Social Experiments
Someone posted an album worth of pictures using these parts to create murder/suicide scenes and the one that got the most attention (which is no longer available BTW) was of a guy on his back with his head blown open and brain and blood strewn across the pavement. My initial response was "wow that's ballsy of the poster", then I proceeded to inspect the photo, to test my gross limits, and then to decide if it was real or not. This picture ended up on my news feed because a friend of mine commended on it. This is meaningful because the friend had just recently lived out a similar scene in person. Point being, I was VERY curious about what his response was. Would it be on the accuracy of the scene, would he be offended by it, would he be the only one able to see the flaws in it? But by the time i saw the picture it had been up for 23 minutes and had 9k responses. I tried, to slog through them and get to my friend's but when I got to 17min ago and was like 3k in, I gave up. But I still read a lot of those comments and I learned a lot. As one might imagine, there were a lot of comments with the goal of making him remove it from facebook, a lot of "man it's been a bad day for that guy", people trying to decide if it were real or not and others saying how cool it was (there were 1.5k shares).
Before I get into the meat of this post I'd like to honor one commenter with the Facebook Darwin Award
"Of course it's real, how can you photoshop that much detail"
First of all, I think you can photoshop all the detail you want... secondly there are way more ways to 'fake' things than photoshop... ok... rant over.
Now the comments that struck me the most were the ones telling him to remove it. I will admit I sort of wonder what the hell he was doing posting that to facebook too. So, since I had some agreement with that sentiment, I looked back in on myself to see where in there was a good reason not to post things like this. Well, I guess for starters it's gross.. but gross is so objective. There are a lot of things that all of humanity collectively agrees with being gross, namely mangled bodies, garbage and shit. However, these are all very natural things, people die/get diseased, garbage decays and takes care of itself... and well... people go to the bathroom if they're lucky. Point being, we MADE those things gross, so that can't be the reason to not post them. Maybe it's cause it's toying with/making light of human life by turning it into a spectacle. But wait... if the scene is real, and he's taking pictures of injustice that is actually rampant in the Philippines it's not like if he didn't take the picture the guy would get up and start waling again. The poster is spreading truth, and what kind of a person wants to be shielded from the truth?!?!?! It's one thing to be well aware that you can't handle the truth, but to take that as an excuse to collectively live a lie!!! Stop being the government.... Then, if the scene is fake, it's art... and it's his art so fuck off, if you don't like it, don't go to that museum. Photoshop boy may be an idiot, but he recognized the attention and understanding of detail that the poster had.
So I was pretty much set on the opinion of "people need to shut up, and leave everyone alone" when I gave up on the hunt for the secret comment. But before I started writing this, I figured I'd ask him... "try having the contents of a persons head flying at your face and then see if you post a picture like this again". I wasn't taking into account the reliving of the disintegration of human life that that would invoke in those who were there. I wouldn't wish that on him ever... fuck.. I've found myself a double standard or something. Now I'm a HUGE utilitarian, I would totally put baby in the corner forever in a dirty pit if it meant 7 billion other happy people, even if it meant I was the one in chains. So that would mean, fuck the 5% who's gotten blood on their hands, they shouldn't stop the masses' education in truth or art. But the argument against that is twofold. It would be making the 5% suffer for the 1 man's art, so that's giving the 1 guy undue power (unless you consider him representing everyone's freedom). THEN it's not like they're just 5% of people getting screwed out of a key to the city. It's the 5% that MADE the initial sacrifice that are AGAIN getting hurt for it.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
I dunno anymore ladies and gents.... fight amongst yourselves