Youtube Bringing Down Cultural Intelligence (Rant, spam on topic please).

[Siberys]

Dear god, what is this world coming to? I stumble across a few things I see either on TV or the internet that are just preposterously ridiculous, and it's all about the cyber world. So, first we have these half a dozen cheerleader girls beating the crap out of another cheerleader, filming it, and posting it on youtube as a joke.


Teens Will Be Charged As Adults In Cheerleading Beating Case - Central Florida News 13

LAKELAND -- The eight teens accused of taking part in the videotaped beating of a 16-year-old will all be charged as adults.

The teens, who range in age from 14 to 18, are charged with kidnapping and battery for the attack in Polk County, and face life in prison because of Thursday’s decision.

Deputies said six girls beat the 16-year-old girl while two boys stayed outside the home and served as lookouts.

The judge also recently issued a gag order in the case because he was frustrated that the parents of the victim and some suspects were talking to the media, along with the amount of details the Polk County Sheriff's Office was releasing about the case.

The Polk County attack made national headlines after video surfaced showing a 16-year-old cheerleader being attacked for 30 minutes.

At one point in the video, the beaten girl was knocked unconscious, and was later seen pleading to be let out of the house.

The attack was allegedly in response to insults the victim posted on a MySpace.com page.

The sheriff's office said that after the attack, three of the teens forced the victim into a vehicle and drove her to another location, where she was told she would be given a worse beating if she called police.

The victim's father said a number of videos were recorded and that the teens intended to post it on YouTube.com.

The girl is still recovering from a concussion and has lost some vision and hearing. She said she won't be returning to public school because of what happened.


The poor girl has a concussion, can't hear out of her left ear or see out of her left eye, and her parents are devastated at what happened. But why did this happen? Because a few people thought it'd be funny on youtube. Youtube is becoming, essentially, a root of evil. And yeah, I know that the show “Root of All Evil” just did something on youtube, but still, this is so far beyond stupidity that it needs to be reiterated.

Now, youtube started off as this friendly video sharing website, but it degenerated into crap like Chocolate rain or Leave Britany alone. Youtube is but one of many horrible internet inventions that helped lower the standard adult IQ scores and overall common sense and integrity of the human race.

A lot of people think that youtube is helping, that it's out there allowing important things to be posted like political campaign advertisements or hell, news channels that will update on occasion to provide the news to people who don't get the paper or have a TV. Yeah, all those things are on there, but theres about a 1 to a thousand ratio of useful videos to pure crapola.

But first, lets focus on those girls. Does anyone think they'd be doing that if youtube or any video-uploading website were available? The video itself is as said, almost purely youtube motivated. So really, should we blame the social retards who were idiotic enough to actually beat up that poor girl just to post a “funny video” on youtube, or should we at least let some of the responsibility fall under youtube for even allowing that to be posted until enough phone calls were in demanding that it be put down. Even if youtube were so strict a website that the owners would first hand view any video before it's uploaded, the fact that it exists would still more than likely have helped make this happen.

Yes, these six or seven girls who beat up and gave a concussion to someone are at fault, and rightfully so considering the youngest was 14 and by that age should have enough of an understanding that what they did was totally unacceptable. But then there's youtube, and not just this video but other videos, I've seen videos far FAR more violent than this one. I've seen videos ranging from exclusive cell phone footage of the Iraq war, to a few teenagers throwing a small puppy off of a cliff and sarcastically asking if that was a “little too mean,” hell there's even uncensored footage of the extremist baptists of Kansas who hold up signs preaching “thank god for dead soldiers” and “God hates fags.”

There are videos gone unnoticed by the owners that are pure hate speeches, they could be about race, sex, sexual orientation, and general groups of mixed people (such as hate speeches against the white house administration). So really, isn't youtube partly to blame for a lot of crap that people are doing? Or at least it's a bit of a conduit, or a reason to do something?

And in case you haven't figured it out, I pretty much hate youtube. I despise what it's doing culturally not just to america but to probably other parts of the world, and what it may eventually do to bring Idiocracy the movie into a reality.

[Xandax]

The "problem" is that in an easy-communicating world with massmedia such as YouTube aka the Internet, e-mails, text messages/MMS it is easy to communicate these incidents now. This means it is "easier" to publish and it is easier for "regular folk" to see.
This is not a YouTube issue as such films where posted on the web before YouTube. YouTube did not neither invent movies or movie sharing, it just became more "popular" with it.
So while I do personally think that YouTube is making a mistake not screening submissions prior to display, I also know it would be an immense, if not impossible, task as I would think the site get many thousand submissions a day - and then the films would just migrate to the next "web 2.0 sharing site".

The problem is much more with "society" these days. Or rather - because "we" shape the society "we" live in, it is a problem with "us".
It is lack of accountability, lack of parenting, it is fundamental flaws in people that can make this happen. I have no golden answers or suggestions - I just know that I do not get surprised by much anymore, which in it self is an indication that something is "wrong".

