Lets just remind ourselves of the morbid curiosity most of us experience when passing a terrible accident, we rubberneck to try and get a peek for any gore. similarly when waiting in A & E. I think it is a sharp reminder we all need to the fragility of life and for caution (which often only lasts a day or so).
I once watched a Isis beheading (Kenneth Bigley) and I couldn’t bear it and it made me feel ill, not to be repeated.
No, I also never feel the need to slow down for motorway gore – I take a peverse pride in looking away out of respect for someone else’s misery – but as you say it is a common reaction in varying degrees.
Jim Dixon
1 year ago
Caitlin Moran wrote a good piece on her reaction to watching a snuff video back in 2009. It concludes:
“i don’t want to overstate the whole thing, or be too dramatic. I had two subsequent nights during which getting to sleep was quite difficult, and I had to climb into my youngest child’s bed and wrap myself right round her while pints of anxiety sat, like bad alcohol, in my guts. But it hasn’t driven me insane, or made me question my world view. I am still an essentially shallow optimist. I am not damaged.
What I am, however, is host to something that will never leave. It made me realise that you should take great care in what you choose – often in a cavalier moment – to place in your memory, because some things will sit there for ever, like a bad seed; like a shadow on the moon; like a crow on a fence in a dream.
A very tiny part of me now, and will always, consist of an elderly man dying in a wood in Ukraine.” https://web.archive.org/web/20110629121815/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/caitlin_moran/article5483397.ece
Matt Hindman
1 year ago
You know, there is something you really have to appreciate about the Islamic State. Most movements and causes, no matter how monstrous or extreme, rely on their enemies to depict them as monsters. Almost all of the most terrible regimes in history had a positive propaganda public relations blitz. The Islamic State said “Screw it. We are horrible people and are proud of it.”
They also referred to themselves as terrorists. Other terrorist groups see themselves as freedom fighters. They vehemently disagree with the description of terrorist.
Last edited 1 year ago by Lisa I
Lindsay S
1 year ago
I’m reminded of when I was younger being taught about the French Revolution and told how the crowds would throng around the guillotine and the Grannies would sit and watch while knitting. Clearly some humans enjoy brutality more than others.
That is precisely why the greatest Empire the world has ever seen, The Roman Empire, build not only the Colosseum but a further two hundred odd similar Amphitheaters to keep the ‘mob’ amused.
I think the grannies were paid to watch and cheer. They knitted to pass the time.
Penny Mcwilliams
1 year ago
I am rather at a loss about the intended point of this article – some people enjoy watching hideous things, but not sure the author had anything useful to say about them. A non-random sample of one is not illuminating, and i for one am not going to start watching any of them.
Andrew McDonald
1 year ago
Well, I read a few pages into this odd advert for the author’s book until I realised there were links to the terrible websites he seems to enjoy studying. And then I stopped. Would you go to a cinema with a few friends a couple of times a week to watch people being killed and tortured? No. So why is it in any way OK to do it at home on your laptop? Feh.
Roger Rogers
1 year ago
Surely people who watch this stuff are basically sadistic, but are sufficiently self-controlled not to actually participate in acts of sadism themselves. Often these people are responding to peer-group pressure to see a video with their mates as a sort of male right of passage The ones who duck out are wimps. Laddisim is an easy gateway into overt Narcissism. Sociopathology and for a few, Psychopathology.
Tom Lewis
1 year ago
Do women not watch ‘Gore Porn’ ? And if not, why not ?
Malcolm Knott
1 year ago
There is great evil in the world and if we choose to watch evil men at work we participate in the evil.
“And there is no treatment for moral unease, because this is the stuff of life in all its richness and dark complexity.” I’m curious if by saying that evil is real we mean that there is some objective, religious, truth to the world, and if so, is that not also the treatment for moral unease? I personally feel, with my religious beliefs, that calling evil what it is, is the treatment for the unease and disgust I feel when I experience its depravity.
This man is indeed some kind of deranged pervert.
Lets just remind ourselves of the morbid curiosity most of us experience when passing a terrible accident, we rubberneck to try and get a peek for any gore. similarly when waiting in A & E. I think it is a sharp reminder we all need to the fragility of life and for caution (which often only lasts a day or so).
I once watched a Isis beheading (Kenneth Bigley) and I couldn’t bear it and it made me feel ill, not to be repeated.
No , most of us don’t actually.
No, I also never feel the need to slow down for motorway gore – I take a peverse pride in looking away out of respect for someone else’s misery – but as you say it is a common reaction in varying degrees.
Caitlin Moran wrote a good piece on her reaction to watching a snuff video back in 2009. It concludes:
“i don’t want to overstate the whole thing, or be too dramatic. I had two subsequent nights during which getting to sleep was quite difficult, and I had to climb into my youngest child’s bed and wrap myself right round her while pints of anxiety sat, like bad alcohol, in my guts. But it hasn’t driven me insane, or made me question my world view. I am still an essentially shallow optimist. I am not damaged.
What I am, however, is host to something that will never leave. It made me realise that you should take great care in what you choose – often in a cavalier moment – to place in your memory, because some things will sit there for ever, like a bad seed; like a shadow on the moon; like a crow on a fence in a dream.
A very tiny part of me now, and will always, consist of an elderly man dying in a wood in Ukraine.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20110629121815/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/caitlin_moran/article5483397.ece
You know, there is something you really have to appreciate about the Islamic State. Most movements and causes, no matter how monstrous or extreme, rely on their enemies to depict them as monsters. Almost all of the most terrible regimes in history had a positive propaganda public relations blitz. The Islamic State said “Screw it. We are horrible people and are proud of it.”
They also referred to themselves as terrorists. Other terrorist groups see themselves as freedom fighters. They vehemently disagree with the description of terrorist.
I’m reminded of when I was younger being taught about the French Revolution and told how the crowds would throng around the guillotine and the Grannies would sit and watch while knitting. Clearly some humans enjoy brutality more than others.
That is precisely why the greatest Empire the world has ever seen, The Roman Empire, build not only the Colosseum but a further two hundred odd similar Amphitheaters to keep the ‘mob’ amused.
I think the grannies were paid to watch and cheer. They knitted to pass the time.
I am rather at a loss about the intended point of this article – some people enjoy watching hideous things, but not sure the author had anything useful to say about them. A non-random sample of one is not illuminating, and i for one am not going to start watching any of them.
Well, I read a few pages into this odd advert for the author’s book until I realised there were links to the terrible websites he seems to enjoy studying. And then I stopped. Would you go to a cinema with a few friends a couple of times a week to watch people being killed and tortured? No. So why is it in any way OK to do it at home on your laptop? Feh.
Surely people who watch this stuff are basically sadistic, but are sufficiently self-controlled not to actually participate in acts of sadism themselves. Often these people are responding to peer-group pressure to see a video with their mates as a sort of male right of passage The ones who duck out are wimps. Laddisim is an easy gateway into overt Narcissism. Sociopathology and for a few, Psychopathology.
Do women not watch ‘Gore Porn’ ? And if not, why not ?
There is great evil in the world and if we choose to watch evil men at work we participate in the evil.
“And there is no treatment for moral unease, because this is the stuff of life in all its richness and dark complexity.”
I’m curious if by saying that evil is real we mean that there is some objective, religious, truth to the world, and if so, is that not also the treatment for moral unease? I personally feel, with my religious beliefs, that calling evil what it is, is the treatment for the unease and disgust I feel when I experience its depravity.