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LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

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Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#331
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world is a scary and violent place. Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Counter-point; the world is mostly a neutral, even OK, place, with also violence in it. Our cognition is heavily biased towards saliencing and preserving the scary bits, and being exposed to a planet scale showcase of those bits does not necessarily make us wiser (e.g. better decision makers). At least for me personally it took a dec…

>it also had an inherent grounding in bare reality, compared to the narratively embellished one of mainstream media I disagree. It will only show one side of the bare reality, as the actions taken by more organized militaries will prevent their footage from ending up there. An Al Qaeda execution could end up on there, but the video of the execution of someone like Bin Laden rarely would.

I remember crying watching 9/11 happen via live stream. My daughter was just about to be born a couple of days later.

Then a war with pretense based on fake evidence. Then Libya, Iraq destroyed, another one in Syria raging until today. Muslims marginalized and placed on no-fly lists. Prisoners in Abu Ghraib tortured for the lulz. Drones operated from the comfort of a container in Utah by fat sweaty men eating donuts and killing civilians in Pakistan. A sign on the door of the container that reads "You are now leaving the United States of America" for improved cognitive dissonance. When they killed Bin Laden without a trial they gave a glimpse of their ugly soul to the world. The uniformed murderer who killed the "terrorist" (that the CIA had created decades earlier) still brags on twitter for having shot Osama in the face and it's not even hate speech according to the platform. It's OK to call for the killing of a "bad person" as long as we all agree they belong to the outgroup. The various administrations that until today operate black sites around the world (including Europe) proof the West is no better then Al Qaeda, or Russia or China. We just have better propaganda. The difference between a Russian, a Chinese and an American? The Russian and the Chinese have no illusion that their government is up to horrible shit and can't be trusted.

The foreign policy of US and EU is one disaster after another. Today they could all cash in at the "good-vibe bank" by NOT opposing waiving of patent protections for Covid19 vaccine. Instead of a war on , a war on Covid? What they do instead: https://twitter.com/astroehlein/status/1389822242134110209

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to watch the stuff on Ogrish back in the day,when we were teenagers. I couldn't say it desensitized me but made me realise I can't do shit about it. When one side of the planet is launching rockets to space and the other throwing stones on people because they looked at someone, there's no fixing of this only slow, agonising passing of time,with the hopes that it will eventually improve as people will be less…

Don't forget that the rocket side of the world does, in fact, also tend to throw some of those rockets at other people. That insulation you mention is heavily intentional. How many Americans would have continued to support the military actions in the Middle East if live videos of mangled bodies were being broadcast right into people's homes on a nightly basis? We in the West live in relative safety yet we refuse to r…

"Don't forget that the rocket side of the world does, in fact, also tend to throw some of those rockets at other people."

Oh absolutely! Rockets vs stones was a simplified example and I do agree that the world is much more complex than that.

I'm in Europe,so some of the issues are slightly different than those on the other side of the pond but there's also plenty underneath the surface.

Just yesterday was reading how many thousands of people died because a few countries decided to switch off radios that were supposed to capture distress calls from the boats with refuges in the sea. That's the ultimate stick fingers in your ears and do la la la kind of thing. And the list goes on,while we can sit in our safe homes thinking it's all out there,too far from me to care too much.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that’s life. I have 2 friends that died in a car accident. They were in their mid-20s. A split second accident. If they didn’t drive that night, they probably would never get as close to death as they did that night. But it happened and all their efforts were erased in a second. It’s not just war that causes that.

The difference is not only the scale of things but especially that a war is caused by people, on purpose, too often with the consent of their population. Car accidents are exactly that, accidents.

The vast majority of car "accidents" (more properly collisions) are the predictable result of policy choices.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#334
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Counter-point; the world is mostly a neutral, even OK, place It isn't, you are lucky to be in a privileged environment. And I don't even mean warzones. People who live paycheck-to-paycheck with family or medical issues wouldn't agree with you.

> People who live paycheck-to-paycheck with family or medical issues wouldn't agree with you. Considering they all go on living anyway, you’d say the good parts must outweigh the bad parts though.

"If you don't kill yourself it must not be so hard, stop complaining"

That's a weird lens to see the world through

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, yeah. Reddit killed the forum. Google and silo'd social media (FB, TikTom) are eating everything else. I just realized that I barely recognize the modern net vs. the one I grew up with.

You consider Reddit usable? I stopped using Reddit a few years ago, recently came back and tried both the website and (dark-pattern driven) mobile app. It's distinctly worse. Everything seems to have been re-engineered to drive "engagement" and/or mindless consumption.

> You consider Reddit usable?

Yeah, and so does millions of people. My account is over a decade old and I considered the "new reddit" unusable for all of 3 days, once you get used to how the modals work it's better, IMO. Not to mention the responsive layout which was atrocious on old reddit when I switched.

As for the app maybe the user acquisition techniques are annoying, but well inside the app I really have zero problem with it. And I used to be a diehard Alien Blue user, which is the gold standard.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#337
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. It is incredibly telling when people attempt to equilibrate "I'm anxious because I'm not sure if I'll be promoted to senior dev this quarter" to "I'm anxious because I cannot feed my family". As someone who has come from the latter circumstances to the former (through a lot of luck and sweat), I can tell you that having the same roof over my head for long periods of time and not having to carefully budget eve…

It’s pointing out that while objectively different, subjectively it’s often the same emotional weight - as counter intuitive as it may be - especially for those that don’t have prior experience or calibration in the objectively more serious environment. In my experience (as someone who grew up with extensive food insecurity, parents who barely kept the family afloat, etc.), it’s hard NOT to have the bar shift too if…

>It’s pointing out that while objectively different, subjectively it’s often the same emotional weight - as counter intuitive as it may be - especially for those that don’t have prior experience or calibration in the objectively more serious environment.

This seems like incredibly useful behavior. When things improve it allows us to tackle new problems with similar conviction as before. It also helps us not get completely overwhelmed when we end up in worse and worse situations.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#338
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this to mean "People aren't killing themselves, ergo everything must be pretty good for them generally"? Because, if that's what's meant here, I have to pretty vehemently disagree with that sentiment.

Yes, the premise of what you read is correct, but the conclusion you make seems different. People aren’t killing themselves, so even if their life sucks in many ways they must have found enough good things in the world to balance them out. The original premise somewhere further up was that poor people are never happy. I guess I should have used a less extreme point.

The self-preservation instinct and general human will to live is strong enough to keep you going even in the absence of "enough good things". But good things aren't the only thing that balances out bad things, as anyone who has seen authoritarianism first hand could tell you. Bad things squared can work just as well.

For example, most religions have a taboo on suicide. "Your life sucks? Well tough shit bucko, you choose the easy way out and you end up in hell where it's infinitely worse forever." Absurd as it may sound, people can live against their will, too.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#340
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War and terrorism was definitely made “more real” on LiveLeak than what you’d experience via the media or YouTube. I also found a real appreciation for other things: driving safely, worker protections, fire safety. These “boring” things take on more importance when you can see what happens when you ignore them. I don't think people should dwell on these morbid things. But seeing just one or two videos of, for example…

I saw someone killed on a lathe on liveleak and ever since that video I've taken tool safety EXTREMELY seriously. Like, I bought safety goggles and wear them for drilling random screws. I never even thought about it before that.

I am pretty sure I know the video you are talking about. It is hard to unsee that kind of thing.

I think it also played a role in my purchase and use of safety goggles.

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