I seriously think it is wrong to point fingers or "blame" YouTube or similar services. The blame falls entirely on the perpetrators and the ones responsible for this. People committed senseless violence prior to YouTube, people do so without the intent to submit to YouTube. Sensless violence is creeping into the every day image here in Denmark as well, something we as a nation isn't so terrible used to, but people wear knives when going out, shootings every week or second week, murders etc. These do not end up on YouTube though.
So it does seem the world is getting more violent and fanatical every day - and I think services as YouTube simply is a reflection of that. Not the other way around.
So while some most likely see or hear about something on YouTube and think it could be fun copying it, copycats aren't new either.

But I understand your point of view, but I do not agree with it.
I see the issues and YouTube more as a symptom of what is wrong with the world, then the cause.

[Claudius]

I don't think u tube caused the problem. If there were no u tube they would have still beaten her up. I think the cause of the problem is that the girls self image was more important to them than either A) following the rules or B) refraining from harming others. They are no different from any thugs throughout history and they will suffer from the consequences of their actions: now and later.

[VonDondu]

I seriously doubt that YouTube (or rather, the ability to record and post videos on the internet) caused those little punks to have no self-restraint or parental supervision.

If you're going to blame the existence of YouTube, then you might as well blame their possession of a car (which gave them the ability to transport a kidnap victim), their possession of convenient recording devices, the use of the house where the attack took place, and a complete lack of supervision which enabled them to do anything their own conscience would not stop them from doing.

To put this in American-style "perspective", those kids could be hooking up and having SEX under those same conditions. If you mention that possibility, people finally become concerned about the conditions that allow kids to misbehave.

Also, this is not the first time that messages posted on MySpace have resulted in disproportionate reactions from other people, who subsequently targeted the person who posted the messages.

The entire internet is evil.

[Siberys]

If you're going to blame the existence of YouTube, then you might as well blame their possession of a car (which gave them the ability to transport a kidnap victim),

Actually, I do think automobiles in general have caused more problems than they have benefits. Millions of accidents per year, hundreds of thousands of deaths per year, the greedy scumbag car insurance people, the even more greedy care salesmen, the fact that a black unmarked van can be one of oh, probably a dozen or two harmful things to children (pedophile, rapist, kidnapper, murderer, etc) let alone other things it can do such as transport drugs easier, seat belts not being used, the depletion of oil, the harm to the environment. Yeah, actually car's are easily just as awful as youtube.

I don't think the entire internet is evil. I think it's a conduit TO evil. It's like saying guns are evil, but really it's the people who use it.

Yes, as I said, a lot of blame is to be put in these six girls who did such a horrible act, but the fact is, one of the main reasons said that they did this was to put it on youtube, and while youtube might not be evil in itself, it is a root to evil.

[dragon wench]

So I guess you'll be quitting Game Banshee, and any other forums you belong to, sometime soon then?


Seriously Sib,
people are people. They will continue to be people and they'll take advantage of any media available to them. Behaviour of this nature has been going on a very long time, it's simply that the internet gives it immediacy. I'm generally of the view that the internet simply acts as a conduit for making human stupidity just that much more transparent.

[Moonbiter]

@Siberys:
Blaming YouTube and other internet fora for the generally miserable state of mankind, is turning it a bit on the head. To use your example: These retarded girls would have done the same thing, YouTube only made it possible to catch on to them. It's a kind of IT-Darwinism. Yes, there will be bad stuff out there, but at least it's public so we can deal with it. It would have been far worse if that wasn't the case.

As I do web-communication for a living at the moment, let me explain a few fundamentals for you: Everything you put out on the net will be there for ever. That's the first rule you have to deal with when you're online. It's hard to grasp the implications of that statement, but that's the way it is. Secondly, there's a thing that IT people call Web 2.0, which is the next generation of the internet that we are seeing now, and you're a part of. It's a completely new way of looking at the internet as a place where you live. That's the short form. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter... they're all part of a brand new world that we have to adapt to. It's not evil, it's just a new way of life. You can make it evil, like the lackwit cheerleaders from Florida. They didn't get it. They thought it would be rad to put that film on the web, and havn't got enough braincells between them to understand that YouTube is not their personal playground.

The question is, should places like YouTube, MySpace or Facebook be censored? Should public blogs be censored? According to Web 2.0 gurus like Mike Moran, Fredrick Marckini and David Weinberger, they should not. According to them, the internet community will always eventually regulate itself. Look at GB. This is an old-fashioned message board where we're all welcome under certain terms and standards. YouTube is open to everyone without those rules, and that is.. according to people smarter than me, the future.

I hope that made some kind of sense. I'm just home from a 14 hour workday and had to go down on my knees to find a babysitter as I'm having an 8 day week. Lucky me.

[Bloodstalker]

Originally Posted by Siberys

But first, lets focus on those girls. Does anyone think they'd be doing that if youtube or any video-uploading website were available? The video itself is as said, almost purely youtube motivated. So really, should we blame the social retards who were idiotic enough to actually beat up that poor girl just to post a “funny video” on youtube, or should we at least let some of the responsibility fall under youtube for even allowing that to be posted until enough phone calls were in demanding that it be put down. Even if youtube were so strict a website that the owners would first hand view any video before it's uploaded, the fact that it exists would still more than likely have helped make this happen.

