It seems worth noting in this context that most of us have never seen death except on a screen. Our ancestors knew the reality of death well. People died at home. Half the children died before they reached the age of five. People killed and butchered their own chickens, pigs, and cattle, and hunted for wild meat. They had real blood on their hands, saw the light go out of real eyes, felt real corpses grow cold. They knew the reek and rot of death intimately. However much of a fascination the snuff clip may have become, it has become so to a people unfamiliar with the real thing. If they are fascinated with it because they do not know it, or if they are inured to because it has only ever been a story, a point of entertainment, to them, is more than I can say. But I cannot help feeling that this has all become to people a kind of drama, a play, a thing of simple goodies and baddies, in which death is fascinating not because it is death, which they do not know, but because it is a trope of drama in an otherwise tedious existence.
I once saw a man, a petty thief, beaten to death by a mob on the street in Dar es Salaam. Quite a common occurrence in sun-Saharan Africa. Just happened to be walking past as he was caught trying to pick a pocket and the crowd gathered in an instance. Lots of shouting, yelling, thuds, cries of pain. Then it was all over and he was just lying there, covered in dirt and dust, not moving. I went back to my hostel and just stared into space for a long while after that. Still think about it now, from time to time.
Indeed. It is a marking and awful experience even to those living there, at least some. I guess you need to have both the cultural carte blanche, a rule of state vacuum and innate inclination for this....But there are enough with the inclination for it to happen.
There sure is enough enthusiastic supporters for the lynching to happen.
Most? Maybe, I don't know, and I don't think many do know. You'd have to be very familiar with the place and simultaneously be objective and honest about the typical behavior of people there. This is a very very rare thing to happen (and not only about sub-saharian africa, about any ethnographic "fact". To the point that ethnography being a science is open to debate).
The only thing I am sure is that some people from those places are against such events , and traumatized in exactly the same way the original poster mentioned.
Why am I sure? Because I live with such a person, who told me about it unsolicited...
Indeed. My kids have slaughtered their own food and nursed dying animals to reduce the suffering; they are not so inclined towards movie violence, frankly. I'd also point out that most gladiatorial combat was not 'to the death.' Blood sports like football and boxing are rarely fatal.
1) I haven't seen any of this snuff stuff - neither recently nor ever - so it is not difficult to avoid it (and I do spend a very lot of time on the internet).
2) Second: We are now in an age in which the downsides of liberal individualism are becoming increasingly apparent (and yes there have also been huge upsides). The tragic problem with Western liberalism is that it does not know where to stop. When you valorise each and every kind of liberty, you 'liberate' human appetites that would be better repressed (like they were when I was a kid in the 1950's.
3) your essay doesn't mention another kind of 'snuff'.....murder (now often serial murder) tv who-dunnits that have come to completely dominate tv drama ( at least they do in Europe). It hasn't always been this way; when I was young it was mostly about robbery and murder plot-lines were a rarity.
I have also managed to avoid these things. Granted, I'm not on Twitter, but I am an avid "internet user," and have never watched a single one of these kinds of videos, not any of the beheadings that were so prevalent 15 years ago, or any of the police murder videos, or any war videos. They can be avoided if you want to.
"The tragic problem with Western liberalism is that it does not know where to stop."
I couldn't agree more. The smartest liberals always warned us that liberalism couldn't do what illiberal organic communities, like churches and families, could do — impose obligations and limits on people that would inculcate self-control. We'd always need those illiberal foundations to give liberalism the scaffolding it needed to do its job of mollifying conflicts in the public sphere. But since the mid–20th century, bounded liberalism became comprehensive liberalism, insinuating itself into and conquering even the most intimate and local spheres, and now we're all homeless.
nah I love it I love the liberalism. because religion doesnt know where to stop either. the freedom of modern medicine is extraoirdinary. It did not happen yet in rome. the fact that we can get in on the very very very small, and that we can make a pill for everything transformataive. UHHHHHH what a relief.
Agree. I avoid news and don't watch free to air, and, in doing so, I don't watch any form of news. I've never seen a beheading or real murder. It can be avoided. Like you, I am very online. We can choose what we see. I think.
Even if I'm generous and say that Twitter did the thing were it magically starts autoplaying all videos (an issue they've always had) - these are not five second clips.
1. Close the tab and turn off autoplay.
2. Quickly scroll past the possible murder video and turn off autoplay.
3. Click directly on the video to pause it and then turn off autoplay.
Now, people definitely seek this stuff out, but that's not new - Faces of Death came out in 1978, and I'm sure was a very popular video rental.
I don't know exactly what you mean when you mention "Western liberalism" but, in my view, liberty goes hand-in-hand with responsibility. It is not liberalism that is the problem, it is the modern emphasis on freedom without responsibility and virtue.
