YouTube’s inadvertent role as a magnifying mirror on society fascinates me. From the most mundane minutiae all the way up to horrifying video testaments to cruelty, YouTube’s got it all. Not a day goes by when someone hasn’t acknowledged that some niche of human behavior is now documented and memorialized on the Google-owned site.
Two articles today deal with YouTube’s role in showcasing video footage of violent behavior. The first, by New York Times’ Corey Kilgannon, looks at how YouTube is a font of videos about teen misbehavior, from after-school beatings to a new adolescent phenomenon known as “fence-plowing” (hurling oneself at wooden fences to see the slats go flying.)
YouTube didn’t invent this kind of youthful, foolish behavior, which has been going on in one form or another since time began. But, what used to be fleeting moments of youthful stupidity now get captured on video for all the world to see.
Schoolyard scraps, spectacular skateboard spills, puppy-love quarrels, goofy antics like placing a slice of American cheese over the face of a snoring buddy, and bruising stunts like hurling one’s body through a neighbor’s wooden fence — these and other staples of suburban teenage life have taken on a new dimension as online cinema verite. Instead of being whispered about among friends and then fading away, such rites of ridiculousness are now routinely captured on video and posted on the Internet for worldwide perusal, and posterity.
On the other end of the violence spectrum, YouTube has also become a marketplace of ideas and bluster for Mexican drug gangs. Horrid videos are showing up on YouTube that document the escalating violence between rival gangs — the Gulf Cartel from northeastern Mexico and traffickers based in the western state of Sinaloa.
One chilling video on YouTube called “The Hit Men” shows a handcuffed man, apparently a Gulf Cartel henchman caught and beaten by police. He is curled on the ground and pleading with his captors. “They’re going to kill me,” he says.
Beneath the images, YouTube members boast in Spanish about the powers of rival capos Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, head of the Sinaloa-based gang, and arch-foe Osiel Cardenas, the Gulf Cartel’s leader, recently extradited to the United States.
Like classified ads during the heydey of print newspapers, YouTube videos may actually be a form of communications between gangs, albeit they appear to exist solely to communicate threats. One slide-show posted on YouTube, accompanied by a famous drug gang ballad called “To My Enemies,” was widely interpreted to be a musical attack on the Gulf Cartel’s private army, The Zetas.
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:16 AM|Comments(0)
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