Humilitainment 2.0: Platformed Crime Entertainment and Digital Carcerality on YouTube
2026-08-29
Reality-based crime television has long shaped public understandings of policing, crime, and punishment by turning law enforcement encounters into consumable spectacle. As these narratives migrate into engagement-driven platform infrastructures, where recommendation systems and interactive features reshape how policing media is packaged, encountered, and monetized, their cultural impact is reconfigured. This article examines COPSTV, the official YouTube continuation of COPS , as platformed crime entertainment structured for visibility and circulation. Drawing on a thematic analysis of 200 highly viewed COPSTV videos, I identify three interrelated patterns: the packaging of policing encounters for visibility through sensationalized titles, rapid escalation, and spectacle-oriented narrative sequencing; recurring representations that glorify law enforcement, individualize criminality, criminalize mental health crises, and normalize police violence; and the conversion of public humiliation into a platformed strategy of engagement. I argue that YouTube’s recommendation infrastructure may contribute to the amplification of punitive narratives by increasing the visibility of highly engaging policing content, positioning viewers for participatory judgment while crowding out structural critique. Situating COPSTV within scholarship on platform governance, media convergence, and digital carcerality, the article shows how platform dynamics render coercion and degradation highly visible, clickable, and economically self-reinforcing.