'Freedom without responsibility' exactly so. In my 70-year lifetime the default mentality in the West has gone from a 'we are all sinners' (mixtures of good and bad impulses) who need to better ourselves to a default of maximal 'self esteem'. This has set in train an epidemic of Narcissism (as preciently foretold by Christopher Lasch) where every one of your discontents is someone or something else's fault not yours. This is what I meant (and what I explore in my own 'Stack: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/)
I just wanted to say that I do not see anything in my feed either and I am extremely thankful for that. I hear that other people are seeing much more. When I get alerts from TwiX (that's what I call it anyway) it is just about poetry and Catholic literature. I think there is something to be said about algorithms. But I am actually surprised I have not been ambushed (I am sure it is just a matter of time) because "Liss" is actually a Jewish name since I married into a Jewish family. I will turn away from all dead children's bodies. I don't need to see that. I still remember the boy in the red shirt on the beach in Greece. I worked in a hospital; I know death. It doesn't scare me. However, this is not observing death or honoring the dignity of the people who lost their lives. This is fetishizing it. It strips the dignity of human being.
just reading this after i'd clicked on an article about the horrible situation in Israel and there was an advert in the corner, playing clips of women being kidnapped, women being murdered. it said "no women should have to experience this" and yet being shown it, as a woman, I don't want to see that? I don't want to see the dead bodies of women in an advert. i'm still sitting at my desk feeling unsettled.
I guess people think there's some value in showing the atrocities which are being committed, to try and generate support, to raise awareness, to raise money, etc.
but do i have to look at a dead body in order to care about something?
the thing between israel and Palestine is also between competing religions that are like kissing cousins. both are based on egyptian book of the dead and both are tyrant gods. and so we end up with a total mess. in a fight over land. and when one gets worse so does the other.
I remember a friend in high school had some of those Faces of Death videos (on VHS of course), so this kind of thing was kicking around pre-internet but in significantly reduced form. I also remember rotten.com as an early purveyor or the macabre and horrifying, doing with still images what Twitter/X is now going with video.
I think part of it is that we've gotten really divorced from the presence of death - it's supposed to be something that happens in a hospital room or ambulance, not right in front of you. So the hidden nature of the subject creates interest in people inclined to seek out the "forbidden"...
I think there are two cultures when it comes to this stuff - our elite class is so worried about bodily harm that they won't let their kids play contact sports while the rest of the country gobbles up real crime/murder videos. It's all very disordered and disturbing.
Oh wow, what a throwback. I remember the rumors about "Faces of Death" (and yup, on VHS), or maybe it was the sequels, but at my high school they were nothing more than rumors, I don't think anyone had them.
Not that it negates the point that you're making, but it has also been revealed in recent years that most of the Faces of Death footage was fake. It was all marketing. But yeah, when I was in junior high and high school, those movies were absolute LORE. I knew kids that had supposedly watched them, but even as a horror junkie, I never could. Didn't see the point.
When I was a kid, decades before the internet, I was shown a film (video was not invented yet) in school of piles of bodies in German concentration camps.
I was probably 14 years old. Among the images I remember were ditches of naked corpses and a pile of human heads. That seared the truth of the horror of the holocaust into my brain.
I agree that there is something nefarious about cultural rubber-necking and the prurient interests it serves. But documenting these atrocities is important. Soon we will hear apologists denying that this took place at all. It’s too awful to contemplate, but it must also be faced.
Likewise, graphic footage of the Vietnam War in no small way led to the end of it. People seeing the horror at home led to protest. The documenting of Nazi atrocities captured what would otherwise have been unbelievable - I rather suspect that it could be the same with what we see from Hamas now: atrocities unbelievable but that they are in front of our eyes.
My discomfort, my horror, is greatly increased by the fact that Hamas itself is sending out this footage, not some embedded civilian reporter. It is as though Nazis proudly published their crimes rather than hid them. I would say it tells me all I need to know about these people, in so far as their world view is opposed to mine, fundamentally. They want me to know it, explicitly.
Yes. And there's a difference. The Nazis had to be ashamed of their atrocities, even to their own people. Today, the gruesome acts seem to be advertised.
I don't understand the objectives. No sane person would feel any sympathy to the perpetrators. It's a PR fuckup. What for?
I had to think about your reply some time. You were on to something for sure. Still, I don't think I confused that. I have met quite a diverse bunch of non W.E.I.R.D. people who I all but one (the Hizbollah guy) would consider to viscerally oppose the discussed behaviors and am pretty sure that such is the default among humans.
When does that default fail? I can't say, but W.E.I.R.D is no secure hedge. See Nazi Germany, only missing the D, maybe see My Lai, maybe Shabra and Shatila and more.
That's precisely it. The Hizballah guy (the mujahadeen) was different from the others. Hamas fighters are also mujahadeen. Their specific jihad is *about* killing Jews, so as they do this, they proudly display their achievement. In contrast, the 911 mujahadeen were about carrying the war to the "far enemy", the US. Hence their goal was to damage key elements of the American state and economy. I suspect they hoped it would crater the stock market and catalyze an economic collapse like in 1929.
"members of the Westernized elite" is endlessly debatable. A Nigerian catholic priest, ok. Some persians, among them a gambler and some opoid addicts, maybe from good familes that have been involved with the shah, who knows? All the anatolian kids coming into germany after their fathers had decided working here was better than returning to the village; surely no elites and not westernized when I first met them.
