There are a variety of compilation videos like this one which highlight video clips of ordinary people getting hurt. The concept is pretty much based around laughing at other people’s pain, which has been a long-standing concept in comedy it’s true, although these videos are often depicting real people who are in all likely-hood injuring themselves. This is quite different than laughing at Steve Martin performing self-degrading comedy in a movie. This is laughing at real people’s pain.

            The fact that people of all ages, including children, whose susceptible minds are undoubtedly the target of this sort of material, leads to a society of civilians laughing at each other’s pain, disconnected from  reality and a video on youtube. “Kids are now attacking strangers in the street; bashing them, kicking them in the head and then filming it an putting it on YouTube for a bit of a laugh.”  This quote was taken from a website that includes a link to yet another violent YouTube video. Indeed there is an effect taking place.

            This video I am writing about is sadly only the tip of ice-burg; With all sorts of other sites popping up depicting heinous sexual acts (Two Girls One Cup), and other more disturbing scenes of real-life brutality (Be-heading/Castration Videos). All of these sorts of deranged videos are now readily available to anyone who bothers to look.  A frightening thought when one realizes that YouTube and the internet video boom is relatively new still. How far will we let it slide before our society is bathing in repulsive media?

Sources: Violent Videos on YouTube: Has it Gone too Far?

http://thedailymind.com/deeper-thinking/violent-videos-on-youtube-has-it-gone-too-far/

           

People have always been able to talk about religion wherever and to who ever they want, and since the internet it ”has indeed transformed religious communication by making possible a far greater array of visual and aural symbols than was possible in the early days…” and since these visual images, people have been uploading many videos to communicate their thoughts and views on certain events, an example of this would be this video, called ‘Monkeys Talk about Religion.’  Where someone created a video about their views of religion using a satirical animation to grab the audience’s attention and give a different twist. 

The internet is a vast medium that people can use to express their thoughts and feelings on whatever they want, but what is so important about this technological advancement is that “the internet does not generate religion, only people do.”  The public are now the ones putting up their own content and for the first time we do not have to watch whatever is played on the television.  This does cause some controversy however, since the public are able to upload anything they want onot the computer, there is now inappropriate content involving religion and there has now been a term coined “cyber-religion” which “refers to the presence of religious organizations and religious activities in cyberspace.”  This has now become a problem because the more religion is talked about on the internet in negative, satirical ways, the more it will impede the way religion used to be; we will lose the value and sacredness that religion once had as we continue to destroy the historical meanings. 

Sources:  Morten T. Hojsgaard and Margit Warburg.  Religion and Cyberspace. Routledge 2005.

           

          On YouTube people are displaying more and more personal, private and humiliating things, such as the video viewed above.  The woman is obviously taping herself stretching, and knows that it is humiliating as she is an obese woman; exposing her stomach, yet still she posts it for the world to see.  Because of YouTube, people are doing more and more humiliating things just to get noticed and to shock viewers. It is a sad reality when things such as this are used to grab people’s attention; that someone has to lower themselves to such a level as this in order to feel somewhat accepted. 

The internet is being transformed by us since we are now the ones controlling the content of the internet as opposed to others choosing it.  Through mediums such as the television, the audience have always had the content of what they are going to watch and when they will watch it chosen for them.  This made our society highly collective as we would all be viewing the same shows and then be talking about it together the next day.  However, now with the internet and sites such as YouTube, the audience can now watch whatever they want whenever they want, creating a highly fragmented society.  On the online article called Cinema Journal,  it states that “On user-generated sites, as the name implies, the public uploads content…, whereas in traditional publishing… the professionals chose and control the content.”  Therefore we are now getting more of the everyday content that we normally never see at anytime, anywhere.  This content is being captured by people who happen to be somewhere at a specific place at a specific time, who happen to have a device to record it.

The public will continue to upload humiliating videos as a way to receive attention from people around the world and there is no one that will be able to stop this from happening as the internet is an uncontrolled medium.  As these videos continue to be posted and viewed, the more and more the public will desire the shock value of them which will ultimatley lead to videos that contain the extreme images, which is a scary thought because it is hard to think what kind of harsher images can you create in order to keep the shock value of the audience at ease?

Sources: Peter Lehman. Cinema Journal.  University of Texas Press.  Summer 2007.

           

        Through the use of YouTube, people can express their feelings on current events and issues such as this video with Chris Brown who was accused of beating up his girlfriend Rihanna.  YouTube is a site where people are coming together across space and time to globally connect with one another to feel a sense of association.  Through this site, the average person is able to say whatever they are thinking about any current event going on in the world, such as politics, war, or simply just celebrity gossip. 

