The so-called ‘Team du Château’ case provides a particularly disturbing illustration of this today. Mounim Sabhi, an influencer with a following on TikTok, Kick and Twitch, has been remanded in custody after being arrested at the manor house in Saint-Gervais-la-Forêt, in the Loir-et-Cher, where his content was filmed. The public prosecutor’s office refers to “numerous acts of violence and humiliation”, particularly involving vulnerable or marginalised individuals living on the premises. He is being prosecuted for several offences, including violence against a vulnerable person and abuse of vulnerability. His guilt will, of course, have to be determined by the courts; his trial is scheduled for 19 November. The manor house, for its part, has been seized by court order.
But to reduce this story to the personality of a social media influencer would be almost reassuring. It would then be enough to identify a potential culprit, express outrage for forty-eight hours and move on to the next video.
The real problem lies elsewhere.
For humiliation to become a spectacle, someone has to organise it. But someone also has to watch it.
The content produced by ‘Team du Château’ has racked up hundreds of thousands of views. According to the description given by Mounim Sabhi himself prior to his arrest, the project was intended to ‘get people off the streets’ and support them, particularly in dealing with their addictions. The courts are now focusing specifically on the circumstances in which these people were exposed and put on display.
And what is striking is that we have already experienced an almost identical incident.
Last August, the streamers Naruto and Safine were convicted by the Nice Criminal Court for acts of violence and humiliation broadcast online, which specifically targeted Raphaël Graven, known by the pseudonym Jean Pormanove. They were each given suspended prison sentences of two years and eighteen months, fines and six months’ ‘digital ban’. Jean Pormanove had died live on air in August 2025; however, the investigation into his death was closed without further action after the post-mortem concluded that there had been no third-party involvement. The convictions therefore related to the violence and humiliation, and not to his death.
Two different cases, two different legal proceedings, but one question is becoming impossible to avoid: at what point did we decide that human vulnerability could become a television genre?
We were already familiar with reality TV. It put willing adults in a house, artificially provoked their arguments and sold their love affairs, their anger and their ridiculous moments to advertisers. It was already questionable, but at least the deal was clear: the contestants came to become famous.
‘Trash streaming’ crosses yet another line. What catches the eye is no longer just the spectacle. It is the possibility that something truly uncontrollable might happen.
Poverty becomes a backdrop.
Addiction becomes a storyline.
Vulnerability becomes a character.
Humiliation becomes an event.
And the viewer stays tuned in because they never know how far it will go.
This may well be the media revolution we talk about far less than artificial intelligence. Whilst we debate whether ChatGPT will replace journalists, a far more primitive economy is developing before our very eyes: that of human attention gained through transgression.
The internet has uncovered a rather frightening truth: our brains don’t just click on what is beautiful, funny or intelligent. They also click on what disturbs them.
Platforms are well aware of this because their systems track our behaviour with industrial precision. We might write ‘how awful’ in the comments and still watch for twenty minutes. To the algorithm, our outrage and our fascination yield exactly the same data: we stayed.
This is where the system becomes perverse.
We often imagine that watching is not the same as participating. That we are merely witnesses. But in the attention economy, watching is precisely the fundamental economic act. A view is a unit of value. An outraged comment remains a comment. A share intended to denounce remains a share.
The outraged spectator can therefore perfectly well contribute to the spectacle that outrages them.
The ancient Roman circus at least had the candour of its architecture. The audience sat around the arena and knew exactly why they had come.
The digital circus is more morally comfortable. We can watch the humiliation from our sofa, telling ourselves that we’re only watching because we find it scandalous.
Then the algorithm suggests the next video.
It would, of course, be far too easy to blame only TikTok, Twitch, Kick or ‘young people ’. The taste for cruel spectacle did not begin with the smartphone. Public executions once drew huge crowds. The tabloid press has built fortunes on misfortune. Television realised long ago that an argument attracts a bigger audience than a reasonable conversation.
The internet probably didn’t invent our voyeurism.
It simply added a ‘monetise’ button to it.
And perhaps that is what should truly concern us. We have built an economic machine capable of turning almost any human weakness into profitable content.
So the next time a video showing someone being humiliated appears on our screen, the question may not just be: ‘How can anyone film that?’
We must also have the courage to ask another question.
Why do we want to watch it?