Another complicating factor is that the visceral, nauseating response that such "snuff clips" evoke are easily used to augment and prey on our rage. When you only see the atrocities committed against one group it's easier to justify a brutal response. So for war-drumming, it's incredibly effective (which is why some videos are essentially fakes as they're recycled from past conflicts). On the other hand, when you see the graphic horror on both sides you get some perspective on the grisliness and grotesqueness of war and the hollowness of self-righteous propaganda. If you're only funneled down one viewing chamber, you'll never escape a black and white Stars Wars view of the world to recognize the depravity and latent possibility for brutality in all humans. The latter may be a bleak and depressing take on humanity but it's probably the best starting place for taking mental and moral stock of how to reduce such violence in the future
This trend has certainly been the straw that broke this camel's back when it comes to twitter. At first, when I noticed it happening in the early days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine I was fascinated by all the real-time footage coming out of the conflict. At least then it was between clearly defined attackers and defenders and often abstracted by featuring distant supply caravans or thanks, explosions in the night, etc. My interest wasn't so much driven by the snuff-like aspect of such material (which was initially not too far beyond what might be shown briefly on a news broadcast) but because it seemed like a new development in history: the first traditional war on social media. I was also fascinated by how this affected the war. The abundance of material seemed to create a paradoxical jumble of information, confusion, speculation, fabrication, and hard facts. I think it made it impossible for the Russians to control the narrative of the war as they had done in other incursions, and made it clear that their strategic thinking was still trapped in moribund Soviet concepts like maskirovka that could no longer be effective in the all-live-all-the-time media environment of the 2020s. But as the war's dragged on into the slow slog of trench-clearing counteroffensives, and the majority of the video has become body cam footage of that tense and torturous work, I've had to stop tracking it because although there is an initial fascination to being able to see things that haven't been recorded before, it did make me feel soul-sick. The fact that Musk has allowed that site to descend into a carnival of murder- and atrocity-porn really depresses me, but it also makes me think that twitter and it's hold over the media culture is finally over. Last night, when the Best American Poetry anthology series deleted its account after a tweet expressing support for Israel attracted the obligatory charges of fascism and Islamophobia, the people that drove BAP off the site celebrated as if they'd achieved some major moral or political victory over the forces of colonialism and oppression. It just seemed silly and childish to me. Who cares if you made someone leave twitter? Everybody leaves twitter nowadays.
As a Ukrainian, I really appreciate your comment. Glad somebody notices this nuance, the impact this informational war has made and is still making. We also can't stand this type of "war content", though it helped to resist Russian propaganda, which is trying with all its might to claim that what is happening is not really happening, we're just miserable liars, and they "release us". I myself avoid snuff clips at any cost, and limit my internet presence for the sake, I get how the news etc. can be devastating nowadays..
It's been a sea change since we were kids in the 1990s. Most of us in the late 20th century grew up watching Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street, internalizing these basically decent Christian ideas about being kind to others, not taking pleasure in seeing people hurt, etc. But now — maybe thanks to New Atheism and the American forever wars discrediting the basis for that entire, trusting, Christian-derived worldview — we're really back in the pagan era, living in a decaying globe-spanning empire that worships nature (that is, power and victory). We think about Rome so much because we're it.
I miss people like Fred Rogers, the man never had a bad word to say about anyone, and helped so many young people and children who were struggling with different issues in their lives. I often wonder what he would say about the world today, or whether society would even listen to him, or simply find him passe. I don't see good role models for children today, especially for boys. The Andrew Tate's of the world valorize naked self-interest, materialism, and narcissism, but honesty and integrity are things that nobody can ever take from you. Somewhere along the way, we've reverted back to the cult of the "strongman", rather than valorizing people with character and charity towards others.
The man was a Presbyterian minister, who was well aware of human evil. His fundamental perspective was that perhaps you as a lone person can't change these collective issues, but you do have control over how you treat others, and if more people do that, it makes a difference collectively. Better though to let the man speak for himself, his interview with Charlie Rose.
Instead of being snide for no reason and getting fixated on your own personal opinions on theology, I believe the measure of the man is how many adults and children he helped over the years with their own struggles, who ministered not just to Presbyterian's , but to anyone who needed to hear his words.
If you're referring to Nietzsche's concept of the ubermensch or overman that's part of it, but I don't think that tells the whole story. I was thinking more of the competitions like the World's Strongest Man, or other strongman competitions. There's clearly a lot of peacocking on social media with weightlifting and bodybuilding, far beyond maintaining physical health, related around "look at how much stronger I am than you". The default position in the West for millenia was the physical body was fallible or sinful, the Gnostics believed it was a prison, but the spirit or soul of the person was what mattered. This meant even a saint could be physically disabled, small in stature, or suffer from tuberculosis or any other ailment, and still be a holy person who was admired by others. Fred Rogers falls into that tradition, it's no coincidence that he was a Presbyterian minister, but he never believed in preaching overtly to others. One of the fundamental differences between the ancient world and the Judeo-Christian world to come is the taboo against things like infanticide for a baby born with birth defects. In Rome, it was considered totally acceptable if the paterfamilias(oldest living male of the household) decided for an infant to be exposed to the elements, and carried no criminal penalties. People died in the arena for spectacle, and nobody shed a tear. In a paradoxical way, sickness and disability gave sufferers insight into the spiritual world and holiness.
