Have never watched any of the snuff video’s. Course I’m not on social media. But you don’t have to watch the stuff. There is no reason to and plenty of reason not to. Why help terrorist agendas? And the regular media has their hand in the same market.
Quite so. The author says he’s susceptible to the stuff because he’s hooked on social media, without making the obvious inference. Come off X, tick tock etc, not just so as not to help terrorist agendas, but also for your own moral and mental welfare.
Fully agree. But if you insist on living in a sewer, don’t be surprised if floods of effluent come your way
Matt Sylvestre
1 month ago
Simple: Choose not to watch. Be better than the loser barbarians that creat this trash. Just be better than these losers… (this is coming from someone who will be happy to learn that the Russians properly retaliated on these barbarians so long as they get only the actual guilty parties). I just won’t demean myself by watching. Though if it were my duty I would have no problem pulling the trigger on the perpetrators…
Jane Watson
1 month ago
I’ve not watched any of it willingly, just the few clips of Nova that came on the news. Of course it’s brutalising – it’s meant to be. It’s a main tool of Hamas, whose ‘content creators’ even use actors.
I have a nephew who follows various ‘pro-Palestinian’ influencers on X. He’s so far down the rabbit hole it’s terrifying. He also manages to be a Putin fan-boy.
Social media feeds its users ‘more of the same’ so that, eventually, they are funnelled into cess pits of propaganda.
I gave this nephew one of my digital subscriptions and regularly link him to informative articles by recognised experts in geopolitics. He frequently reacts angrily after reading a few sentences – ‘that guy just can’t stand Putin’…
He links me to a post on X. I look up the source, and tell him he’s following Kremlin (or IS) propaganda.
My condolences for your situation. Some kids are more susceptible to nonsense than others. Hopefully it’s a phase. If he’s somewhere between fourteen and twenty-five, it’s not surprising. Lots of kids have an idealistic phase where they become very passionate about some cause or another. They usually moderate as they get older and accumulate experience, realizing that the world isn’t black and white. I personally never had an idealistic phase. I was always the kid that had to question the why of everything and do things my own way. I was jaded and cynical by the time I was in high school. Trust me when I say that comes with it’s own set of problems as well.
Edward H
1 month ago
I think it depends on context, not just of the videos/images and how they came to be made, but also the identity/personality of the viewer. Anecdotally, I know people who have changed their opinions when confronted with this kind of evidence. It can be epistemologically valuable for people who tend not to believe media and prefer to see raw evidence.
After all, we have Holocaust deniers. Actual footage of terror keeps it from being easily denied. When denial is attempted – see Hamas sympathizer comments – these people are outed as liars, not to be trusted.
I believe it is worthwhile to see an occasional terror incident to remind me of just how horrible the terrorists are. I can’t take watching this stuff too often, however, because it sickens me a bit each time.
But the problem seems to be the use of AI to show pretty children as the victims of Israel. The “sheep” who want a free Palestine do not seem intelligent enough to separate truth from fiction and believe that Hamas are the victims not the perpetrators.
I was thinking about the Holocaust as well. Back then, it was deemed critically important that the truth of the horrors be preserved so future generations would know what happened and it wouldn’t be lost in history. I think that’s the right idea. The best evidence, photos, videos or whatever, should be preserved and kept and taught. It shouldn’t be something we see often, lest we become too familiar, but suppressing it is a far greater risk, for the world needs to remember what happened. Each of us should know the depths of human depravity lest they fail to recognize it if they see it personally. It falls to each of us to properly moderate.
brian millar
1 month ago
Do images of terrorism inspire terror, or just loathing for the perpetrators?
I recall how the BBC showed extremely graphic images of Northern Ireland in the 1970s (an image of somebody’s viscera being shovelled up off a pavement has haunted me since I saw it as a kid). By the 1980s, the reports were confined to smoke billowing from a building and phrases like ‘critically ill in hospital’, or ‘seriously injured’. If you don’t know what those phrases actually refer to, you have no understanding of what actually happened. It was much easier to sympathise with a cause when the reality of their actions was made abstract.
