For the last week on livestreaming media aggregating sources and message boards, including 4Chan, there has been a controversy over a YouTube Channel called “The Window Of Life”. Broadcasting from behind an alley on 411 6th East Street in Austin, Texas, a Youtube livestreamer decided to capture the interactions of the homeless people taking place from outside of his window that he coupled with a text-to-audio delivery system. People can pay money to donate to him, and for each donation, a person could play their own messages on a speaker system he set up.
The response has been as expected. The cameras captured much fighting, drug dealing, drug taking, and disorderly or unsanitary behavior common among homeless people in the US. However, being that the text-to-audio and music play is uncensored, and that 4Chan has been using it, naturally there were many people who began their own trolling of the homeless people, such as sending them insulting and racially-charged messages or playing racially-charged or politically charged music, such as works by Johnny Rebel or National Socialist music from the 1930s. According to the person who put the camera up, who goes by the Youtube handle “Keegle Weegle” and has since been identified as Keegan Godsey, the police refuse to address the homeless issue or the drug dealing, but have issued him ticket and accused him of “hate crimes” while only issuing him citations.
The camera has gotten a lot of attention, with people coming from around the city to posts memes outside of the camera or troll the homeless in person. Austin police have been regularly seen in the area, but it has not stopped people from posting signs, throwing birdseed, putting up a pinata, throwing dollar bills, putting about two-dozen randomly acquired scooters into the alleyway, or making large swastikas using a variety of instruments. He has now attracted the attention of local news in Austin.
An Austin man has set up a livestream of the alley behind his East Sixth street apartment. The alley is full of people who are homeless – and drug dealers who prey on them.
“It’s a half a block from where tens of thousands of people are coming to party every weekend, and nobody ever sees this side of it. So, I just thought people need to see this.” said stream founder Keegan Godsey.
Users can pay to play audio in the alley. Some of the clips are light-hearted. Others are not. Drugs, sex, and racial slurs were all mentioned when a FOX 7 Austin team listened.
Godsey has had the stream up for five days and has already received six citations from Austin police. Police say it’s a noise ordinance violation and within those citations, an officer alleges that this is a hate crime. (source)
A question that I have not seen a serious attempt to answer is, who is Keegan Godsey? 4Chan has been lauding him as a sort of hero, but there has been no real inquiry into who this person is.
Keegan Dalton Godsey seems to come from West Lake Hills, Texas. He is 23 years old, he appears to call himself in a very old Myspace page 666skaterfromhell666, and while he has a Facebook page, it was last updated in 2014, meaning he would have been about seventeen at the time.
One of the immediate things I noticed about him, and one can see it in the video above, is that he has a very strange “Kenny G” type haircut as well as wears black nail polish on all his fingers. This is concerning because it suggests that he is a sodomite, and while in one tweet he says that he just wants a nice girl in 2015 (source) and in a photo with porn prostitute Joseline Kelly (source, source), there are a number of posts that either he reposted or posted himself that suggest homosexuality, beginning in 2016 (source, source, source, source (note the bear photo)) and well as bestiality and furry culture (source, source).
Godsey was also arrested twice and charged with three crimes in 2014, the first being assault, and the second for public drunkenness with marijuana possession. (source)
Godsey also starred in an amateur film in 2016 with two friends showing them sneaking into a DJ Khaled concert, and towards the end of the film, manged to climb on stage at a DJ Khaled concert and stage-dive off of it. He acquired a small amount of fame from this, including what appears to be a brief appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel Show.
This is consistent with his other posts on twitter, where he seems to portray himself as an aspiring entertainer or filmmaker, where one can also find his profile on exploretalent.com.
Another video where Godsey appears
He also seems to have attempted with his friends to start a business selling fashion watches, but seems to have since closed.
As Godsey posted on January 26th 2020, retweeting from Jimmy Kimmel, “So far 2020, you suck.”. His popularity seemed to have peaked with the DJ Khaled incident, and while he appears to have tried to ride with popularity for as long as possible with that, it seems to have naturally faded away.
His Youtube channel has been in existence since 2007, but “The Window Of Life” series did not make its first broadcast until February 7th, 2020.
The first video
While it cannot be absolutely proven, Godsey seems to have been spamming the “Window of Life” thread on 4Chan, as it was repeated multiple times over a series of days. Being what the website is, 4Chan naturally attracting national socialists and racist types, the opportunity to pay money to say racist things to homeless black people selling or shooting up with drugs in an alleyway was similar to putting blood in the Amazon- the piranhas smelled it, and they flocked for a meal.
So who is Godsey? Nobody still really knows, but what we can conclude based on the above and publicly available evidence is that Godsey:
-Seems to by his words and behaviors show something of a sexual interest in both men and women
-Seems to have a desire for fame
-Is clearly willing to do dangerous, risky, or outrageous things for public attention
-Had a small public outpouring of support for one particular act but has since been unable to recapture past fame
-Seems to have set up a situation to bait the racist and ultranationalist supporters of 4chan into giving him attention using racism as the main point of contention.
What Godsey actually believes is anybody’s guess because one does not know. Perhaps what is most interesting about his channel is that instead of the 4Chan viewers trolling others, they are being trolled because this person is making money off of exploiting their viewpoint for his own personal financial gain with no real constructive acts taking place.
It is, in a back alley on the streets of Austin, a strategy of tension, with one man profiting off of causing friction between two groups with no regard for the long-term consequences of his actions.