I have been disgusted about the increasing amount of “in your face violence and gore” in movies/tv shows for years! To me (obviously in the minority) it is so clear that the increase in watching people suffer is enjoyed! That’s why people are “desensitized “ to the real stuff! They are used to it! I cant watch it...any of it.
To be honest I actually really enjoy B horror movies (maybe one day I'll do a listicle of the best ones), the more "B" the better, and many of these have a lot of grisly but obviously fake violence. Somehow just the fact that snuff clips are real and horror films, even if way more grisly, are fake, makes them affect me entirely differently.
I don't think it's fair to equate people who enjoy horror films that are obviously fake with people who enjoy watching real-life death. Most horror fans I know are the gentlest, most "moral" (if I may) people I know, and do not celebrate real bloodshed. For many of us, in fact, horror is a way to deal with real-world anxieties in a controlled environment. I will also say that even though I love horror, I am not a gorehound, and I'm still pretty squeamish about on-screen brutality, regardless of the context. I feel like I have become much more squeamish as I have aged, not desensitized.
I've never felt more grateful to be mostly removed from social media. I didn't even hear about the war breaking out until Sunday afternoon, when people talked about it in church. This timed-release news exposure is very much by design for me. I want to know about things, but I want to know about them on saner terms than the ones offered by the algorithm.
Thanks for another beautiful, wrenching, important piece of writing.
I’m sensitive. But maybe you could add a headline with instructions of what paragraph to jump to if we want to skip the more graphic, violent details. Others might feel the same as me.
to expand a bit: especially now that i’m a dad of young kids. i was always sensitive to this stuff, so avoid it like the plague. but now having kids it’s truly horrific.
I agree, the kind of society that becomes inured to suffering is a bankrupt society. People project our present day collective indifference to suffering onto the past, but Buddhism's entire raison'd etre is to help solve the problem of suffering in the world, or Christianity imploring followers to pray for their enemies, or show Christian mercy to defeated foes. The voyeuristic attitude of today is a strange mix of detachment from danger, gleeful cruelty, shorn of any dignity or respect for the person, fit only to be used as a prop to be gawked at by others, and propagated by "social media".
Learn some history. Compared to any previous society I wouldn't exactly describe ours as "inured". If anything we're so unable to cope with it that we simply look away. Remember until two centuries ago, public executions were a form of popular entertainment.
I think you posted this: "Online, we become ghostly copies of true humanity, which, according to L.M. Sacasas, “do not elicit the moral recognition that attends the embodied self” and can be reviled and abused at will."
I think that this has some relevance here. On the Internet, we are abstracted from corporeal reality.
I think what you are describing is a kind of death pornography, which like sex pornography reduces human beings to ghosts.
In my opinion, after you have watched a handfuI of these clips you have essentially seen them all. So watch or read or get out and do things that are productive or educational. Figure out something you can do to help decrease the atrocity rates. Don't become addicted. I also agree that it is quite easy to avoid snuff clips. I recommend we all do so, partly because watching them is exactly what the perps want you to do. And by the way, they are, often with expertise, trying to put you in a degraded and fearful state, which is inherently unhealthy. The producers of these are not trying to bring you to a more human state. // Moreover, watching snuff's just motivates the perps to make more elaborate and extreme ones, thus increasing the suffering of the victims. Don't be complicit in that! So if you need to, when you hear about new snuff events, just extrapolate from what you have seen in your mind's eye. Don't click on the new one. Don't train the algorithms to send you more. I'm not advocating for burying one's head in the sand. Being aware of what is happening and standing / acting against it can be combined with taking charge of your own mind and working to free it, and engaging in self-care.
Sometimes I force myself to watch that stuff so if it happens in my presence irl I'll be less likely to freeze. But damn, I agree that it eats a little piece of your soul each time.
It seems worth noting in this context that most of us have never seen death except on a screen. Our ancestors knew the reality of death well. People died at home. Half the children died before they reached the age of five. People killed and butchered their own chickens, pigs, and cattle, and hunted for wild meat. They had real blood on their hands, saw the light go out of real eyes, felt real corpses grow cold. They knew the reek and rot of death intimately. However much of a fascination the snuff clip may have become, it has become so to a people unfamiliar with the real thing. If they are fascinated with it because they do not know it, or if they are inured to because it has only ever been a story, a point of entertainment, to them, is more than I can say. But I cannot help feeling that this has all become to people a kind of drama, a play, a thing of simple goodies and baddies, in which death is fascinating not because it is death, which they do not know, but because it is a trope of drama in an otherwise tedious existence.
I once saw a man, a petty thief, beaten to death by a mob on the street in Dar es Salaam. Quite a common occurrence in sun-Saharan Africa. Just happened to be walking past as he was caught trying to pick a pocket and the crowd gathered in an instance. Lots of shouting, yelling, thuds, cries of pain. Then it was all over and he was just lying there, covered in dirt and dust, not moving. I went back to my hostel and just stared into space for a long while after that. Still think about it now, from time to time.