Richard Craven
1 month ago
I’m physically incapable of watching this stuff, but also think that Hamas-supporters should be made to.
It is important to put all the evidence of terrorist atrocities online. There are still many deniers of the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023, just as there are many deniers of the Holocaust.
In this matter, personal privacy is less important than justice and truth.
ralph bell
1 month ago
I once watch a beheading video back in the early 2000’s and it just made me physically and mentally sick and disturbed, I have not watched once since.
I can see the Pro Hamas deniers of atrocities still make excuses even after watching the reality…
Yeah, it’s really gross if they use a small knife and it takes a long time. Saudi Arabia uses swords, so it’s quick.
Jerry Carroll
1 month ago
Thank you for the hand-wringing. I played While My Guitar Gently Weeps as I read. These are hard times and weakness is exploited by evil people. The Russians who forced one of the terrorists to eat an ear know how to deal with such people. Yes, terrorize the terrorists is just the ticket.
I’m of two minds on that. It makes the Russians easier to hate if you are jihadist, but it shows that the Russians don’t care about Western opinion and will eliminate their enemies, unlike the West, where we are supposed to understand and love them.
I was utterly disgusted by the FSB, or whoever they were, not only behaving like orcs but being proud to release the footage. It makes me despair to think that Russia could be so uncivilised. I know Putrid is a vain and repulsive creature, but surely this can’t be acceptable to most Russians.
Paul T
1 month ago
No you shouldn’t watch them. They want you to watch them. Brutalising yourself to “bear witness” is false. You aren’t bearing witness, you are acting as a voyeur.
AC Harper
1 month ago
I would sooner the material be available than be censored. Once the Powers That Be deploy censorship there will be nothing but cat videos on social media.
I choose not to view such material but I like to be aware that it exists – just as I choose not to rubberneck at traffic accidents but do slow down in case there are stray pedestrians, animals, or wreckage in my lane.
But that again is part of the problem, not that it is censored, but that it is manipulated to show whayever the people releasing the films want them to show. Not the actual truth but the truth as they want everyone to believe it to be. Just look at Hamas/Iran propaganda… Footage that is 10 years old. Snips of a film made in the Lebanon to show how bad Israel is. Pictures of the dead in Syria. But it works, how many calls have there been for a ceasefire? And after the ceasefire, when does the next 7 Oct take place?
Tim Dilke
1 month ago
I have deliberately avoided watching ISIS decapitation films, I don’t think I would ever overcome the mental image. Yet, somehow, I’m ‘happy’ to watch Russian canon fodder looking up as a drone aims for them. I have tried to rationalise this. One a victim who didn’t deserve it, the other an aggressor who did? Both end the same way. An Islamist would feel that the individual murdered by ISIS deserved it. Both in the end remind me that I’m lucky to be able to sit in my comfortable little bubble of what remains of the ‘civilised’ world.
Jim M
1 month ago
In the United States, we do have a right to watch murder porn because we are not children and have the First Amendment. You are not my parent and I can watch what I want, in reality, not your world where you control everything on the internet.
Not knocking your first amendment, but if children are watching murder porn maybe keep them away from guns?
Victoria Cooper
30 days ago
There is no turning the clock back. This is a new world, strange, and we can but learn to deal with it. It will, and does, throw up many questions and finally if we must indulge in (justifiable for once) navel gazing, then so be it. We develop awareness of ourselves and grow as people. It will be a process not without pain and angst. It will take a long time for many people have more ground to cover than others.
Alan Gore
30 days ago
The problem with suppressing this stuff is that if you do, supporters of the terrorists will take it as an excuse to claim that the act didn’t happen in the first place. The “it never happened” claim has been made about the October 7 attack too, but you can’t refute footage of the event taken by the terrorists themselves.
Dumetrius
30 days ago
Speaking as someone who used to watch snuff videos and ch__ p__n for a living, my advice is that if you have a choice, and if it is a matter of idle curiosity or ‘recreation’, you don’t watch these kinds of thing.
