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The other day an old navy shipmate said I had to see a video. In the past, nothing good could come of this. I don’t know why I thought this time would have been any different, but still I had to see. Needless to say, I was horrified at 2girls1cup.
This video has been floating around the internet for a few years and is horrific. It’s not a snuff film, but it is horrible, I’ll just leave it at that. It has become popular in that video web sites have videos of people watching it just to see their response. There are also songs that have been written and played on the internet about this video. I had never heard of this video until a few days ago, and I could have lived my whole life without knowing about it.
Still I saw it.
It makes me question why I saw it. Why is it that the more civilized we become, the closer together we become, the more we are fascinated with the disgusting and horrific? Are we really becoming more civilized or are we still animalistic in nature?
I asked this question first in the early 1990s. This was the area of the rise of the ‘modern primitive.’ Many people were getting tribal style tattoos. People were starting to get body piercing. People were starting to experiment with lost tribal customs. Not only were people starting to experiment with them, they were researching them, they were interested figuring out where to go next. Now these tribal patterns and piercing are considered normal.
Next in the late 1990s and early 2000s we saw the rise of internet video and ‘reality shows.’ Videos that showed us making fools of ourselves became the norm. Films such as Jackass and TV shows such as Survivor became very popular. These shows directly addressed our need for a more primitive lifestyle. People were stranded on a disserted island forced to use their whit and cunning to win. Shows like Jackass made us laugh at modern life while watching people take great risks.
How does this relate to the horrific video I saw? It seems that the more comfortable we become in life, the more we want to be horrified. The more we want to see people taking great risks with their health and safety, while we are safely behind our computer screen. We have found entertainment not only in sex, but in intimidation. There was nothing sexual in the video my friend had me watch, only intimidation and disgust.
It is not a new phenomenon. The Romans were very fascinated with the horrific, as was the Greeks. I have never came across anything that states if the lesser ‘civilized’ societies was fascinated with the horrific, sexual, or macabre. Were the Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, or Native African Tribes fascinated with the macabre? I don’t think so; these ancient people were concerned with survival, agriculture, hunting, and living. The Iroquois Indians were famous for their torture techniques, but I don’t believe they did this for the entertainment value.
It seems that the more leisure time civilized society has, the more we spend this leisure time pursuing less productive means. The more comfortable we become, the more we like to witness people being intimidated and embarrassed.
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