Indeed. It is a marking and awful experience even to those living there, at least some. I guess you need to have both the cultural carte blanche, a rule of state vacuum and innate inclination for this....But there are enough with the inclination for it to happen.
> It is a marking and awful experience even to those living there,
Well that doesn't appear to be the case. I suspect most of the locals were happy to see justice being done.
There sure is enough enthusiastic supporters for the lynching to happen.
Most? Maybe, I don't know, and I don't think many do know. You'd have to be very familiar with the place and simultaneously be objective and honest about the typical behavior of people there. This is a very very rare thing to happen (and not only about sub-saharian africa, about any ethnographic "fact". To the point that ethnography being a science is open to debate).
The only thing I am sure is that some people from those places are against such events , and traumatized in exactly the same way the original poster mentioned.
Why am I sure? Because I live with such a person, who told me about it unsolicited...
Indeed. My kids have slaughtered their own food and nursed dying animals to reduce the suffering; they are not so inclined towards movie violence, frankly. I'd also point out that most gladiatorial combat was not 'to the death.' Blood sports like football and boxing are rarely fatal.
Yes!
Three thoughts:
1) I haven't seen any of this snuff stuff - neither recently nor ever - so it is not difficult to avoid it (and I do spend a very lot of time on the internet).
2) Second: We are now in an age in which the downsides of liberal individualism are becoming increasingly apparent (and yes there have also been huge upsides). The tragic problem with Western liberalism is that it does not know where to stop. When you valorise each and every kind of liberty, you 'liberate' human appetites that would be better repressed (like they were when I was a kid in the 1950's.
3) your essay doesn't mention another kind of 'snuff'.....murder (now often serial murder) tv who-dunnits that have come to completely dominate tv drama ( at least they do in Europe). It hasn't always been this way; when I was young it was mostly about robbery and murder plot-lines were a rarity.
I have also managed to avoid these things. Granted, I'm not on Twitter, but I am an avid "internet user," and have never watched a single one of these kinds of videos, not any of the beheadings that were so prevalent 15 years ago, or any of the police murder videos, or any war videos. They can be avoided if you want to.
"The tragic problem with Western liberalism is that it does not know where to stop."
I couldn't agree more. The smartest liberals always warned us that liberalism couldn't do what illiberal organic communities, like churches and families, could do — impose obligations and limits on people that would inculcate self-control. We'd always need those illiberal foundations to give liberalism the scaffolding it needed to do its job of mollifying conflicts in the public sphere. But since the mid–20th century, bounded liberalism became comprehensive liberalism, insinuating itself into and conquering even the most intimate and local spheres, and now we're all homeless.
nah I love it I love the liberalism. because religion doesnt know where to stop either. the freedom of modern medicine is extraoirdinary. It did not happen yet in rome. the fact that we can get in on the very very very small, and that we can make a pill for everything transformataive. UHHHHHH what a relief.
Agree. I avoid news and don't watch free to air, and, in doing so, I don't watch any form of news. I've never seen a beheading or real murder. It can be avoided. Like you, I am very online. We can choose what we see. I think.
Even if I'm generous and say that Twitter did the thing were it magically starts autoplaying all videos (an issue they've always had) - these are not five second clips.
1. Close the tab and turn off autoplay.
2. Quickly scroll past the possible murder video and turn off autoplay.
3. Click directly on the video to pause it and then turn off autoplay.
Now, people definitely seek this stuff out, but that's not new - Faces of Death came out in 1978, and I'm sure was a very popular video rental.
I don't know exactly what you mean when you mention "Western liberalism" but, in my view, liberty goes hand-in-hand with responsibility. It is not liberalism that is the problem, it is the modern emphasis on freedom without responsibility and virtue.
'Freedom without responsibility' exactly so. In my 70-year lifetime the default mentality in the West has gone from a 'we are all sinners' (mixtures of good and bad impulses) who need to better ourselves to a default of maximal 'self esteem'. This has set in train an epidemic of Narcissism (as preciently foretold by Christopher Lasch) where every one of your discontents is someone or something else's fault not yours. This is what I meant (and what I explore in my own 'Stack: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/)
A dearly missed professor of mine pithily summed it up many years ago by asserting “things are always getting better and always getting worse.”
That’s not to be read as a “so it goes” Vonnegut-like indifference. That said, it is sometimes hard to dee how things are getting better.
I just wanted to say that I do not see anything in my feed either and I am extremely thankful for that. I hear that other people are seeing much more. When I get alerts from TwiX (that's what I call it anyway) it is just about poetry and Catholic literature. I think there is something to be said about algorithms. But I am actually surprised I have not been ambushed (I am sure it is just a matter of time) because "Liss" is actually a Jewish name since I married into a Jewish family. I will turn away from all dead children's bodies. I don't need to see that. I still remember the boy in the red shirt on the beach in Greece. I worked in a hospital; I know death. It doesn't scare me. However, this is not observing death or honoring the dignity of the people who lost their lives. This is fetishizing it. It strips the dignity of human being.
just reading this after i'd clicked on an article about the horrible situation in Israel and there was an advert in the corner, playing clips of women being kidnapped, women being murdered. it said "no women should have to experience this" and yet being shown it, as a woman, I don't want to see that? I don't want to see the dead bodies of women in an advert. i'm still sitting at my desk feeling unsettled.
