Why would a group of teenage girls attack one of their own and proudly videotape the crime? One expert said on television this morning that this collective psychopathology is related to the easy "star making" power of YouTube and My Space and the internet.
This is nonsense—the assertion that a form of media desensitizes people and turns them into stone cold predators is ridiculous. Americans invariably swallow this "media-centric" explanation every time we witness a scene of unexplainable violence. "It’s Elvis Presley’s hips!"; "It’s Moe, Curly, and Larry!"; "It’s MTV!"—and on and on.
People who video their own acts of cruelty are not emulating TV or cyberspace. They are simply vicious and heartless and proud of it. How do such people materialize?
Nature or Nurture? The crème filling in Twinkies?
Why did a whole nation follow Hitler? They didn’t have YouTube or junk food.
The answer to such questions invariably forces a return to the concept of stigma and its associated concept of "spoiled identity". The best book on this subject is the famous study by Erving Goffman.
Societies hand out permission to stigmatize certain groups of people. Today’s teens are more materialistic than their predecessors. Issues of identity and social value are prevalent. Who will be the chosen outsider?
As Goffman notes: the stigmatized individual is almost always a person with a disability.
Why?
Because social legitimacy depends on the act of casting an atypical person "out".
I don’t know enough about this current story, but I can safely say that the matter at hand is far more complex than the availability of YouTube. One could argue that YouTube helps us catch such predatory and atavistic people before they can do any further harm.
"I’m just sayin’"
S.K.
LINKS:
Planet of the Blind 