Have never watched any of the snuff video’s. Course I’m not on social media. But you don’t have to watch the stuff. There is no reason to and plenty of reason not to. Why help terrorist agendas? And the regular media has their hand in the same market.
Quite so. The author says he’s susceptible to the stuff because he’s hooked on social media, without making the obvious inference. Come off X, tick tock etc, not just so as not to help terrorist agendas, but also for your own moral and mental welfare.
Where is his personal responsibility? Is he a sheep? Just because these things are available, doesnt mean, as an adult, you have to watch them.
Fully agree. But if you insist on living in a sewer, don’t be surprised if floods of effluent come your way
Simple: Choose not to watch. Be better than the loser barbarians that creat this trash. Just be better than these losers… (this is coming from someone who will be happy to learn that the Russians properly retaliated on these barbarians so long as they get only the actual guilty parties). I just won’t demean myself by watching. Though if it were my duty I would have no problem pulling the trigger on the perpetrators…
I’ve not watched any of it willingly, just the few clips of Nova that came on the news. Of course it’s brutalising – it’s meant to be. It’s a main tool of Hamas, whose ‘content creators’ even use actors.
I have a nephew who follows various ‘pro-Palestinian’ influencers on X. He’s so far down the rabbit hole it’s terrifying. He also manages to be a Putin fan-boy.
Social media feeds its users ‘more of the same’ so that, eventually, they are funnelled into cess pits of propaganda.
I gave this nephew one of my digital subscriptions and regularly link him to informative articles by recognised experts in geopolitics. He frequently reacts angrily after reading a few sentences – ‘that guy just can’t stand Putin’…
He links me to a post on X. I look up the source, and tell him he’s following Kremlin (or IS) propaganda.
It’s exhausting.
My condolences for your situation. Some kids are more susceptible to nonsense than others. Hopefully it’s a phase. If he’s somewhere between fourteen and twenty-five, it’s not surprising. Lots of kids have an idealistic phase where they become very passionate about some cause or another. They usually moderate as they get older and accumulate experience, realizing that the world isn’t black and white. I personally never had an idealistic phase. I was always the kid that had to question the why of everything and do things my own way. I was jaded and cynical by the time I was in high school. Trust me when I say that comes with it’s own set of problems as well.
I think it depends on context, not just of the videos/images and how they came to be made, but also the identity/personality of the viewer. Anecdotally, I know people who have changed their opinions when confronted with this kind of evidence. It can be epistemologically valuable for people who tend not to believe media and prefer to see raw evidence.
After all, we have Holocaust deniers. Actual footage of terror keeps it from being easily denied. When denial is attempted – see Hamas sympathizer comments – these people are outed as liars, not to be trusted.
I believe it is worthwhile to see an occasional terror incident to remind me of just how horrible the terrorists are. I can’t take watching this stuff too often, however, because it sickens me a bit each time.
But the problem seems to be the use of AI to show pretty children as the victims of Israel. The “sheep” who want a free Palestine do not seem intelligent enough to separate truth from fiction and believe that Hamas are the victims not the perpetrators.
I was thinking about the Holocaust as well. Back then, it was deemed critically important that the truth of the horrors be preserved so future generations would know what happened and it wouldn’t be lost in history. I think that’s the right idea. The best evidence, photos, videos or whatever, should be preserved and kept and taught. It shouldn’t be something we see often, lest we become too familiar, but suppressing it is a far greater risk, for the world needs to remember what happened. Each of us should know the depths of human depravity lest they fail to recognize it if they see it personally. It falls to each of us to properly moderate.
Do images of terrorism inspire terror, or just loathing for the perpetrators?
I recall how the BBC showed extremely graphic images of Northern Ireland in the 1970s (an image of somebody’s viscera being shovelled up off a pavement has haunted me since I saw it as a kid). By the 1980s, the reports were confined to smoke billowing from a building and phrases like ‘critically ill in hospital’, or ‘seriously injured’. If you don’t know what those phrases actually refer to, you have no understanding of what actually happened. It was much easier to sympathise with a cause when the reality of their actions was made abstract.
