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Comment by c-c-c-c-c | Hacker News Reader

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c-c-c-c-c

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.

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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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