Poles across the political spectrum were united in schadenfreude this week when the Ukrainian TikToker “Crawly” was deported. “Crawly” was notorious for dressing up as a gnome and annoying random Polish people in public — a bold move if you’re a Ukrainian citizen in any danger of being conscripted.

Vladyslav “Crawly” Oleinychenko is apparently planning legal action against the Polish government. In a statement posted online, he claimed that not since the days of the Polish People’s Republic has free speech been so endangered. To be fair to Oleinychenko, some of his most apparently egregious stunts appear to have been less spontaneous — and, thus, less immoral — than they look (in a video in which he barges into a woman’s toilet cubicle, for example, one sees that the woman is fully dressed and the toilet seat is down). Still, a little more humility might have been merited as being an oddball in shopping centres doesn’t quite make you the equal of Jerzy Popiełuszko.

Earlier last month, people across the world were united in schadenfreude when the American live streamer “Johnny Somali” was indicted in South Korea. Mr Somali had been travelling across the world, irritating people in Japan, Israel and elsewhere. Actually, “irritating” is too weak a word for this insufferable troll, who was making nuclear bomb references in Tokyo and desecrating the Western Wall in Jerusalem. 

He was finally indicted in Seoul after being disruptive in shops, following various incidents like kissing the Statue of Peace, which commemorates Korean women who were sexually enslaved in World War Two. One advantage of the imposition of martial law in South Korea might have been the government jailing this idiot indefinitely.

Poles have a neat word — patostreamer. This, predictably enough, describes social media personalities who flaunt apparently pathological behaviour in public. It is grim, though rather interesting, how much young people love this kind of stuff.

Millennials and Gen Xers might recall comedy shows like Trigger Happy TV. The performer would act like a fool in public and much of the comedy depended on people’s reactions. As humour, it has not aged exceptionally well — although the choice of music was first-rate — but it was at least light-hearted. The comedian, in general, was the butt of the joke.

IRL (“in real life”) streaming, which emerged on platforms like Twitch and YouTube in the late 2010s, was considerably darker. Most of the chaos, though, was the product of the viewers rather than the creators. Pioneering streamer Paul “Ice Poseidon” Denino, for example, was kicked off a plane when a follower called in a bomb threat.

Now, for a lot of patostreamers, the joke is the awkwardness, anxiety or anger of members of the public. Take Jack Doherty — an eminently punchable 21-year-old American who looks for fights with people before his bodyguard steps in to intimidate them. 

Mr Doherty makes himself as obnoxious and antisocial as he can in the hunt for views online. Recently, he crashed his car soon after being recorded on his phone while driving. Doherty hopped out of the car and started filming the wreckage while his friend was still trapped inside.

Closer to home, British readers might recall the passing scandal that surrounded “Mizzy” — the attention-hungry prat who filmed himself barging into people’s homes. (He was back in court this year when he was found guilty of stealing a woman’s iPhone. It’s always the ones you least expect.)

You can’t always get away with this kind of behaviour. One livestreamer was annoying a man by filming in his face in Northern Virginia last year when the man pulled out a gun and shot him. The man was acquitted of aggravated malicious wounding in a rare triumph for justice.

What attracts young people to this kind of idiot? There is some extent to which teenagers will always be interested in the sort of people who annoy their parents. One might as well condemn the grass for being green.

But I suspect something more sad is going on here. There is also some extent to which we should expect young people to be a public nuisance. Most of us had occasional episodes of underage drinking, excessive noise, hare-brained self-endangerment et cetera. It was a means of bonding with our friends — and of finding our limits. 

Thus, through different but mutually reinforcing pathologies, public spaces become both emptier and more unpleasant

Nowadays, children and teenagers spend a lot less time outdoors. They spend less time with friends in general, in fact, and more on social media and video games. This has become especially true since the pandemic, with the Times noting “the rise of the teenage recluse”. According to one poll by YouGov and the charity OnSide, 76 per cent of young people spend most of their free time on screens and 48 per cent spend most of their free time in their rooms.

Watching other people’s antisocial antics, for some teenagers, might be a way of satisfying their own frustrated urge towards collective excitement and spontaneity — with the antisocial aspects exaggerated to compensate for the level of displacement. Kids enjoy the vicarious thrill while the level of obnoxiousness rationalises and justifies their homebound nature. Thus, through different but mutually reinforcing pathologies, public spaces become both emptier and more unpleasant.