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Comment by imranq | Hacker News Reader

Why is there so much fetishization of violent content in the comments? Sure maybe liveleak provided some footage you couldn't get on youtube and that is indeed a loss, but to think that the violence you see represents the truth is just as bad as denying that any bad happens in the world.

The world is far larger than any one mind can handle. I wouldn't judge it from a few videos taken out of context. The world can be a great place and so can the internet, buts it's easy to get PTSD from it. Browse responsibly.

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I'll just repeat my previous comment because I actually feel this is important: I've gotten absolutely zero enjoyment from the few that I've watched. They make me feel completely sick and scared for myself and my family and I think about how incomprehensibly horrible it must be to live through these events, either as someone who died or someone who watched or knew the person who died. However, I am much more careful with my daughter and prone to take precautions after having watch them. I think they provide value, I absolutely do not get the same effect from reading or learning about bad things that can happen to me, my brain just never really considered it a real option until I saw it happen. And yes, I probably have PTSD from them, but I am not a careful person naturally so I feel they have probably had a positive effect on me and made my family safer because of that.

The reason violence doesn't represent reality: check out data on what makes people suffer and die.

Self-harm is about equal to interpersonal violence, conflict and terrorism combined. But by far the largest cause of suffering and death is disease.

https://ourworldindata.org/burden-of-disease#how-do-differen...

While you probably won't hear free-speech advocates shouting nearly as loudly for this as for view-point-diversity (ahem)... there is some legitimate concern that this content is often legal.

And more than that... it was often news-worthy. The kind of stuff on that site included war crimes, murders, armed robbery, reckless disregard for the safety of others, accidents caused by poor city maintenance...

You may not like the videos, but the things that they captured will happen whether the videos exist or not. And while I wouldn't recommend that anyone make a habit of watching something on LiveLeak, it was still a resource that had educational possibilities.

Like you said: most of the world is a great place. And I think most people, upon seeing violent content like that, would become deeper advocates for peace and safety. It's hard to be a big tough guy who thinks he's rambo when you see how meaningless your life is against a bullet.

I think that viewpoint diversity is properly seen as the canary for newsworthy content like this. Not that I have much faith that most see it that way.

Watching a compilation of car accidents from dashcams and cctv made me treat my car and motorcycle like a 2 tonnes weapon not a transport method where I can text, chat and fight search results on youtube. Don't accelerate on roundabout or that guy on a sidewalk might lose his hips with legs. Nope, I don't want to see that video again, but you should.

Me, and others, see such change of perspective a good thing, no other medium can provide. Many people here don't see that a positive fetish, but a warning. I watched that video like 14 years ago, and images are still in my head.

> fetishization of violent content [...] few videos taken out of context

it's literally the opposite, it's not for the of violence, it's the unadulterated content: every other outlet either filter or worse, "narrates" hevaily cut snippets out of source material.

and we already live in a bubble as it is. having some amount of "ground truth" was certainly better than none.

and I said as one that steered clear from the site itself most of the time.

The snipping in particular is pretty cancerous. Distilling a five hour event or talk into a 2 minute highlights reel loses all nuance.

Violence doesn't represent truth. But it is part of it, and it is usually censored. Seeing it uncensored hence feels like seeing more of the truth.

If you don't experience seeing an American contractor getting decapitated by ISIS, then you may never have the gut-punch visceral understanding of how certain parts of the world works. Aside from actually getting kidnapped by ISIS, you can't experience it and truly feel the emotions of that act. Until you see a grainy, badly-compressed mobile phone video of someone slicing through cartilage and bone and sinew, a body twitching, blood trickling out from under the knife, a bunch of guys screaming and hollering and celebrating the victory of a murder. The body, headless, lifeless, being picked up and tossed in a ditch.

Now, watching that video won't help you understand ISIS at all. It may even completely color your interpretation of why the events took place, or who was doing it, or why. Is it better to walk around ignorant to a visceral understanding of horrible things? Or to walk around with new biases, after having seen something horrible with no context? Even if the "truth" is lost somewhere in between, I would rather know a little than know nothing.

We live in a world of "Nightly News" and platforms full of rules and restrictions. "Truth" will always elude us there, as long as someone else is deciding for us what we are allowed to see. It's nice to have at least one place where you can remove the filter.

> it's easy to get PTSD from it. Browse responsibly

"Yeah, he's real cool when he's showing you those videos on LiveLeak, man. The bus full of children being blown up is really funny; that's a funny video." https://youtu.be/OQdHeNNWrj8?t=82

> The world is far larger than any one mind can handle.

^^ Never heard it phrased this way, but I like it.

Also see: "For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief."

Ecclesiastes 1:18

What are you on about. Since when can you get shell-shock from watching videos online.

Its not fetishization but rather an unabridged edition of the footage you see on the news.

Individuals can absolutely be traumatized by footage.

Sure you can. You can build up a tolerance, but most people are not mentally prepared to confront graphic violence.

It takes months of hard training for soldiers to be prepared for confronting death. How is a school teacher going to feel after watching a video of a school shooting? Probably not very safe all of a sudden, and that could have long lasting scars even if it wasn't something they personally experienced.

Edit: And while I agree, LiveLeak was a source of truth for news stories, it also was a fetishization for some people. I think in order to truly tackle the legacy of liveleak, we can't ignore that some people watch gore for the gore and not because they want to be more informed citizens. I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we must confront that reality too.

"most people are not mentally prepared to confront graphic violence" That's ludicrous. The apex predator on the planet that has violently gained control of the planet and killed trillions of other species including its own kind is not only mentally prepared to confront graphic violence, it is hardwired to conduct graphic violence on both a personal and global scale, things that were published on Liveleak. But don't be hard on yourself, most people make believe and live in a fairy tale world that props up the falsehood of who they really are. Shutting down sites like Liveleak is just another way to perpetuate the fairy tale and hide the ugly truth.

As an apex predator, we don't hunt other humans for food. I'm not sure why you think killing a human is the same as killing a chicken.

We are hardwired as social animals to not kill our same species. It's the exact opposite of what you suggest.

All research shows that humans don't like killing other people. That's what makes Serial Killers so interesting as a topic, because they don't have the instinct to not kill.

Losing your instinct to not kill takes a lot of conditioning.

The many stories coming out of content moderation companies would disagree. E.g:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...

The problem is that these clips of condensed malevolence has such a disproportionate effect on your outlook on life. I'm almost certain it has made me much more cynical and less trusting in general. In my day to day life in a safe western society, it's been an overwhelmingly bad and unnecessary sort of "hardening".

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