I guess people think there's some value in showing the atrocities which are being committed, to try and generate support, to raise awareness, to raise money, etc.
but do i have to look at a dead body in order to care about something?
the thing between israel and Palestine is also between competing religions that are like kissing cousins. both are based on egyptian book of the dead and both are tyrant gods. and so we end up with a total mess. in a fight over land. and when one gets worse so does the other.
Yes. As a jew, I felt the only thing I had the stomach to do right now was to deactivate every social media account I had.
Understandable. I've heard similarly from a few other people as well.
Sorry, but looking away from unpleasant things doesn't make them go away.
Nor does looking at them.
Why ??
There's lots of folks who very well know how to distinguish between a member of the genuine Jewish Community and the Zionists ...
I remember a friend in high school had some of those Faces of Death videos (on VHS of course), so this kind of thing was kicking around pre-internet but in significantly reduced form. I also remember rotten.com as an early purveyor or the macabre and horrifying, doing with still images what Twitter/X is now going with video.
I think part of it is that we've gotten really divorced from the presence of death - it's supposed to be something that happens in a hospital room or ambulance, not right in front of you. So the hidden nature of the subject creates interest in people inclined to seek out the "forbidden"...
I think there are two cultures when it comes to this stuff - our elite class is so worried about bodily harm that they won't let their kids play contact sports while the rest of the country gobbles up real crime/murder videos. It's all very disordered and disturbing.
Oh wow, what a throwback. I remember the rumors about "Faces of Death" (and yup, on VHS), or maybe it was the sequels, but at my high school they were nothing more than rumors, I don't think anyone had them.
Not that it negates the point that you're making, but it has also been revealed in recent years that most of the Faces of Death footage was fake. It was all marketing. But yeah, when I was in junior high and high school, those movies were absolute LORE. I knew kids that had supposedly watched them, but even as a horror junkie, I never could. Didn't see the point.
I did not know that! I distinctly remember seeing one clip of a guy getting gored by a bull and saying "ok, that's all I need to see!"
I did not know that!
When I was a kid, decades before the internet, I was shown a film (video was not invented yet) in school of piles of bodies in German concentration camps.
I was probably 14 years old. Among the images I remember were ditches of naked corpses and a pile of human heads. That seared the truth of the horror of the holocaust into my brain.
I agree that there is something nefarious about cultural rubber-necking and the prurient interests it serves. But documenting these atrocities is important. Soon we will hear apologists denying that this took place at all. It’s too awful to contemplate, but it must also be faced.
Likewise, graphic footage of the Vietnam War in no small way led to the end of it. People seeing the horror at home led to protest. The documenting of Nazi atrocities captured what would otherwise have been unbelievable - I rather suspect that it could be the same with what we see from Hamas now: atrocities unbelievable but that they are in front of our eyes.
My discomfort, my horror, is greatly increased by the fact that Hamas itself is sending out this footage, not some embedded civilian reporter. It is as though Nazis proudly published their crimes rather than hid them. I would say it tells me all I need to know about these people, in so far as their world view is opposed to mine, fundamentally. They want me to know it, explicitly.
Yes. And there's a difference. The Nazis had to be ashamed of their atrocities, even to their own people. Today, the gruesome acts seem to be advertised.
I don't understand the objectives. No sane person would feel any sympathy to the perpetrators. It's a PR fuckup. What for?
> No sane person would feel any sympathy to the perpetrators.
You seem to have confused the W.E.I.R.D. (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) worldview for that of all of humanity.
I had to think about your reply some time. You were on to something for sure. Still, I don't think I confused that. I have met quite a diverse bunch of non W.E.I.R.D. people who I all but one (the Hizbollah guy) would consider to viscerally oppose the discussed behaviors and am pretty sure that such is the default among humans.
When does that default fail? I can't say, but W.E.I.R.D is no secure hedge. See Nazi Germany, only missing the D, maybe see My Lai, maybe Shabra and Shatila and more.
That's precisely it. The Hizballah guy (the mujahadeen) was different from the others. Hamas fighters are also mujahadeen. Their specific jihad is *about* killing Jews, so as they do this, they proudly display their achievement. In contrast, the 911 mujahadeen were about carrying the war to the "far enemy", the US. Hence their goal was to damage key elements of the American state and economy. I suspect they hoped it would crater the stock market and catalyze an economic collapse like in 1929.
> I have met quite a diverse bunch of non W.E.I.R.D. people
I suspect most of those were members of the Westernized elite.
> would consider to viscerally oppose the discussed behaviors and am pretty sure that such is the default among humans.
Instinctual siding with the underdog is a rather Western trait. Most people instinctually back the strong horse.
