The ability to record video at a moment’s notice has produced wonderful results for humanity. Being able to start recording an incident within seconds has helped people show clear evidence of crime, keep the police accountable, catch hilarious moments, and even to share wonderful acts of kindness. But like anything good, it comes with some negative consequences.
Many of the “good deed” videos are nothing more than setups by the recorders. I’m not saying they’re staged with actors, but I am saying that many are done purely for vanity. Why else record yourself doing the deed? While it is good to do help out others, it is truly perverted to use a misfortunate person as a tool to get some likes on Facebook.
A smart guy (Jesus) once said, “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”
A cell phone video recently released on Twitter showing an agitated, F-word-spewing woman kick and hit other passengers on a New York City train before screaming an ethnic slur shows a different problem with the video-happy culture. She was apparently upset that another woman was taking her spot on the crowded train, so she kicked and swung her keys and umbrella at others while shouting obscenities. Others tried to hold her back and tell her to calm down when it all “culminated”in the woman calling someone else a “Chink.”
Clearly, this woman’s behavior was terrible, but the reactions in the video and in the responses on Twitter were also horrendous.
The first thing to note is how many people on the train recoiled in horror when she shouted the ethnic slur compared to how they reacted to actual physical violence. Apparently, these people think that calling someone nasty word is much worse than physically assaulting someone with a weapon. But it only gets worse.
Let’s take a step back for a second. Does this woman appear to be acting reasonably? Without knowing anything about this woman, should we assume that she is motivated by hatred or is it more likely that she has some sort of mental problem that is causing her to act this way? It seems to me that the latter is almost certain to be true. But many people would rather believe that she’s evil and fully deserving of anything terrible that happens as a consequence.
Near the end of one of the videos, someone refers to her “white privilege.” If we want to talk about being privileged and having advantages in life as a result, then let’s talk about the “privilege” of having a healthy mental state. That’s nice to have, isn’t it?
The consensus among many people seems to be that she should suffer for her words and actions. Should she suffer more than she already does? Again, what she did was wrong, but how does looking for revenge help anyone in this situation? Perhaps we should try to develop some empathy for others and see how they react to that instead of the normal scorn. There is a place for disdain and disassociation for sure, but maybe we should reconsider it when we’re dealing with people with serious troubles.
The final straw for me was seeing the recorder of the video smugly posing for a picture showing how he detained the woman until the police came to take her. Despite all the wrong she did, I feel much worse for this woman than anyone else on the train that morning. I’m probably in the minority for feeling this way, but I understand. After all, we have victory laps to run over snagging a video of a racist.
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