There was a time when intelligence was rare. Secrets were whispers in alleys, dossiers in safes, grainy satellite images locked behind clearance levels. Information was hoarded by the few, for the few, and used to shape the fates of nations. But the world changed. The cameras multiplied, the networks opened, the feeds went live. What used to be guarded by spooks is now available to everyone with a WiFi connection.
Open Source Intelligence—OSINT—was supposed to be a revolution of transparency. The promise was simple: data is everywhere, so anyone can find the truth. Governments use it. Businesses use it. Journalists use it. Hobbyists use it. Armchair detectives use it. Even random teenagers on Discord can now outpace military analysts in tracking troop movements.
But here’s the rub: the truth wasn’t enough. The truth never is. People didn’t just want to know—they wanted to feel. OSINT, with its immediacy and rawness, wasn’t just information anymore. It became entertainment. It became OSENT: Open Source Entertainment. Because watching is addictive. Consuming is easier than thinking. And spectacle—especially raw, uncut spectacle—sells better than any report.
The Cameras Are Alwayss On
In Ukraine, war doesn’t arrive weeks later in grainy black-and-white newsreels. It’s live. Drone footage of Russian armor getting obliterated streams hours after the strikes. Telegram channels post trench firefights like sports highlights. You can watch a tank explode, replay it, meme it, cut it to EDM. Analysts pick apart missile trajectories on Twitter while millions of casual viewers just watch for the boom. This isn’t classified intel—it’s content.
And the thing is, Ukraine’s not the exception. It’s the model. Every war now runs parallel to its own live broadcast. The Gaza war has two fronts: one in the rubble, one in the feeds. Every explosion, every child crying under the sirens, every drone shot of flattened neighborhoods is instantly global. Israel releases edited clips to prove its strikes are “surgical.” Hamas releases its own clips to prove Israel is brutal. NGOs leak footage, reporters post videos, activists share images. None of it is private. All of it is content.
The difference between OSINT and OSENT is that OSINT is supposed to make you think. OSENT just makes you watch.
Gaza: War as a Series
The Gaza war may be the purest example of OSINT collapsing into OSENT. You don’t need to be a spook to know what’s happening; you just open your phone. TikTok is full of bombed-out streets. Instagram has reels of crying mothers. X (formerly Twitter) has a steady drip of drone footage, some real, some fake, all shared like clips from a dystopian reality show.
This isn’t just observation; it’s performance. Both sides know the cameras are rolling. Israel shapes its footage for Western audiences: precision, order, “we targeted militants.” Hamas shapes its footage for the global South: chaos, destruction, “look what they’re doing to us.” NGOs, aid workers, journalists—each becomes a character in the drama, their posts a kind of testimonial theater. The suffering is real, but so is the framing.
And we, the global audience, eat it up. We scroll, we react, we share. We watch war not to understand it, but to feel it. Gaza isn’t just a tragedy; it’s a feed. It’s season after season of atrocity clips, cut to evoke maximum outrage or sympathy, depending on who’s doing the editing. The civilians trapped inside live the horror. The rest of us watch it like content.
Ukraine: The Video Game War
Ukraine’s war plays out like a live-streamed strategy game. Twitter accounts post updated maps like scoreboard graphics. Telegram channels share first-person drone kills. Analysts with anonymous avatars become minor celebrities, their threads dissecting every battle. Even Western intelligence agencies quietly use the same open data streams as the crowd.
The entertainment value is undeniable. Drone videos track soldiers like ants. Convoys explode in cinematic fireballs. The audience cheers or jeers, depending on their allegiance, like they’re watching a playoff series. This isn’t the CNN coverage of Desert Storm—this is a TikTok war. It’s bite-sized, addictive, made to loop.
OSINT in Ukraine started as citizen journalism, a way to hold power accountable. But the algorithms twisted it. They boost the most shocking clips, the bloodiest explosions, the most dramatic moments. Context dies in the feed. What’s left isn’t intelligence. It’s spectacle.