In a word, yes. We should blame the individuals who committed the act. While the video may itself have been motivated by a desire to place it on youtube, I don't really care about the video so much as the fact that the act itself was horrible. yes, I understand that posting a video of such a thing would be tasteless, but the actual attack, which seems to have been motivated by comments made by the victim, is far worse in my view than any adolescent idea of "This would be a cool video."

To blame a medium like youtube for these kinds of acts of violence is the same thing as blaming music, movies, games, or any other medium you want to name. The medium itself is neutral. There are countless people who use youtube and never think to do anything like this. Whether they post idiotic things on it or not is irrelevent, and highly subjective in any case.

In my opinion, any attempt to blame a neutral medium for an act of violence simply serves to excuse the individuals who perpetrated that violence to some extent. It also serves I think to detach anyone who consideres a violent act from any feelings of responsibility. The people who are shooting students in schools, mugging people in back allys and any other violent crime you can think of that takes place daily somewhere aren't motivated by getting exposure on youtube. The fact that these individuals thought it would be cool to post a video like this to me simply confirms the mental state of the criminals. It's a sick thing to even consider doing such a thing.It shows a severe detriment in their thought process that is seperate and in no way related to the availability of youtube. It is innate to the people who commited this crime, and was not instilled in them by youtube.

My own thought is that we are living in a society that attempts in every way possible to hold people like this blameless. No one is accountable for their own actions because "Youtube/Violent Movie/Violent Video Game/Insert Your Favorite Scapegoat Here made them do it." Everything has to be something elses fault because there is no way possible a human would commit such acts on their own, regardless of the facts that people have been committing these types of crimes since the beginning and the actual ratio of people who do these things compared to people who don't even though they use the same mediums and play the same games is astronomically small. If there was a true corelation, then the ratio would be much higher. If youtube did actually instigate this kind of behaviour, then why are there so very few instances of it?

Am I surprised that youtube is mentioned in this case? No. Youtube is the same as any other place where people gather. It would be impossible, given the amount of people who use youtube, that something like this would not happen. Not because youtube motivates it, but because there will always be these kinds of people in any large gathering. I personally think that anyone who would think beating someone this severely, giving them a concussion and damaging their hearing and sight is "way cool" or "badass" are likely to engage in this kind of activity regardless.

[Nightmare]

The people that committed the beating are disgusting human beings; Youtube was only something that they used to communicate. If it wasn't Youtube, it would be something else.

Slightly related, I often find that on political forums or arguments that people will often cite a Youtube video as proof of their assertions, which I find absolutely hilarious. In terms of credibility, youtube is worse than wikipedia, and yet people still seem to believe that a video that someone edited and posted is a credible source of political information. Now, being a university student, I'm all for dumbing down academia because its dense and generally just semantics. But people that believe that using youtube to cite their facts is actually credible? They get what's coming to them.

Apologies for the slightly off-topic rant, but it seems to fall under the thread's title.

[Maharlika]

Simply put, technology magnifies and enhances the capabilities of humans. For good or for bad, it all boils down on how one makes use of technology.

[VonDondu]

Originally Posted by Maharlika

Simply put, technology magnifies and enhances the capabilities of humans. For good or for bad, it all boils down on how one makes use of technology.

Are you suggesting that the same sort of beating could not take place in the absence of modern technology?

[Moonbiter]

Originally Posted by VonDondu

Are you suggesting that the same sort of beating could not take place in the absence of modern technology?

Do you want to argue for arguments sake? I think he was pretty clear on his opinion, and it was a bit of a no-go, argument wise. Sort of like: "The Internet gives retards a new way of expressing themselves. Period." We could probably figure out some way to twist that statement into a five-page discussion, but I hardly think we would land at a different conclusion.

[Maharlika]

Originally Posted by VonDondu

Are you suggesting that the same sort of beating could not take place in the absence of modern technology?

I think Moonbiter somewhat expressed it eloquently.

Well to answer your question, certainly not. My post is directed at people who would blame the internet, myspace and youtube for this particular incident. Even the victims's parents particularly the father is blaming myspace and youtube.

Like yup, if not for them, it wouldn't happen to his daughter.

Then again, if this would have happened 25 years ago, it would be something like these girls got a hold of the victim's "black diary," read it, got pissed, then invited the victim to comeover to the house...

@Moonbiter: Well said. I wonder what these retards would come up next.

[VonDondu]

Maharlika, I didn't see the irony in your post. I thought you were saying something equivalent to, "Better guns allow people to kill each other faster." You didn't make clear what you think causes this sort of violence in the first place.

There's no point in blaming technology for the way that people hurt each other, since it's really beside the point. I thought the irony in my own earlier message was clear when I suggested that if you want to blame video recorders for the beating, then you could blame a lot of other things as well. But I thought I made it clear that it would be dumb to do so.