lives. New technology allows for the constant surveillance of everyday people doing every day things everyday. Using Google's tool, Google Earth, anyone can type in any person's address and often receives a relatively recent photograph of the person's house. Using scroll features it is even possible to view a house in relation to its location to other houses in the neighborhood.
Google Earth allows anyone to see recent pictures of anyone else's house without the homeowner's knowledge or permission.

This constant surveillance may have serious implications for our society. Because people are becoming increasingly more aware that their every action is being surveyed by some camera at some point, for some people it turns real life into a stage of sorts.
One Dunkin Donuts employee fended off a robber without regard for his own safety because his first thought was that if the surveillance tape somehow ended up on YouTube he didn't want to look like a wimp. (full article here)

This growing awareness of surveillance modifies and motivates the behavior of individuals more concerned with being surveyed the way they want to be portrayed.

In a way it's almost as though people recognize that their privacy is being completely invaded but rather than being dismayed, some people not only accept it but also attempt to use it to their benefit.