"members of the Westernized elite" is endlessly debatable. A Nigerian catholic priest, ok. Some persians, among them a gambler and some opoid addicts, maybe from good familes that have been involved with the shah, who knows? All the anatolian kids coming into germany after their fathers had decided working here was better than returning to the village; surely no elites and not westernized when I first met them.
> All the anatolian kids coming into germany after their fathers had decided working here was better than returning to the village
If by "anatolian" you mean "Turkish", did you find out what they think about the Armenian genocide?
Another complicating factor is that the visceral, nauseating response that such "snuff clips" evoke are easily used to augment and prey on our rage. When you only see the atrocities committed against one group it's easier to justify a brutal response. So for war-drumming, it's incredibly effective (which is why some videos are essentially fakes as they're recycled from past conflicts). On the other hand, when you see the graphic horror on both sides you get some perspective on the grisliness and grotesqueness of war and the hollowness of self-righteous propaganda. If you're only funneled down one viewing chamber, you'll never escape a black and white Stars Wars view of the world to recognize the depravity and latent possibility for brutality in all humans. The latter may be a bleak and depressing take on humanity but it's probably the best starting place for taking mental and moral stock of how to reduce such violence in the future
This trend has certainly been the straw that broke this camel's back when it comes to twitter. At first, when I noticed it happening in the early days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine I was fascinated by all the real-time footage coming out of the conflict. At least then it was between clearly defined attackers and defenders and often abstracted by featuring distant supply caravans or thanks, explosions in the night, etc. My interest wasn't so much driven by the snuff-like aspect of such material (which was initially not too far beyond what might be shown briefly on a news broadcast) but because it seemed like a new development in history: the first traditional war on social media. I was also fascinated by how this affected the war. The abundance of material seemed to create a paradoxical jumble of information, confusion, speculation, fabrication, and hard facts. I think it made it impossible for the Russians to control the narrative of the war as they had done in other incursions, and made it clear that their strategic thinking was still trapped in moribund Soviet concepts like maskirovka that could no longer be effective in the all-live-all-the-time media environment of the 2020s. But as the war's dragged on into the slow slog of trench-clearing counteroffensives, and the majority of the video has become body cam footage of that tense and torturous work, I've had to stop tracking it because although there is an initial fascination to being able to see things that haven't been recorded before, it did make me feel soul-sick. The fact that Musk has allowed that site to descend into a carnival of murder- and atrocity-porn really depresses me, but it also makes me think that twitter and it's hold over the media culture is finally over. Last night, when the Best American Poetry anthology series deleted its account after a tweet expressing support for Israel attracted the obligatory charges of fascism and Islamophobia, the people that drove BAP off the site celebrated as if they'd achieved some major moral or political victory over the forces of colonialism and oppression. It just seemed silly and childish to me. Who cares if you made someone leave twitter? Everybody leaves twitter nowadays.
As a Ukrainian, I really appreciate your comment. Glad somebody notices this nuance, the impact this informational war has made and is still making. We also can't stand this type of "war content", though it helped to resist Russian propaganda, which is trying with all its might to claim that what is happening is not really happening, we're just miserable liars, and they "release us". I myself avoid snuff clips at any cost, and limit my internet presence for the sake, I get how the news etc. can be devastating nowadays..
It's been a sea change since we were kids in the 1990s. Most of us in the late 20th century grew up watching Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street, internalizing these basically decent Christian ideas about being kind to others, not taking pleasure in seeing people hurt, etc. But now — maybe thanks to New Atheism and the American forever wars discrediting the basis for that entire, trusting, Christian-derived worldview — we're really back in the pagan era, living in a decaying globe-spanning empire that worships nature (that is, power and victory). We think about Rome so much because we're it.
I miss people like Fred Rogers, the man never had a bad word to say about anyone, and helped so many young people and children who were struggling with different issues in their lives. I often wonder what he would say about the world today, or whether society would even listen to him, or simply find him passe. I don't see good role models for children today, especially for boys. The Andrew Tate's of the world valorize naked self-interest, materialism, and narcissism, but honesty and integrity are things that nobody can ever take from you. Somewhere along the way, we've reverted back to the cult of the "strongman", rather than valorizing people with character and charity towards others.
> I miss people like Fred Rogers, the man never had a bad word to say about anyone
That's because his show was functionally a sheltered world that avoided dealing with real evil.
The man was a Presbyterian minister, who was well aware of human evil. His fundamental perspective was that perhaps you as a lone person can't change these collective issues, but you do have control over how you treat others, and if more people do that, it makes a difference collectively. Better though to let the man speak for himself, his interview with Charlie Rose.
https://youtu.be/djoyd46TVVc?feature=shared
> The man was a Presbyterian minister,
Said how much the mainline Presbyterian church has degraded from the days when they took Calvin seriously.
Instead of being snide for no reason and getting fixated on your own personal opinions on theology, I believe the measure of the man is how many adults and children he helped over the years with their own struggles, who ministered not just to Presbyterian's , but to anyone who needed to hear his words.
> Somewhere along the way, we've reverted back to the cult of the "strongman"
I think we know where this comes from. It's usually translated "Overman."