This is a breakthrough in technology because for the first time, with this new and upcoming phenomenon people are able to see the other person who is expressing these ideas, this is important because “providing such facial and bodily information is likely to reduce undesirable online conflict… [this] conflict will be reduced when viewers can see that a real person is behind the video that are created and posted on the site.”  There will be less confusion and misunderstanding between the people sharing their thoughts and ideas as they are able to see how the other person is reacting to what they are saying. 

Throughout history we have always found ways to communicate our ideas with others, however, through the use of sites such as YouTube, we are now able to produce mass communication to people around the globe and even better yet, these people are able to fully see the person expressing these ideas, and are therefore able to grasp their concept much easier as it is as if they were having a conversation face to face. 

Sources: Patricia G. Lange.  Commenting on Comments: Investigating Responses to Antagonism on YouTube.  Annenberg Center For Communicating.  Tampa Florida, March 31, 2007.

           

          Through YouTube many users are taking the websites advantages of publicity and using their own creative ideas to become famous through it.  One example would be the boy in this video named Phil Defranco who created his own show on YouTube and posts new videos on a regular basis since 2006.  His show is well-known and viewed by many of the users of YouTube which is very impressive as he expresses all his own comedic thoughts and ideas.  He is now so well known that he has his own Wikipedia page that fans can check out.  Phil is only one of the many people on YouTube that have become famous do to their ideas and creativity; many people have captured a hilarious, embarrassing once in a life time moment they have posted and become famous due to it. 

            This is almost a sad reality because users on this site are becoming famous for things that would have never even been talked about thirty years ago.  It’s sad because people are carrying around cameras everywhere they go just in case someone does something absurd or outrageous that they can then take and post as their own video, perhaps without the actual person in the video ever knowing it and displaying it to a world-wide audience.  However, not all the producers and users of facebook take humiliating videos of others and post it, many of them use their talents, wits, and comedic approaches in order to get noticed; such as the famous Phil Defranco.  YouTube, therefore has become a great site of free expression where people can post anything they want for others to view and comment on, and pick and chose who to agree with or disagree. 

This video was taken by the parents of these children; like many other YouTube videos, the child is unaware of what is going on when his or her parents post their video.  It is unfair to these children that are displayed on YouTube because they have no say in the matter as they are too young to understand.  It could become detrimental to these kids in later years of life as there is a huge concern of privacy over the internet and as they grow up they would only be known as “the kid on YouTube.”  And for what, so the parents can see how many hits their video gets over the other children’s parents? I think that it is selfish and wrong to be posting these videos of your children when they are at such a young age because even though it seems harmless enough, it could affect their lives in a serious way. 

Although these videos are quite humorous to watch, in the legal and copyright laws it states that “children under 13 may not use the site, while children 13-17 may participate with parental permission.”  If there are these laws which are created to make a low participation rate (obviously in order to protect children’s safety), than why is it acceptable for the parents to post videos of these young children?  It is senseless and irresponsible, there are clearly laws against this for a specific reason.  I think that parents should think twice about displaying their children on the World Wide Web for all to see, for many obvious reasons and if this continues to happen, the laws should be changed. 

Sources: Melisa Cefkin and Ken Anderson.  Epic 2007: Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference.  October 3-6, 2007. American Anthropological Association, Keystone CO, USA.   

           

Lately I have noticed an increase in Attention Deficit Disorder within children, there has also been studies that concluded that ADD makes up “as much of 50 percent of child psychiatry clinic populations.”  It has always been and continues to be “a consistent problem that may change its manifestation with development from preschool through adult life.  It interferes with many areas of normal development and functioning in a child’s life.”  This becomes an even greater problem in our society today do to the over-exposure of media. 

In the online article ‘Annual Progress in Child Psychiatry and Child Development,’ it states that there are many factors that affect and add to ADD but “most likely there is an interplay of both psychosocial and biological factors that may lead to a final common pathway of the syndrome of ADD.”  These biological factors being mainly the mass media we are all exposed to at earlier and earlier ages. 

Children are being exposed to mass media at an early age and are unable to inundate the information as the messages and images are being received too fast.  When a child is born their neurological pathways are all open and if they are not exposed to certain things, these pathways are able to close down and focus on the important things.  However when these children are watching TV, the images they are viewing are being received too fast for them and they are unable to narrow their focus, and their attention becomes focused on too many things at once creating this deficit disorder.  Therefore, there are both positive and negative effects that the media has on us, however, it is up to us to better understand these effects before they become detrimental to our well-being. 

Sources: Margret E. Hertzig and Ellen A. Farber. Annual Progress in Child Psychiatry and Child Development, 1997

           

Our society today is persuaded by capitalism to buy in the market and they do this through the largest entity they can; mass media.  We see it everywhere, on billboards, in commercials on TV, and even on the radio; what we should be buying in order to “fulfill” our lives.  Our society has become so obsessed with name brands in fashion that we will pay extreme amounts simply to wear the label.  This is outrageous because we could be getting the same clothes made in the same sweat shop for a lot cheaper, minus the label. 

