NM
I don’t normally support censorship, but in this case I do, for the following reasons:
- A lot of people would be traumatized by viewing such a video, even if you, personally, are not. Given how many sites have “autoplay” these days there is no practical way to avoid seeing such a video once “published” short of removing oneself from the Internet and that’s not fair. (Yes, it’s been published, but since sites are taking it down as fast as they can the accidental viewing problem isn’t as bad as it would otherwise be).
- The copycat factor you mention
- Actual video tape of people actually being murdered is not something the public needs to see, any more than the general public needs to see every autopsy and piece of evidence in every other crime. This is the sort of evidence that should be accessible to those with a need to know but is no one else’s business. Sort of like medical records.
- Because the piece of slime who filmed it wanted it distributed to rile people up that’s a good reason to NOT broadcast it, to thwart the goals and aims of terrorist slime.
Yes; and I’ve said the same thing most times variations on the theme have come up since Budd Dryer. At least IMHO people need to see the reality of violence on this level.I honestly feel that it could get us up off our chairs, away from our keyboards, and doing something to stop the madness above talking it over.
I think there’s one important point that everyone is missing. I’ve watched the video, and the most striking thing for me was how bland it seemed. Any first-person shooter video game - and there are hundreds of them - they’ve been highly popular for decades - is far more gory, and has far more graphic violence.
I’ll tell you exactly what every video gamer, and probably every right-wing fanatic, is thinking (maybe secretly) while watching that video: “Bor…ring”.
90% of all normal teenage kids have seen far worse violence than that in games. Watch any videos of walkthroughs of Call of Duty, or even of 20 year old games like Quake and Half Life, and compare. There are any number of videos on YouTube - just google.
In fact, that may be the only value of showing the video - to show people who are caught up in the ‘glamour and glory’ of violence how little the real world actually corresponds with that.
There is a big problem with male teenagers driving recklessly and drunk. So you feel it would be appropriate for the dead battered body of your relative’s son (who died in a car accident from reckless/drunk driving) to be widely shared on social media to discourage other teenagers from engaging in this behavior?
This. It’s basically a real-time snuff film.
If my son died of reckless driving, and i thought that pictures of his shattered body might discourage another boy from reckless driving, damn right I’d want it in social media. I’d be desperate to extract any tiny element of good I could from the tragedy.
I don’t think that works, though. I don’t think people identify with shattered bodies, and think, “that could be me”. I saw “death on the highway” in drivers Ed, and we took it as a joke. The stats about differential impairment of adults and teens were much more persuasive. (People with 30 years of driving experience are less impaired at the same level of blood alcohol than new drivers.)
In this situation, I think the killer wanted publicity, and wanted to glamorize what he did. If you want to understand the horror of his actions, you would do better to read obituaries of the victims than to look at their remains, let alone watch their murder. People identify with live people who do things and have social connections and hopes and dreams. They don’t identify with bodies.
Also, that was an event which directly contradicted his belief that “a good guy with a gun” could have helped. I don’t see any comparable lesson in this one.
I certainly don’t want it locked away by the government. I’m glad that reporters have access to it. And I’m okay if regular people like GreenWyvern can find it if they look hard enough. But i certainly do want Facebook, etc., to take it down so no one sees it inadvertantly.
That’s interesting. I know two people on another message board who saw it by mistake, and they are both pretty upset about that. One sounds kind of traumatized. I bet they’ve both played violent video games.
I don’t want to view it, but realistically you can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube. I know people who download stuff like this the instant it appears. Once it’s out, it’s out.
I’ve seen the video and at least to me there is no emotional resonance, you just feel so detached from what you’re watching, and the GoPro or whatever gives it a video game feel. Watching it is also a sort of real life example of the banality of evil.
I will say this watching it unfold, imagining if I was there I clearly see the best option is find the nearest exit, window whatever or make an exit and just run and don’t stop till you can’t run any longer. Playing dead is not an option, he returns numerous times to shoot the pile of bodies in their heads and such, I would previously thought that might be a good idea, but not after seeing the video. If you had no other way of escape and you had to engage the shooter you better hope he’s reloading, otherwise you probably don’t have much chance. This was so well planned and prepared there’s about zero the people could have done to fight back.
The NZ authorities seem to have made up their mind about whether the video should be censored or not:
source: NZ Police Twitter account
less than 12 hours later that same account tweeted out this:
That’s bait, apparently.
Literally 10 minutes ago a GoPro video of a cartel hit was on my Facebook feed. Pulled up to a garage with automatic weapons and killed everyone. Not only was it on Facebook but it had that two click thing that they put on violent videos so it wasn’t snuck on there. And that’s Facebook. Do you realize how easy it is to see videos like that? The only way to stop it is to somehow shut down the Internet. What makes this video so much worse than hundreds I could link to if I chose? Should those be made illegal to watch?
Since you ask: yes. And we actually tried to have it done - a group effort on behalf of an aunt when her son (my cousin) died as a result of a drunk driving incident.
Feel free to disagree with me but I’m at least consistent throughout my life.
I think I agree with you (I think). How much of an impact would 911* have had if no one saw the horrifying images of planes flying into buildings, people jumping, buildings collapsing, and then the faces and life stories of all those who perished. For me personally, I don’t think it would have had the same impact if I had only read about it.
And again I hate to use the animal cruelty analogy, but the reason those Humane Society & SPCA commercials are effective (cue Sarah McLaughlin music) is because it’s one thing to hear about animal abuse…but it’s something else entirely to actually see it. Same thing with factory farms. Laws did not change until people saw what was really going on with their own eyes.
I’m sure there is a very small segment of society who “jerks off” to people being murdered or animals being abused and killed, but I should think (wishful thinking?) that the overwhelming majority of society would have the opposite reaction.
*Loach, my sincerest condolences that you lost a loved one on 911. I hope you have found peace.
Absofuckinglutely. Now, I realize many may not, but I absolutely would, and if I ever go out in that manner, I want the world to see what kind of evil we’re up against.
The hate crime.
Hell no. Go after the distribution.
Just this hate crime? Because I could find you dozens. And it’s not like I have to go dark web, I can go on main stream sites and find it for you.
And how are you going to go after the distributors? In every country that’s hooked up to the Internet? What is the crime? Bad taste?
Is there some reason why you don’t think Twitter, Twitch, Instagram, Veoh and so forth are “palatable alternatives”?
I have already seen people talking about how this was a hoax. I guess that’s inevitable. All the crazy seem to think the same way about everything. But that’s after they saw the video. It didn’t look “real” to them. All from people who have never heard a shot fired in anger or seen a dead body. Now it’s just fringe people who can’t believe their own eyes. What if it’s actively being suppressed by governments around the world?
Prior to this, I didn’t realize New Zealand was such a tyrannical shithole:
New Zealand man, 22, arrested for allegedly distributing video of mosque shootings