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I absolutely did this with the gore and it desensitised me to the point that I will make jokes that lose me friends on here without even realising
Didn’t pick up any ideology from it as far as I can tell, other than ‘if I have to die I would prefer to be extremely exploded’
Then again this was all like uh MorbidReality and WatchPeopleDie rather than the chans
So like when that woman was murdered I had seen the pictures of it almost instantly because that’s just reflexive to me. It’s not great!
But that is kind of what being a depressed teenager growing up on the internet will do to you. I also got really good at posting
Similarly the mosque shooting video was a logical progression from, say, the video of the TV station guy who killed two of his colleagues while they were filming
On some level I imagine it is a coping mechanism but it’s also voyeuristic curiosity and also deliberate self-harm! Especially if growing up you were like, I have to be Tough and get to grips with the Real World™ so then I won’t have anxiety or think about being a girl
I definitely remember being like, I can’t do anything serious or meaningful in the world and nobody takes me seriously but at least I can prove I’m not too scared to myself by watching this
I think the point at which you really get broken is when you start like critiquing them. Like you want the guy to read at least one book about cinematography before strapping on the GoPro
I dunno that we have any frame of reference for understanding what seeing a bunch of POV killing without doing any yourself does in your brain
Other than lead me to make normal people upset, I suppose
And it all ties into foreign policy too. You are a guy who just got his entire head unpeeled by a .50BMG round and then the reversal of some guys hacking off an aid worker’s head
All the British guys who were doing liveleaks of baroque ISIS killings in Syria - blowing heads off with detcord, cage full of petrol - are my age or younger and I bet grew up with the same exposure
‘Gary Brecher’ didn’t know how lucky he was
If you grow up as a war nerd now... I mean, I have upset people by laughing off guys getting killed on at least two continents now, in Donbass and Syria and probably more I can’t even remember, because it just doesn’t register
That nerd impulse that used to go into weapons systems is still there but it’s for the effects rather than the numbers on the specs, because now you don’t have to imagine them. Some NATO intelligence service blew the heads off three militia leaders with a rigged chandelier? Sick
But it’s all totally bipartisan because you are just automatically on the side of whoever’s filming, that’s how cinema verite works
You hear the guy yelling takbir as the missile flies over and you’re like, yeah, I hope it hits, because I have bonded with this guy and I want to see a cool explosion
It’s very strange because it means war is never boring or tragic, it’s always sick or funny or interesting. And it can be funny, really funny, to watch people kill each other. I don’t know why other than that no environment is immune to humans laughing at it
Later I would end up reading about this in more candid war memoirs, and lots of veterans ended up spending decades absolutely ashamed or silent about feeling exultant or laughing at combat, and now we have a whole generation that *only* knows combat from those things
Once again: MGS2 most prescient piece of media produced in my lifetime, not reading replies