People are given a wide variety of options to choose from and when they finally have made their decision over what brand they will choose they think that just because they chose the brand name, their product is of higher value; this however is false. People have perceived value for name brand products because “value is an abstract concept that is highly interrelated and frequently confused with the concepts of quality, benefits, and price.” It is through the messages that our society conveys, (that we should be buying these labels) that we actually think they will better the overall value of our life.  It is stated in the online article called ‘Effects of Price, Brand, and Store Information on Buyers’ Product Evaluations’ that the research claims that “favourable brand and store information positively influenced perceptions of quality and value, and subjects’ willingness to buy.”  This displays our societies vulnerablility to brand name items and just goes to show that the way messages are conveyed can have huge effects on a population. 

Sources: William B. Dodds, Kent B. Monroe and Dhruv Grewal. ‘Effects of Price, Brand, and Store Information on Buyers’ Product Evaluations’. Journal of Marketing Research, August 1991.

With technology these days nothing is left up the imagination and everything about everyone is known.  If you are a user of Facebook, than you know that everything about you is displayed, even if it’s something you might not particularly want displayed on the World Wide Web.  Through Facebook if we are interested in someone we can see what they were like before we knew them and in a sense, get to know them through this way (or in Facebook terms “creep”), and if you pursue this relationship you might change your ‘status’ so that everyone else knows who you are currently seeing. This is unfortunate because nothing is kept private anymore; this is especially hard for those who want to ‘start over’.  They are unable to have this new start because wherever they go, there new friends can simply go online and a whole list of information pops up onto their screen.   

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerburg in 2004 then a Harvard graduate.  There are many different users on this and many of them using it for different purposes.  There are “university administrators [who] are using Facebook for disciplinary purposes, firms [who] are using it for marketing purposes, and intruders [who] are exploiting security holes.”  However, all of these users have one thing in common; all their privacy can be being obstructed quite easily.  In one research study they found that there are serious flaws in Facebook’s system and that the “privacy on Facebook is undermined by three principal factors: users disclose too much, Facebook does not take adequate steps to protect user privacy, and third parties are actively seeking out end-user information using Facebook.” 

On Facebook users have a “profile” where they can upload videos and photos, give their contact information, and tastes in movies or songs.  It shows the users list of friends and their friends list of friends, and anyone can join any group.  Therefore, this it makes life a lot easier for those who want to hack into people’s networks and steal information, or their identity.  This is where the problem of privacy comes into play and the users’ privacy is breached. This website it great for keeping up with your friends and family, however with your privacy being ubstructed, should this site be allowed to stay up and running? Personally as a facebook user myself, it wouldn’t effect my life to a great extent if this site was to be taken down for my own protection, but the choice is ultimatley left up to the other users and whether or not they mind having their privacy violated.   

Sources: Harvey Jones, and José Hiram Soltren. Facebook: Threats to Privacy. December 14, 2005.  http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/student-papers/fall05-papers/facebook.pdf

On the internet we are able to have freedom of expression, and through this expression, viewers are able to interpret these ideas in any way they feel.  This affects large corporations in a negative way because artists on the net take private media culture and mix it in an artistic way to create new meaning that shows the truth of the corporations’.  We are a highly collected society due to capitalism, yet through the internet we are able to shift the fame to the individuals who use this power to create new meanings for others that they might not have seen otherwise.  Through these interpretations we subvert meanings in popular and corporate culture, which gives the public more power to be un-persuaded by their messages. 

People are persuaded by the meaning and interpretation of the message; if there are people showing negative re-interpretations of the corporations image, it will persuade people’s feelings on it.  In the article Basic Dimensions of the Corporate Image, it states that “the image of the manufacturer affect’s peoples selection or rejection of his products.  Whether sales are enhanced more by a favourable image than they are impended by a negative image is a subject for conjecture, although there are reasonable grounds for believing the negative image to be more potent determinant of consumers’ choice.”  Sometimes we are unable to see the negativity attatched to an image until it is shown in a different way, when this happens, we usually keep that negative image in our mind over the positive one we used to hold and dub the corporation as ‘bad’ or ‘evil’.   

People attribute humanistic traits to corporations so that they can attribute different characteristics to them.  It is “the sum total of their perceptions of the corporations’ personality characteristics [that] we refer to as the corporate image.”  When the corporate image is disfigured by the artists’ on the internet, it is likely that they will never get their “pure” image back.  The more these corporations try to stop this from happening, the more out of their hands it gets.  As the artists’ use the corporations outrage to create a newer, more negative image for the public to interpret. 

Sources: Aaron J. Spector. Basic Dimensions of the Corporate Image. October 1959.