If you're referring to Nietzsche's concept of the ubermensch or overman that's part of it, but I don't think that tells the whole story. I was thinking more of the competitions like the World's Strongest Man, or other strongman competitions. There's clearly a lot of peacocking on social media with weightlifting and bodybuilding, far beyond maintaining physical health, related around "look at how much stronger I am than you". The default position in the West for millenia was the physical body was fallible or sinful, the Gnostics believed it was a prison, but the spirit or soul of the person was what mattered. This meant even a saint could be physically disabled, small in stature, or suffer from tuberculosis or any other ailment, and still be a holy person who was admired by others. Fred Rogers falls into that tradition, it's no coincidence that he was a Presbyterian minister, but he never believed in preaching overtly to others. One of the fundamental differences between the ancient world and the Judeo-Christian world to come is the taboo against things like infanticide for a baby born with birth defects. In Rome, it was considered totally acceptable if the paterfamilias(oldest living male of the household) decided for an infant to be exposed to the elements, and carried no criminal penalties. People died in the arena for spectacle, and nobody shed a tear. In a paradoxical way, sickness and disability gave sufferers insight into the spiritual world and holiness.
I have been disgusted about the increasing amount of “in your face violence and gore” in movies/tv shows for years! To me (obviously in the minority) it is so clear that the increase in watching people suffer is enjoyed! That’s why people are “desensitized “ to the real stuff! They are used to it! I cant watch it...any of it.
To be honest I actually really enjoy B horror movies (maybe one day I'll do a listicle of the best ones), the more "B" the better, and many of these have a lot of grisly but obviously fake violence. Somehow just the fact that snuff clips are real and horror films, even if way more grisly, are fake, makes them affect me entirely differently.
Same
I don't think it's fair to equate people who enjoy horror films that are obviously fake with people who enjoy watching real-life death. Most horror fans I know are the gentlest, most "moral" (if I may) people I know, and do not celebrate real bloodshed. For many of us, in fact, horror is a way to deal with real-world anxieties in a controlled environment. I will also say that even though I love horror, I am not a gorehound, and I'm still pretty squeamish about on-screen brutality, regardless of the context. I feel like I have become much more squeamish as I have aged, not desensitized.
I've never felt more grateful to be mostly removed from social media. I didn't even hear about the war breaking out until Sunday afternoon, when people talked about it in church. This timed-release news exposure is very much by design for me. I want to know about things, but I want to know about them on saner terms than the ones offered by the algorithm.
Thanks for another beautiful, wrenching, important piece of writing.
To be honest, I couldn’t even read this. Read a few of your descriptions of the footage and I had to stop. It’s too much for me.
Absolutely fair.
I’m sensitive. But maybe you could add a headline with instructions of what paragraph to jump to if we want to skip the more graphic, violent details. Others might feel the same as me.
yep
to expand a bit: especially now that i’m a dad of young kids. i was always sensitive to this stuff, so avoid it like the plague. but now having kids it’s truly horrific.
I agree, the kind of society that becomes inured to suffering is a bankrupt society. People project our present day collective indifference to suffering onto the past, but Buddhism's entire raison'd etre is to help solve the problem of suffering in the world, or Christianity imploring followers to pray for their enemies, or show Christian mercy to defeated foes. The voyeuristic attitude of today is a strange mix of detachment from danger, gleeful cruelty, shorn of any dignity or respect for the person, fit only to be used as a prop to be gawked at by others, and propagated by "social media".
Learn some history. Compared to any previous society I wouldn't exactly describe ours as "inured". If anything we're so unable to cope with it that we simply look away. Remember until two centuries ago, public executions were a form of popular entertainment.
I think you posted this: "Online, we become ghostly copies of true humanity, which, according to L.M. Sacasas, “do not elicit the moral recognition that attends the embodied self” and can be reviled and abused at will."
I think that this has some relevance here. On the Internet, we are abstracted from corporeal reality.
I think what you are describing is a kind of death pornography, which like sex pornography reduces human beings to ghosts.
In my opinion, after you have watched a handfuI of these clips you have essentially seen them all. So watch or read or get out and do things that are productive or educational. Figure out something you can do to help decrease the atrocity rates. Don't become addicted. I also agree that it is quite easy to avoid snuff clips. I recommend we all do so, partly because watching them is exactly what the perps want you to do. And by the way, they are, often with expertise, trying to put you in a degraded and fearful state, which is inherently unhealthy. The producers of these are not trying to bring you to a more human state. // Moreover, watching snuff's just motivates the perps to make more elaborate and extreme ones, thus increasing the suffering of the victims. Don't be complicit in that! So if you need to, when you hear about new snuff events, just extrapolate from what you have seen in your mind's eye. Don't click on the new one. Don't train the algorithms to send you more. I'm not advocating for burying one's head in the sand. Being aware of what is happening and standing / acting against it can be combined with taking charge of your own mind and working to free it, and engaging in self-care.
Sometimes I force myself to watch that stuff so if it happens in my presence irl I'll be less likely to freeze. But damn, I agree that it eats a little piece of your soul each time.