I’m physically incapable of watching this stuff, but also think that Hamas-supporters should be made to.
Should they be made to watch it even if they then enjoy it, or only if they don’t?
Robot chicken style.
It is important to put all the evidence of terrorist atrocities online. There are still many deniers of the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023, just as there are many deniers of the Holocaust.
In this matter, personal privacy is less important than justice and truth.
I once watch a beheading video back in the early 2000’s and it just made me physically and mentally sick and disturbed, I have not watched once since.
I can see the Pro Hamas deniers of atrocities still make excuses even after watching the reality…
Yeah, it’s really gross if they use a small knife and it takes a long time. Saudi Arabia uses swords, so it’s quick.
Thank you for the hand-wringing. I played While My Guitar Gently Weeps as I read. These are hard times and weakness is exploited by evil people. The Russians who forced one of the terrorists to eat an ear know how to deal with such people. Yes, terrorize the terrorists is just the ticket.
I’m of two minds on that. It makes the Russians easier to hate if you are jihadist, but it shows that the Russians don’t care about Western opinion and will eliminate their enemies, unlike the West, where we are supposed to understand and love them.
I was utterly disgusted by the FSB, or whoever they were, not only behaving like orcs but being proud to release the footage. It makes me despair to think that Russia could be so uncivilised. I know Putrid is a vain and repulsive creature, but surely this can’t be acceptable to most Russians.
No you shouldn’t watch them. They want you to watch them. Brutalising yourself to “bear witness” is false. You aren’t bearing witness, you are acting as a voyeur.
I would sooner the material be available than be censored. Once the Powers That Be deploy censorship there will be nothing but cat videos on social media.
I choose not to view such material but I like to be aware that it exists – just as I choose not to rubberneck at traffic accidents but do slow down in case there are stray pedestrians, animals, or wreckage in my lane.
But that again is part of the problem, not that it is censored, but that it is manipulated to show whayever the people releasing the films want them to show. Not the actual truth but the truth as they want everyone to believe it to be. Just look at Hamas/Iran propaganda… Footage that is 10 years old. Snips of a film made in the Lebanon to show how bad Israel is. Pictures of the dead in Syria. But it works, how many calls have there been for a ceasefire? And after the ceasefire, when does the next 7 Oct take place?
I have deliberately avoided watching ISIS decapitation films, I don’t think I would ever overcome the mental image. Yet, somehow, I’m ‘happy’ to watch Russian canon fodder looking up as a drone aims for them. I have tried to rationalise this. One a victim who didn’t deserve it, the other an aggressor who did? Both end the same way. An Islamist would feel that the individual murdered by ISIS deserved it. Both in the end remind me that I’m lucky to be able to sit in my comfortable little bubble of what remains of the ‘civilised’ world.
In the United States, we do have a right to watch murder porn because we are not children and have the First Amendment. You are not my parent and I can watch what I want, in reality, not your world where you control everything on the internet.
Not knocking your first amendment, but if children are watching murder porn maybe keep them away from guns?
There is no turning the clock back. This is a new world, strange, and we can but learn to deal with it. It will, and does, throw up many questions and finally if we must indulge in (justifiable for once) navel gazing, then so be it. We develop awareness of ourselves and grow as people. It will be a process not without pain and angst. It will take a long time for many people have more ground to cover than others.
The problem with suppressing this stuff is that if you do, supporters of the terrorists will take it as an excuse to claim that the act didn’t happen in the first place. The “it never happened” claim has been made about the October 7 attack too, but you can’t refute footage of the event taken by the terrorists themselves.
Speaking as someone who used to watch snuff videos and ch__ p__n for a living, my advice is that if you have a choice, and if it is a matter of idle curiosity or ‘recreation’, you don’t watch these kinds of thing.