When did humanity lose all sense of decency?
I know the above statement is vague and I think I already know the answer to my question anyway but there is a reason why I am asking it to begin with. A truly horrible thing happened in my neighborhood a few days ago and I was pretty appalled by the general reaction of the public.
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It should be obvious, but these are not the people in question
I was walking to pick up a take away sandwich from this place in my neighborhood when I turned the corner and all of a sudden this semi-quiet street near my condo was just loaded with people and an ambulance. It was then that I noticed a body on the ground outside of another condo. It was covered with a blanket and their was police and medical people milling about. I didn't linger but it appears as though this person had either jumped or had fallen from a window several floors up. The person was clearly dead.
This is a tragedy in itself of course and it saddens me to think that if this person did in fact jump, that he or she felt as though they had no out but to kill themselves. However, what was also very tragic was the public's reaction to this. It was not a scene of sadness but one of morbid curiosity. I actually saw a few people taking selfies with the corpse and one person even tried to pull back the cover to have a look at the body. They were stopped by police and whistles were being blown to make the crowd back up.
What kind of world has this become where when seeing a tragic accident / suicide the first reaction of some people is to get it on their own social media? What ever happened to compassion and decency? These people were not concerned about what lead to this person being dead but instead they wanted to turn it into a moment for them to "shine" on social media.
I of course did not take a picture and got out of there as fast as I could. I also took a different path back to my condo after getting my sandwich.
Later on that day, word had spread about the incident and people were actually driving from their own homes to get a glimpse of the body or the aftermath. This is taking Stand by Me to another, much more crazy level.
I used to feel as though SE Asia wasn't as wrapped up in social media that the western world is but all of that got tossed out a few days ago. I see that my Vietnamese counterparts are just as wrapped up in the self-indulgent "hey look at me!" culture that has destroyed a lot of society.
I am mostly not a part of social media and things like this just make me feel even moreso as if I have made the correct choice in leaving it behind. I hope that anyone who did post pictures of the victim on their FB or IG get attacked by their friends for doing so. Humanity can suck sometimes and I truly feel as though social media has lead to the overall decay of the human experience.
Bro, people have been this way for forever. Social media being a thing has just amplified it and desensitized people even more making it worse. But, yeah. People are shit, they've always been shit. Even when I was a kid in the 90s, I saw a fair amount of times where people were drawn to and huddled at car accidents where someone was injured or died. Or, literally just anytime the cops were on scene dealing with something there's always a crowd being fascinated and entertained. The internet has warped society and cultures around the world in pretty fucked up ways for sure. It is both the greatest invention ever made, and the worst invention ever made.
All you can do is continue being a decent person and hope more people try to also do that.
I suppose you are correct but it just wasn't as noticeable until people were trying to actually get in the photo with a dead body like they are today. Rubber-necking was always popular and being a "lookie-loo" is nothing new.
I would have thought though still, that wanting to be in a picture with a corpse would still be something only a handful of people would be interested in but this mob was really focused on doing exactly that.
I can't imagine not having the internet. It's a massive part of all of our lives but the few days that I have accidentally left my phone at home and had no choice but to go without it I have ended up having a much better day.
I'm not at all surprised that a fair amount of people would try to do selfies with a body and shit. There were dedicated forums on sites and subreddits to looking at pictures of dead people, or watching people die that had hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Gore subreddits, all kinds of degenerate stuff out there with large communities where people are desensitized as fuck. Combine people who follow that kind of stuff with social media where shocking videos/photos get tons of interactions and they can get a dopamine rush from the attention, and baby you've got a weird fucking stew going.
On the other hand, the media also perpetuates that kind of shit. There was a story in my town a few months ago of someone dying on the sidewalk from ODing, body sat there for a bit and started building a small crowd. Someone called 911 eventually, but the news crews rolled up right at the same time as the police did and were trying to get video footage of the body before it was covered up. Other people in the crowd were also filming it to post to twitter and trying to grandstand about the mistreatment of the community and some other weird shit. People suck ass, man.
Sheesh. I would think that of all the various community guidelines that exist in the major social media that posting dead bodies at active crime scenes and what not would definitely be a violation. I've had nothing to do with those for a long time though so I guess I don't know what the hell is going on there.
I know what you mean about the media chasing ambulances though. Jake Gyllenhaal I think it was had a movie that was about exactly that. Don't recall the name of it though. It was worth seeing if you can hunt it down but knowing what I know about you and movies, you have probably already seen it.
So, reddit did eventually crack down and ban those subreddits. But, those places existed for about 2-3 years before they did so and grew to large numbers of subscribers. I think there's definitely policies in place for this kind of shit, but, the enforcement is another thing all together.
Also, yeah that movie is called Nightcrawler. I've seen it twice, he had a great performance of playing a sociopath in it for sure. Definitely a dark/grimey movie.