‘They were comparing me to Bonnie Blue’: the disturbing rise of nightlife content

‘They were comparing me to Bonnie Blue’: the disturbing rise of nightlife content Footage of women walking between bars and clubs in UK city centres, often filmed covertly, is proliferating online – attracting thousands of views and profits for those who post them. Can anything be done to stop the creepshots? ‘M y friend just sent me this video, told me she’d found me in it,” read the text. “As I was looking for myself, I noticed you’re in it too. I didn’t know I was being filmed, guess you don’t either, just wanted to let you know …” When Nancy Naylor Hayes received the message in November 2023, she felt a twinge of fear. It was from an acquaintance she hadn’t heard from in years. “I was panicking,” she says. The text pointed her to a Facebook link, which led to a montage of clips of women filmed on the streets of Manchester during nights out. “You don’t know what you might have been caught doing,” she says. “What if they’ve got a horrible video of me?” She saw herself a few minutes in, with a friend she had been with that night as they visited the city’s bars. Clearly oblivious to the camera filming her, she stands on a pavement outside a doorway on her phone – calling a taxi, she recalls – her hand on the hip of her khaki miniskirt. Then the film-maker zooms in on her face and lingers there before recording her reaching across to wipe something from her friend’s cheek. The 25-year-old from Wigan, who works as a progression coach for young people facing homelessness, still finds herself struggling to describe how the video made her feel. After all, she was “just literally stood having a conversation”. Yet she felt embarrassed. That intrusive lens “completely violates all privacy”, she says. “Surely that’s not allowed?” she texted back. In fact, videos of this nature, termed “nightlife content” or “walking tour content” and filmed covertly in public areas, tend to fall into a legal grey area with nothing prohibiting them. It is not illegal to film in a public area ...