inkbluesky

Is Your Daily Life Enslaved by the Electronic World?

On March 30, 2008, a group of teenagers in Florida lured one of their own peers to one of the girl’s homes and videotaped her beating. With one girl behind the camera to record the episode, and two boys guarding the door, the rest mercilessly beat the young woman into a concussion. It was for a dual purpose: to “punish” the victim for allegedly “trash talking” about them on MySpace, and to post the footage on YouTube. The most telling line during the beating was when the young woman behind the camera yelled out: “There’s only 17 seconds left. Make it good.”

[ ]…On CNN a few days ago splashed a typical story that spoke volumes of our modern impulses: “Wife Brings Drama of Divorce to YouTube.” Private lives are increasingly translated into a public space, oftentimes turning intensely personal dramas into perplexing global phenomena.

What makes the incident in Florida unusual, however, is not the violent acts themselves — girl fights have been well reported, after all — but that the girls’ actions were dictated not by a pure act of revenge but by a kind of exhibitionism rarely seen before.

Its honestly coincidence that yesterday I posted about how most of our interactions with others are either pretty good or not especially bad. But that story did mention there are a certain number of anti-social types and I don’t mean the occasionally cranky mood. Another Yoytube video I saw posted on Digg a month ago was a 13? year old that threw a fit because his brother had altered his MySpace page. Its starts off almost funny and quickly degeneratred into the kind of hysteria that makes me glad that few months in high school where I thought about being a clinical psychologist was just a passing phase. What do these people have to be angry about really. They have homes. They seem well feed and wear nice clothes. Where’s their sense of self worth. Only someone with a deeply fragile ego could think some mild slight would warrant not just an obscene level of violent retribution, but the humiliation that was supposed to go with it by posting the video. I felt a little sorry for the divorced woman, but ultimately that tirade accomplished the opposite of what she intended. Most people ended up wondering how her marriage lasted as long as it did.  Andrew Lam, the author of the opinion column thinks that people need to learn to stop making information age fools of themselves, but I think that’s the point these people think they’re being clever or enjoy the role of “microcelebrity” fool. A new net assisted sad-masochism is apparently, among some people, a twisted virtue.

park neon.

Managed like a herd of cattle for canned enthusiasm, Puppet Theater in the Mosh Pit

Felicitously, Edward Wyatt’s Reporter’s Notebook in today’s Times details how strictly micromanaged and coordinated is the canned euphoria of American Idol--why, it’s as if Leni Riefensthal were waving a sparkled baton, orchestrating the camera fodder to maintain unison:

“At the end of every performance you will stand on your feet.” That is one of the commandments offered by Cory Almeida, the indefatigable warm-up man who exhorts and instructs the audience for 15 minutes before each performance and during the numerous commercial breaks.

For the audience members who stand in the “mosh pit,” the area immediately in front of the stage, special instructions are required. “When you are applauding after a performance, we need your hands above your head,” Mr. Almeida said before a recent Tuesday performance. “Otherwise we can’t see that you’re clapping.” As he spoke other stage technicians offered more individualized guidance to mosh pit enthusiasts, including how to wave their arms from side to side over their heads during slow songs.

Reality TV keeping it real.