Somehow
in my brain-dead, blog-post procrastinational state I found myself watching a
CNN documentary on the Rodney King beating.
Unfortunately, I made the tragic mistake of looking at the comments
sections after I finished watching the video.
The comments section on YouTube is a dark, dark, place, where the line
between “trolling” “joking” and “caring” is often difficult to draw. Somehow, when people sit in front of a
computer with complete and total anonymity they can say whatever they would like and not suffer a *single* consequence for
what they say. It’s bad enough that
people can just mess with each other to piss each other off, but the legit,
“debates” and “conversations” people have are absolutely insane:
From: “Rodney
King deserved his beatdown. However, the media concluded he dindu nuffin.”
To: “cnn fails to
acknowledge/ Rodney king was high on pcp and the cops yell repeatedly at king
to lay down. shame on the guy who recorded the video.. the media and king for
the countless lives lost during the riot. Then lie about it. shame shame shame.
black lives matter is a joke.”
To “why can't they just go
back home to Africa?” (you would think troll but then you look at
the feed below full of “the blacks have been in US for what 300-400
years? They can leave.”)
To “When you're a
convicted felon out on parole, high on weed and meth, and don't want to stop
because you know it will mean going back to prison, why not refuse to stop,
antagonize the police, and play the race card?”
To: “Rodney
King was a worthless thug.”
One guys
response to “The law should be the same for everybody, doesn't
matter if you are white, black, Chinese, Latinos or whatever. Rodney made a
mistake and the officers overreacted. We are all the same and we could suffer
the same any time. But the law enforcement should learn to be more respectful
and patient with people.” :
With: “Made
a mistake? Are you really that stupid or are you just trolling? Never mind, the
answer is obvious. When some other Rodney King type kills your family while
high, drunk, and running at 80 mph from the police, you shouldn't have a
problem with it. Remember he's just a poor victim who made a
"mistake". Ooops! 99% of the incident and Rodney's
"mistakes" took place before the camera was even turned on. You make
it sound like he was just standing on the street corner minding his own
business when and the police pulled up and started beating him. No, we are not
"all the same". Speak for yourself, dumbass. The vast majority of
people are smart enough to not do the things that got him into that situation
in the first place.”
To: “King
was a drug addict and a fiend. He got every bit of beating he deserved.”
It goes on and on.
I apologize for bringing all these
sickening comments up, but I think there is something really important in
bringing light to dark places. Many of
these people are totally serious and convinced in what they are saying and it
is absolutely sickening. They are those
“silent voters” in the election that may have perfectly “normal” lives where
they never voice any of their opinions anywhere except in the security of
anonymity online. How can one say these
things? You look at almost any video
even mildly related to politics and the comments are FULL of these exceedingly
long rants and arguments. Clearly these
people “care” in that they spend a long time drafting the comments. That’s what is most scary to me.
(Semi-unrelated: What scares me more than Trump is Trump’s supports: most of
what Trump says lacks meaning [only in so far is that everything he says is
said purely for the purpose of the reaction
it causes – he has changed about everything he has said already…] where his
supporters take everything he says with the most meaning possible.) These people don’t just subtly have racist
views but outwardly publicly expand upon their views without not even a
hesitation of the problematic nature of calling Rodney King a “thug”. How does
this happen? This toxic culture has
always been there but now is allowing people to unleash and justify and expand
their views. How can a true “conversation” occur? It is much easier to reply to a YouTube
comment slamming the other person than walk down the street to the old man with
the Trump sign in front of his house.
Another
big part of the problem is our society and media’s focus on the “little” things
regarding basically everything that ever happens ever in history. There is always some alternate point of view;
that’s what makes history so interesting!
But expanding and extrapolating off of every tiny detail while missing
the big-picture is entirely different. Powell’s attorney states, “King always
was the aggressor.” Powell states after
the not-guilty verdict, “I was just hoping for the right decision because I
know I am innocent and that was the verdict.”
OK. King was breaking the law. But
HOW can you possibly objectively state that he was the aggressor and say with a
completely straight, all-believing face that “I am innocent”?!? Those things should be COMPLETELY
unrelated. Yet, time and time again,
case after case, it is the same story of “aggression” of the tiny little things. Same goes for Trump and the modern day
conversations: the “he said she said he did this she did this” politics of
blame and scandal inspired by the media leads us to never actually search for
the truth.
Sorry
this is an absolute mess. I apologize
for all poorly worded/thought-out ideas that do not connect to each other.
But
– what do we do? As American society how
do we actually plan on communicating with each other? How can we have discussions with people that
can react completely differently to
the exact same video? Communication
seems so “easy” yet somehow so much more distant as we grow more polarized and
stuck in echo-chambers of the same news, ideas, politics.
Goodnight,
thoughts appreciated.
