Friday, October 26, 2007

Man jailed for urinating on woman

A man who urinated on a woman as she lay dying and shouted "this is YouTube material" has been sentenced to three years in prison.

Anthony Anderson also covered Christine Lakinski with shaving foam after she collapsed in a Hartlepool street.


This item has a worrying counterpart:

Melborea Moronica: New 'Depraved Species of Electric Flora' Found Growing in Melbourne, Australia

A Melbourne rugby reporter, Ben Davis, presents his live-to-air TV report on the night's game. Behind him a Brisbane Broncos fan pretends to lick his ear. A few seconds later the phantom ear licker returns, grabbing Davis in a headlock and knocking him off camera. Davis recovers, attempts to restart his report and is then attacked by the ear licker and around 10 of his mates, who proceed to bash the hapless reporter -- in full view of the still-rolling TV camera.

Unsurprisingly, a few days later Davis's attackers were caught and arrested, having not bothered to hide their gurning mugs from the camera. I've watched the footage again and again, as it's absolutely boggling, the sheer, brazen willingness of these men to perform for the lens, to not even bother to cloak their random acts of violence from a watching world.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ugg...I saw the Rugby footage before and it gave me that sick, dead inside , dark feeling. I really don't understand the disconnect. As a child of the 70's & 80's I grew up with my fair share of violence and videogames so I really don't think that's the equation.

It's a larger issue of dehumanizing the species through gross consumerism and celebrity idolization in my opinion. They've made real-life the "black sheep" of reality television. It's as though this generation is striving to insert itself into an augmented reality by any means necessary. They do this with the fleeting hope that they will be elevated into TV-life.

Denny

Tony F. said...

I think the real issue here is the level of emotional insipidness that younger people are being raised to achieve. Parents are raising kids these days who are incredibly well-mannered and adjusted when younger, but who turn into demons when they get older.

All facets of society are to blame. In terms of what's acceptable, the list just gets shorter and shorter. You can't let your children play with a toy gun, lest they get arrested. Kids can't scrap with other kids without the police getting involved.

TV is rife with the worst sort of mind-numbing tripe and intellectually draining horror. Music, not just in terms of content, but in terms of quality, is just. plain. awful. Everything sounds the same. Everything looks the same. Have you ever seen a group of teenagers wandering around? They all look and dress the same.

The constant inundation of video entertainment keeps kids from developing real personalities and coping skills, materialistic parents give them no real insight into humanity, and modern education is an utter failure. I don't hate the younger generation; I pity the poor SOBs. They have absolutely no chance when they get older. Forget global warming, the NWO, or World War 3; even if we find our way past all these, they're going to be helpless.

You could make the argument, I suppose, that it has always been this way and always will, but some of the headlessness you read about in the news (these stories are perfect examples) really makes me believe otherwise.

Anonymous said...

"A Clockwork Orange" begins to come to mind with this stuff.. who needs dystopian fiction - the future is here now.

I think a "Children of Men" type of dark ages future is more of a foreshadowing prediction that an apocalyptic fantasy.

Dustin said...

I watch the kids of my friends and what I see is a generation which seems incapable of differentiating between cartoon-ish violence and real violence in many cases. There's a real disconnect there, for whatever reason.

e said...

Mac,
Have you been following Cliff Pickover's newsgroup today? - story about how global warming is causing odd and borderline psychotic behavior in people?

Anonymous said...

As I've suggested before, when a sufficient number of people begin to understand and believe that their future may be very dark, if not hopeless, social integrity and continuity begins to suffer.

As we see, via continuous news reports, scientific findings, and other data sources that we may not have a real future due to ecological damage, overpopulation, global warming, warfare, and anti-democratic and thuggish behavior by some of those at the top of our government, without real or corrective consequence or action, things begin to unravel and fall apart.

I suspect we are beginning to see the start of individuals in different locales not giving a damn, being prone to violence, and acting in depraved and destructive ways, as the two stories Mac notes here indicate. Perhaps this has always been the case, but from my experience over the past 5 decades, I have observed a general dumbing down of our culture, a kind of roughening and violence-prone, arrogant attitude on the part of younger generations increasing, and a subtle kind of growing fear and despair taking hold. A sort of "me first" behavior is not only more common, in some cases it is held up as either "cool" or admirable, which I find baffling.

I suspect this kind of general trend is not only growing, but will continue, and that more and more stories of the kind of depravity noted in just these two stories will become more common.

And I don't think we have seen anything yet. I fear for the future of humanity, sad to say.

Mac said...

Elan--

Thanks for the lead!

TJ--

The only problem with "Children of Men" is that it's unnecessarily optimistic.

On a personal note, I've had several recent run-ins with consumer-bots (young and old) that only underscore the general sentiments voiced here. Collectively, we're falling down a mine-shaft; we've become psychologically destitute. Which is why, in part, ardent Singularitarians are deluding themselves. *Of course* we'll develop the necessary technologies given enough time; the real question is what we'll choose to do with them.

Mac said...

And has anyone noticed how virtually *all* children are medicated for "ADHD" now? I don't want to start a debate about whether or not it's an actual medical ailment, but if it is *everyone* seems to have it. (Must be contagious -- you know, like obesity.)

Dustin said...

ADHD is a whole other can of worms. I've been watching that one for a while, and I think the free use of drugs intended for adults in children(and even babies) is likely tied in this discussion to a fairly large degree. Not to mention that fact that practically every American citizen is one some kind of prescription at any given moment...

Anonymous said...

I think the current culture is suffering from IDD -- Intelligence Deficit Disorder. (It's like, you know, a political thing....)