Hacker News Reader

Comment by Simulacra | Hacker News Reader

People around the office were watching it. Shockingly easy to find.

Everyone keeps saying how easy it was to find. My experience was different, eventually came across a torrent of it but it took me surprisingly long, 30 minutes or so. Maybe im bad at googling?

It was very easy to find within the first hour or so of the news, at least. I googled the name of the shooter maybe half an hour after people started tweeting it, and the first Google results were YouTube videos containing some of the footage [0]. It actually surprised me that Google's search results would put YouTube videos at the very top of SERP for a term that had an anomalous spike (because of the shooter's uncommon name). I'm less surprised that they hadn't manually blacklisted it -- I don't remember when I first saw it on Twitter, but it wasn't from news stories or an official source.

0: https://i.imgur.com/rBZcdCa.png

You have ask what sort of people would watch this ???.

The same people who gathered around TVs on 9/11 after the first strike and then saw the 2nd strike live? So most of the country?

On the morning of September 11, 2001 nobody knew there would be a second attack on the other tower. I distinctly remember everyone including myself thinking about the B52 that accidentally ran into the Empire State building. We were all at work so it wasn't like we were watching TV.

You're assuming at the time that everyone knew it was a terrorist attack, which is false.

Nobody knew that until well after the second plane hit. And even after the third plane crashed into the ground.

The only reason anyone watched TV was because it was a major event with a dramatic incident. Most of the people at the time in my town didn't turn on the TV I had to ask several times at a bar to have the TV turned on. Even then people had no idea what was going on.

No assumptions. We were gathered around the TV in the conference room after the first one hit and part of the conversation was whether it was terrorism, since it was pretty obvious you don't just happen to ram into the side of the tallest building in the country.

But your comment is a non-sequitur regardless- even once we all knew it was a terrorist attack it was replayed endlessly on TV for months, including the people throwing themselves off the building.

I haven't watched any of the footage of the New Zealand attack, but to somehow say it is exceptional to watch the footage is historically speaking, incorrect.

There's a pretty big difference between watching an event that killed people, and watching people - individuals - die.

Can you elaborate on the difference please, I’m not sure I see it myself...

Fair point, how about the people who turned on the television in the subsequent days, knowing that the video of both towers was being played on near constant repeat?

But it continues to be featured and replayed to large audiences to this day, so that excuse doesn't really add up.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity#Morbid_curiosity

I refuse to watch it or even seek it out, personally I think it’s disrespectful and way too morbid. But I do understand the morbid curiosity. Very strange fact of human psychology.

Not strange at all. We crave for knowledge because knowledge is extremely useful. Seeing, understanding and learning from anything and everything is how we survive, advance and evolve.

Just because we live in a society nowadays that promotes being weak doesn't mean our base instincts are not there.

People who like to verify what they are being told.

Why are people reading news about such events which happen on the literal other side of the world, spending a week discussing it in their social circle?

To what end? Becoming an informed voter? Don't think so. It's entertainment, just like watching the video. It just sounds less socially acceptable.

- Politicians

- The Police

- The Military

- Journalists

- The people who care to carefully understand a situation before forming a stance

I wasn't too interested, but now I feel a duty to watch it due to the censorship. I think we all have that duty.

Aspirants.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com