desensitization: the net, reality, and violence.

[Voicedrew]

Somebody mentioned vidiii a couple of days ago, which lead to me clicking on the recording of the Buffalo mass shooting. I thought that it was "surely bait", but I was wrong. I didn't watch the full thing, I skipped to a part near the end and looked away just in time to miss the shooter executing someone he had previously incapacitated at point-blank range. He was also wearing a facemask (from the covid times).

To avoid seeing the execution, I quickly scrolled down to the comments, only to find a terribly sick individual saying something along the lines of "And they told him his facemask would protect him". The video was distressing, but honestly the comments were equally if not more disturbing. It's kind of absurd how, what once would have been the worst thing the previous generations had to witness, can now be seen from the comfort of home.

 

[R_Savarin]

Excuse me do you think that gore should be posted in a classroom? If so why?

I'm really hoping he just means stuff like dissecting frogs

 

[Dr. MacGutsy]

Excuse me do you think that gore should be posted in a classroom? If so why?

From a medical standpoint. You gotta know what you're looking at. Also drivers ed and all that.

 

[Yabba]

From a medical standpoint. You gotta know what you're looking at. Also drivers ed and all that.

That's true

 

[Alix]

I have heard stories about kids in my town watching your usual gore IN SCHOOL and getting caught. I just can't comprehend it. The goriest thing I have ever seen was an image of some dead children after a bombing, with blood (RIP), and I saw only a flash of it, no more. It still got in my head, and when I think about it, it just makes me sad and disgusted. So hearing about kids watching executions for fun (I think they purposefully searched it, don't know if for fun or morbid curiosity that ends wrong) feels otherworldly to me. What's even worse is the fact that it's inside a school. If you decided to watch something like, for example, combat footage, inside your home, it could be possible that you just had morbid curiosity, and most important of all, that you know that watching it is "wrong" (in the sense that it's something that should not be treated like normal fun). But watching it inside a school with your friends means that you think it's normal. The ones who do this see it as normal as watching something funny or weird with your friends. And when it's kids who do this, it's even worse.

 

[Some_porcupine]

I have heard stories about kids in my town watching your usual gore IN SCHOOL and getting caught. I just can't comprehend it. The goriest thing I have ever seen was an image of some dead children after a bombing, with blood (RIP), and I saw only a flash of it, no more. It still got in my head, and when I think about it, it just makes me sad and disgusted. So hearing about kids watching executions for fun (I think they purposefully searched it, don't know if for fun or morbid curiosity that ends wrong) feels otherworldly to me. What's even worse is the fact that it's inside a school. If you decided to watch something like, for example, combat footage, inside your home, it could be possible that you just had morbid curiosity, and most important of all, that you know that watching it is "wrong" (in the sense that it's something that should not be treated like normal fun). But watching it inside a school with your friends means that you think it's normal. The ones who do this see it as normal as watching something funny or weird with your friends. And when it's kids who do this, it's even worse.

classic, ED times too... classmates will show you shit and gore for fun (but that is more of 90s-00(10)s culture, "rite of passage" of sorts...)

 

[☯змія☯]

I completely forgot about this thread until Porcupine randomly liked it. Anyway, just a quick update: I ended up seeing my psychologist, and after some in-depth conversations and reflection, it turns out I've been diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder. Which became a byproduct of said expositions at early stages of development.

 

[Babble Cowboy]

The people have become soft. Back in the day one used to see death, suffering and violence all the time. From his young age, one would see his siblings and older family members suffer and die, at public executions he would see, well, the executions, and OF COURSE a lot of game and cattle. But then public executions and 'anatomy theaters' (autopsies) have become somehow too much for the general populace?

Back in the day it was normal to expect a child to sneak up on a wood grouse and snap its neck. Then, last century, children were commonly berated for slinging stones at sparrows & pigeons. Today's parents I have seen giving their children some talk for killings insects or simply scaring pigeons away.

Bring on the worst desensitisation, it will not move the overtone window even half the way it used to be.

 

[alCannium27]

I don't know, if we are truly desensitied to violence, somehow I don't think gore would have such a stigma to it and it's actually harder to seek out than, say, titties. Snuff films still has this aura of mystique to it too -- like we still say snuffs films don't exist despite the fact that we know someone somewhere must have em.
Anyway, we've always loved war, the ancients and youth viewed wars with a tint of glory. We tend to view the modern wars like this trauma-fest, whereas in truth, we simply has one too many dramas and agenda-driven semi-factual works emphasizing on the PTSD for shock value.
To quote Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart
"For dash and gallantry the bloodthirsty Scots, Australians and Canadians led the way, with the impetuous Irish close behind. The Australian to my mind were the most aggressive, and managed to keep their form in spite of their questionable discipline. Out of the line they were undoubtedly difficult to handle, but once in it they loved a fight. They were a curious mixture of toughness and sentimentality."

 

[internet_userr1]

Idk about you guys but gore is one of the first "inappropriate" pieces of media i was exposed to as a kid. One of the first youtube videos I ever watched was this one (the original post was taken down I think- this was years ago... maybe around 2017)
One of the first websites I ever accessed was this webpage that looks like old youtube, completely overtaken by gore videos. When I was a kid I even watched this like... Joker and Harley-Quinn show that was extremely inappropriate in not just gore aspects but intimate aspects too, I watched this INFRONT of my dad who did not give two fucks.
In 2021, my friend sorta pressured me to join this really niche TikTok challenge called the "gore challenge." Straightforward enough. You watch gore up to 20 levels. Level 1 is the least brutal, level 20 is the worst. I think I got up to level 7 (saw some dude getting skinned alive) and then I quit and dumped that girl cs she was weird asf.
These are REAL people btw, participating in REAL gore videos. These things werent happening to someone by another person, a guy would get infront of his camera, press "film" and slit his throat himself. I seriously dont know how this worked, because by the extremes these people were taking, I have no clue how it even got uploaded to the webpage. Edit1> thinking about it now, if level 7 was that bad then there were probably snuff films somewhere down the line of these levels.

