Unwise Words
The internet could be the tool of the single greatest social revolution in centuries. Free access to information could be the most effective social leveller yet conceived, and with the recent proliferation of free service providers, we could be on the cusp of a great and historically significant change in the way that valuable information is exchanged and cultural advantage gained from intellectual ownership. No longer will knowledge be the preserve of the educated, no longer will it be necessary for you to have an accurate understanding of libraries and indices in order to gain access to information. The intellectual emancipation of the masses could be at hand.
Alternatively it could just be that the single greatest tool for titillation and self-debasement ever conceived is rapidly becoming more and more prevalent in our world. Now it is easier than ever before to access pictures of women having sex with horses and other livestock, to see people being cut in half in hilarious fashions, to see horrific accidents where many people lost their lives all in the name of the harmless accumulation of data. Of course, it's really cool to be able to see dead bodies at www.celebritymorgue.com and its not sick and degrading to see pictures of the dead Lindbergh baby decomposing. As long as we pretend that it's witty and ironic to have a curiosity about death and sexual violence, then its okay to satiate the very real desire to observe that seems to be innate in most people obsessed with the darker side of the internet.
Sites like www.rotten.com might seem very amusing in their showcases of the deformed and unfortunate, but in the end, looking at sites like this is tantamount to a complete lack of compassion or any kind of decency. Its okay to laugh and say that these kind of criticisms are made purely from squeamishness, well fine, but honestly its time to pull your heads out of your arses and take note of the fact that by visiting these sites in your droves you are condoning the exploitation of individuals who have suffered terribly, and all for a double sophism, that firstly you aren't really sick and twisted, just healthily ironic, and that secondly to get this stuff off the net would be a terrible invasion of the forces of evil on the wonderful utopian internet. Fine, the net is a place where freedom of expression is an important right, but freedom of expression has nothing to do with exploiting images of degradation and death and violence, where often the victim/subject has no power to prevent the images from becoming part of the public domain.
In Oxford there are a lot of sick fucks. That is a fact that anyone could verify simply by wandering around an average college bar on an average Friday night. Obviously this is a completely subjective and personal opinion, but it is also an incontrovertible fact. It would be nice if it wasn't so, but sadly the evidence in computer rooms the length and breadth of Oxford suggests that in a university where most students pride themselves on their superior powers and tastes there are a significant minority who think that pictures of dead babies and snuff-mpegs are funny, rather than inhumane and degrading.
Perhaps it is stupid and reactionary to complain when people take advantage of a new medium to satisfy their desire for the undesirable, but frankly the internet seems to be for some people a far too easy route to cheap thrills at others' very real expense.
18th May 2000