Londyn Henry
Staff Writer
I am sure that everyone reading this has, at one point or another, encountered a video online of a fight or someone being harassed. In more serious cases, maybe it was a video of someone losing their life. This all may sound extreme, but it is our reality. And I want to know why it has become so normalized.
Now keep in mind, I am not talking about violence in movies and popular culture; that is an entirely different discussion. I know that I have watched my fair share of action movies and violent shows with plenty of gore. What I am talking about is far scarier, and that is the violence that captivates our society.
Living in the social media age, it is easy for a person to become accustomed to seeing violence online through short-form media clips. However, this has slowly desensitized us to brutality. While a tragedy that used to be reported on the news with limited footage would educate the masses on an incident, social media has allowed for mass viewership of raw footage of people being harassed, assaulted, or killed. Our minds have slowly become numb to what real tragedy and horror look like without us even recognizing the shift.
And it isn’t just social media that is doing this. A few weeks ago, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stated on national television that it was the intent of the federal government to livestream the public execution of a criminal that murdered multiple people in a hospital shooting. Now what that person did was inexcusable – evil – no doubt about it.
But in what world are we living in where the United States of America would livestream a man being put to death by firing squad? It feels far too dystopian.
The government, rightfully so, is not moving forward with the livestream. And yet, that comment was still made, by a high-ranking government official, mind you. People still went online to voice their excitement at watching a man being shot to death. Forget for a moment, that the execution will not be publicized. Think about the fact that our society has come to a point where watching a man die on national television is something of a spectacle, rather than a horrific use of public media.
These remarks resemble a growing idea that violence should be normalized. In fact, it is pushed further through the idea that wanting to see people beaten, assaulted, or killed is the “manly” thing to want; that you’re not a real man if you don’t want to see human suffering.
It reminds me of the idea of “bread and circuses.” Similar to the days of the Roman Empire and their displays of bloodshed in the Colosseum, those in power can simply distract the masses with superficial pleasures and the satisfaction for the lust for blood that seems to undercurrent a portion of its citizens.
Now we do need to recognize that this desire for human suffering has always been present. We are, after all, human. Part of being a member of the human race is greed, desire, and an instinct for violence. I mean, people have committed atrocities in the name of such things, and America is no stranger to an assassination.