Cop Porn and Crash Cams: Domestic OSENT
It’s not just war. You see the same thing with local policing. Cop pull-over videos, dash cam chases, body cam arrests—they’re everywhere. Entire YouTube empires thrive on cutting police footage into adrenaline reels. A suspect flees, the sirens wail, spike strips fly—instant content. Millions watch. It’s OSINT because the footage is often public by law. It’s OSENT because it’s consumed like popcorn.
This isn’t new. The TV show Cops was the original OSINT-turned-OSENT. Police departments handed over footage, producers crafted it into dramatic arcs, and audiences ate it up. Now, instead of one show, there’s an endless feed. Departments release body cam clips as PR. Creators scrape public records for dash cam footage. The audience gets their fix in infinite scroll.
And it’s not just police. Crash cam videos are a genre all their own. Russians pioneered it—every car with a dash cam, every accident online. Road rage, fender benders, highway carnage—people watch it compulsively. Four-way stop fails, semi-trucks tipping, a Mustang spinning out—it’s instant dopamine. Crashes, like explosions, don’t need explanation. They just need to play.
WorldStar, Ring, and the Surveillance Spectacle
If OSINT has a cultural homeland, it’s WorldStarHipHop. WorldStar turned street fights, confrontations, and chaos into viral content before “viral” was even a term. It was the raw feed of human conflict, edited and shared for maximum spectacle. Violence became shareable, humiliation became content, and millions tuned in.
Now the Ring camera has taken that ethos to suburbia. Every porch is a surveillance post, every doorbell a lens. Package thefts, pranksters, weird animals, fights with neighbors—Ring footage floods the internet. It’s not just security; it’s entertainment. Channels post endless compilations: porch pirates tackled, Amazon drivers throwing boxes, Karens screaming at HOAs. The suburban mundane becomes binge-worthy.
The Audience Is the Investigator
What makes OSENT different from old-fashioned voyeurism is participation. The audience isn’t passive. They analyze, they speculate, they contribute. After a bombing, Reddit geolocates the site within minutes. After a crime, TikTok sleuths identify suspects—sometimes right, often disastrously wrong. The same tools that expose truth also spread lies. OSINT empowers the crowd, but OSENT turns the crowd into a mob.
The gamification of investigation is addictive. People don’t just watch—they play detective. They solve puzzles, chase leads, post findings. Every click is a move, every share a point. But the game has no referee, and innocent people sometimes lose.
The OSENT Economy
All of this feeds the algorithms. OSINT may be valuable for governments, militaries, and corporations, but OSENT prints money for creators and platforms. YouTube monetizes police chases. TikTok pushes Ring cam clips. Telegram channels collect donations. Twitter accounts farm engagement from drone strikes. Information is a commodity, but entertainment is a goldmine.
And like any commodity, OSENT bends reality. Footage is edited for impact. Context is stripped. Truth is secondary to virality.
Gaza, Ukraine, and the Never-Ending Feed
This brings us back to Gaza and Ukraine. These wars aren’t just conflicts; they’re content streams. The world watches them not as analysts but as audiences. The suffering is real, but the viewing is performative. We share, we rage, we cry, we scroll. And the wars keep going.
OSINT was supposed to reveal truth. OSENT reveals feeling. The line between the two is gone. Wars are fought on the ground and on the feed. Crimes are solved in labs and in comment threads. Every camera is a potential lens for the show.
OSINT into OSENT
The transformation is complete. Open-source intelligence no longer serves just to inform; it serves to entertain. The CCTV clip, the drone strike, the Ring camera prank—they are all part of the same spectacle. The world is open-sourced, and the curtain is always up.
OSINT has become OSENT. And the show never ends.
tl;dr
The provided text argues that Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), once a tool for uncovering truth through publicly available information, has largely transformed into Open-Source Entertainment (OSENT). This shift is characterized by a global audience consuming raw, real-time footage of events like wars, police incidents, and domestic surveillance for emotional engagement and spectacle rather than for critical analysis. The author contends that platforms and algorithms prioritize shocking and dramatic content, stripping away context and turning genuine human suffering into a form of addictive, shareable entertainment. This transformation blurs the line between informing and entertaining, fundamentally altering how major events are perceived and consumed by the public. Ultimately, the text suggests that while OSINT aims to make people think, OSENT merely makes them watch.
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