Stop This Mindless Violence!
There is an epidemic of violence going on right now. I'm not talking about the war in the Middle East or gang warfare, I'm talking about random people decided violence is the true path to happiness. They settle all conflicts by fighting, and they do everything they can to get a video of a fight up on YouTube. And they have to be stopped.
This is kind of a continuation of last week's article on the internet. Last week I pointed out that the internet really isn't here to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, there are people who not only take the internet way too seriously, but they go out of their way to be obnoxious in the name of gaining internet fame. This article is about those people.
It seems like the internet has seen a significant influx of beatdown videos lately. I'm sure it has something to do with the large amount of fight videos being placed on video websites. Kimbo Slice is a name that should be familiar to anyone who watches these videos; he started out as a backyard fighter and recently made his way in to the world of professional mixed martial arts.
But there's a difference between Kimbo and someone else entering in to an agreed upon fight, and a beatdown. The most infamous beatdown video we've had crammed down our throats is the Victoria Lindsay video, where she was attacked by six girls for something she posted on MySpace. The girls beat her so badly she temporarily lost sight in one eye and suffered permanent hearing loss in one ear, as well as a concussion. And why did they do this? So they could post the video on YouTube for laughs; I'm not making this up. They didn't have any remorse for what they'd done, and after they were arrested they were more concerned with whether they would be at cheerleading practice the next day than anything else.
All this over something posted on MySpace - the retarded stepchild of the internet, proof that just because something's popular doesn't mean it's good. Last I heard, all 8 people involved in the beating were being charged as adults, and face life in prison for their actions. They're just lucky Victoria Lindsay didn't happen to be black, or they would be facing hate crime charges too.
But at least Victoria Lindsay knew her attackers; there has also been a steady influx of videos of people being attacked purely at random. In the UK there's something called "Happy Slapping," where people videotape each other attacking random people and then running away giggling like a monkey who just discovered how to masturbate.
Sounds relatively harmless, right? Only problem is it sometimes ends with those involved going to prison for manslaughter or murder. In a recent case, the person videotaping a fatal slap attack has been charged with manslaughter as well, for standing by taping it instead of trying to stop it.
These are the type of people who make me embarassed to be a human. There is no excuse for randomly attacking people, and there is certainly no excuse for beating someone unconscious just so you can post it on the internet. These fuckers make me sick. And the worst part is I know the douches and turd sandwiches of the world are capable of so much worse; the Victoria Lindsay thing is just a drop in the bucket compared with how depraved people are capable of being.
Let me speak directly to these people now: what the fuck is wrong with you? If you honestly think beating people for no reason is acceptable behaviour, you have serious mental problems. Sooner or later you're going to hit the wrong person, and they're going to put you in the hospital or the morgue, and nobody will feel any sympathy for you at all because you absolutely deserved it. And the world will be a better place when that happens, because we'll have one less asshole to put up with.
Sadly, it isn't just kids who think violence is the answer for everything. Last week on my walk through the train station I saw a short wide black woman turn around and punch a guy square in the back as hard as she could for no apparent reason. The guy she punched did what I imagine most people would do: he stopped, turned around, stared at her a moment, and said "Are you fucking kidding me?"
A few moments later I overheard her side of the story: "That guy almost tore my shoulder off." So what this amounts to is that in the mass of people that always appears at the train station, with people going both directions and not having enough room to do so comfortably, he bumped her harder than she liked, and she thought the appropriate response was to punch him from behind. We're dealing with fucking geniuses here. The difference between those two hitting each other is that his was an accident, and hers was assault. She's lucky he didn't have a temper.
-- Sun Tzu
I don't know if this is happening because of the internet, or parental neglect, or if these kids are just psychotic. What I do know is the only time you should ever hit someone outside of an arranged fight is if they hit you or a loved one first (friends count). You should never start a fight, but if someone else starts one with you, you have every right to finish it, and you'd better make them regret picking that fight with you. When it comes to being a person worth knowing, the instant you throw an unprovoked punch you prove yourself unworthy.