Gore is easily accessible, atleast how i've seen it. There are websites everywhere for gore, free and real websites that you can just access anytime. Maybe its gottan better now, idk, but as far as I see it, gore isnt something that you'd have to access the dark web to watch or anything.

But watching it inside a school with your friends means that you think it's normal. The ones who do this see it as normal as watching something funny or weird with your friends. And when it's kids who do this, it's even worse.

I see why you would think that but I'm still a kid myself and sometimes (usually tbh) this isnt really it.
They KNOW what they're doing is bad, they literally just don't care. There have been numerous people in my school caught for watching literal porn in class, which, if you have a brain that functions properly is LOGICALLY just not okay to watch in a classroom environment. We've been programmed from young ages to think that genitals and porn etc is something that should be PRIVATE and not seen or discussed inside classrooms (unless its a sex ed class) so there's really no excuse for it. And if we're basing it on that logic, then the kids who are watching gore in class 100% know that what they're doing is bad. Or maybe they're just really stupid, who knows with this generation (I say as a person born in this generation...)
Some guy even got suspended for "allegedly" storing about 10k files of child pornography on his SCHOOL laptop- though this is just a rumor and I have no clue how legit it is because I seriously don't understand how he wasn't expelled for that but only suspended for a week... also zero legal action???
But as for the boys who watch porn during class, this is all unfortunately true. I've seen it happen Infront of my own eyes.

Edit 2> I wanted to add onto the desensitization of this generation, because I've seen people discussing how its important for humans to be somewhat desensitized to gore to function a little bit- and while i agree- i also feel as though there are things that kids my age laugh at that kinda disturbs me.
I'm going to talk about gore specifically.
There were these Minion AI videos that were posted on TikTok of shootings, covered up by the "minion AI filter" so it looked "funny." It was obvious that these were real videos, and you could hear people screaming in the background. The comments were horrible under these ones. They didnt care at all, they were talking about how this "meme" was weird and that the AI filter was bad, they said to just post the video without the minion filter because that would be "funnier."
Then there was also another one.
During the rise of internet drama around the Israel and Palestine war, there was a video of these Palestinian's, who were bombed. Not once, not twice, not three times. They were bombed approximately 60 times whilst they were at a camp, a place where they were told they'd be safe. After the horrific bombings, some of the people managed to escape, and then there, on screen we saw a father holding his baby. She was wearing a diaper, but had no head. They had decapitated his baby.
I remember watching this video and just bursting into tears, it was absolutely horrifying to watch. It was the saddest video I had ever seen. And the comments were even worse. Nobody cared AT ALL, even the people who claimed to "support Palestine" weren't being respectful. They were saying stuff like "had it coming" "3rd video I've seen today" "I don't understand why they escaped when they're gonna get bombed again soon anyways" "can this war just hurry up and end?"

I really don't know how bad this is going to get but considering these scenarios I'm expecting a very terrifying and emotionless future devoid of any forms of empathy and it scares me to my core.

 

[Babble Cowboy]

devoid of any forms of empathy

It appears you struggle to take relativity into account. The case most likely is not that one *doesn't know* what emotions those people feel, it is that he *doesn't value* those emotions. Most people would care about the well-being of their friends and family, then, to a lesser extent, that of their acquaintances, distant relatives, community members of all kinds et cetera. Say, I would assume for almost any person his mother getting a burn on her finger while cooking is worse than 10000 babies being skinned alive in some faraway land.

Now, what is unclear to me is why so many people are actually attracted to such videos. I understand the pleasure of violence, but what is the pleasure when it is committed by some else and the person watching is just that, watching? The pornography analogy does not work because in that scenario the viewer physically imitates intercourse to pleasure himself, which is not the case with violence. The best source of the actual drive to watch these videos I can imagine is the taboo nature of what is presented--which would suggest that once such content is not taboo, most people would not even care to watch it. [Do you observe any similar effects with pornography? That once it has become less of a taboo the people have lost their interest in it, or moved to the kinds that have been still being shunned?]

 

[internet_userr1]

Now, what is unclear to me is why so many people are actually attracted to such videos. I understand the pleasure of violence, but what is the pleasure when it is committed by some else and the person watching is just that, watching? The pornography analogy does not work because in that scenario the viewer physically imitates intercourse to pleasure himself, which is not the case with violence. The best source of the actual drive to watch these videos I can imagine is the taboo nature of what is presented--which would suggest that once such content is not taboo, most people would not even care to watch it. [Do you observe any similar effects with pornography? That once it has become less of a taboo the people have lost their interest in it, or moved to the kinds that have been still being shunned?]

Interesting thought.
I'd argue that its because of the high exposure to pornography now. You should read this post.

As Rams969 said: Another case is the people that become cenobites, long ago, seeing a naked woman was enough of an impression to make you have a strong reaction that made you behave like a cartoon character going "awooga". But now that we have access to every single thing fetish and kink on the internet there a naked woman is not impressive. People that have seen already tons of videos of pairs fucking become bored about it and start looking for more and they start watching gangbangs, but that is not going to be enough so they start with masomachism videos and so on. For many people on the internet normal sex is just something ordinary, they want to feel and watch something more, experience something beyond the normal. People are looking for the ultimate sensation in the internet, and become more depreved over time.