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LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

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Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Showing these kind of things has always been against the ethical standards of journalism and exceptions to it used to be discussed intensively by editors - excluding the tabloid yellow press who make their living from this trash, of course. I guess some of the more recent American TV channels realized at some point, after they had gained fame for showing everything, that quotas are not everything and that relatives u…

You haven't explained why my view of the world should be decided by a bunch of rich corporate media guys. This filtering is exactly why newspapers and TV news are going away. The Internet can show you what actually happened not some filtered, preened, and positioned propaganda. It is not your responsibility to control other people's emotions and reactions to real life events.

Newspapers, TV and press agencies are going nowhere. Contrary you what you seem to believe, journalists are risking their lives daily to bring you the actual news and all the pictures you click on. So far, the Internet has not provided anything of value in that regard except copy & pasting info from the press and news agencies, most Internet sites do not employ any writers and correspondents who actually go abroad to get the news at all. "citizen journalists" have barely ever reported on anything of relevance, and even in the rare cases when they happened to be at the right place and time (some hurricans in the US, I guess) their "reporting" was by far more biased and way less informative than what you'd get from the news media.

You're completely deluded if you think opinion blogs and copy&paste news aggregation sites make you better informed. On the contrary, they are just a modern form of the "Chinese whispers" game.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Showing these kind of things has always been against the ethical standards of journalism and exceptions to it used to be discussed intensively by editors - excluding the tabloid yellow press who make their living from this trash, of course. I guess some of the more recent American TV channels realized at some point, after they had gained fame for showing everything, that quotas are not everything and that relatives u…

If those are the standards of ethics then ethicists are just a bunch of pretentious tossers who should be disregarded on principle. It fits with the absolute shit that comes out of the mouth of any "AI Ethicist" who takes any spurious correlation as creating robo-Hitler and clearly have Hollywood as the basis of their credentials. There is no "consent of awareness of events" and frankly that would be a nightmarishall…

> The whole fucking point of free speech is recognizing you don't get to decide how other people think!

Just like other media, Liveleaks could pretty much make you think anything they want you to think. The fact that they are more radical in their editorial decision (but they did not show everything either) does not mean that they influence people less. On the contrary, the more emotionally upsetting the content, the easier is to influence other people's thinking.

But I bet you're one of those guys who think everyone else is influenced except for you.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry to hear about your anxiety, it sounds terrible to have to process those feelings in such everyday situations. You shouldn’t feel bad about the way your mind has dealt with experiencing horrific videos, and how it has led to anxiety around death and risk assessment. It’s not normal to witness or experience such events, especially when they are concentrated and amplified on a site like LiveLeaks. We simply ha…

I'm not speaking hypothetically; I have spoken to many different therapists over the years. I attempted to seek out ones that would practice cognitive behavioral therapy, but because I guess I'm not good at finding them, I've had ones that tell me they'd rather do things their way. This is after having to switch from one to another and restart the relationship if it doesn't work out. I don't think I can recall any si…

I hear you on the frustration with finding a good therapist. I’ve heard it’s not abnormal to go through 5+ before you find one who you really like. By the way, a good strategy can be to set up initial consultations with multiple in near succession, so you don’t have to wait so long before you can evaluate the next person. If you land on someone you really like, cancel the other appts.

But like you say, COVID is also making the situation worse. For example, all psychotherapists affiliated with my PCP’s hospital are booked out 6+ months.

Therapy isn’t your only option, but it’s a great option if you find someone you enjoy working with. Like life changing great. You should also be upfront with them about what you’re looking for (sounds like you are). If they ignore you that’s a red flag. Your PCP might have a locator service as well, which can save you some hassle. If you know you want CBT, that should be a primary filter.

You can try to solve your issues on your own but it can take a lot more work. Eg you have to start by understanding what anxiety is, where it’s coming from (not the literal thoughts, but on a subconscious level), and work to confront your deeper underlying emotions. Meditation. Understanding yourself. Not impossible, but up hill, and not appropriate for all issues. You could be blind to a lot of issues that a third party can help you identify. Check out the book Self Analysis by Karen Horney (have not read, just seen as a recommendation).

While you continue your search, I can make a recommendation to you, it’s a YT channel: https://youtube.com/c/HealthyGamerGG

Ignore the “gamer” label. There’s a ton of good general advice on there. It’s an MD psychotherapist talking to primarily gamers and internet people about a wide selection of mental health topics. And then some more lecture style content. Ex search for anxiety. There’s a lot of advice on relieving symptoms, and understanding the mechanisms involved. He mixes standard western style approaches like psychotherapy with eastern style understanding of mind/body, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

And here’s a guide to therapy, I found it super helpful: https://youtu.be/YuLfFqPFrkc

Best of luck!

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#714
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My American school in the 1990s showed “Signal 30” in Driver’s Education class, a gruesome documentary film from the 60s showing deceased, disfigured victims in automobile accidents. Totally messed up to show kids that.

I think it is rather more messed up to give teens the power to create such horrors without first making them confront what exactly a car can do.

Teenagers are not emotionally developed enough to take lessons from movies like that. We laughed and then drove like assholes.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can. You can build up a tolerance, but most people are not mentally prepared to confront graphic violence . It takes months of hard training for soldiers to be prepared for confronting death. How is a school teacher going to feel after watching a video of a school shooting? Probably not very safe all of a sudden, and that could have long lasting scars even if it wasn't something they personally experienced.…

"most people are not mentally prepared to confront graphic violence" That's ludicrous. The apex predator on the planet that has violently gained control of the planet and killed trillions of other species including its own kind is not only mentally prepared to confront graphic violence, it is hardwired to conduct graphic violence on both a personal and global scale, things that were published on Liveleak. But don't b…

As an apex predator, we don't hunt other humans for food. I'm not sure why you think killing a human is the same as killing a chicken.

We are hardwired as social animals to not kill our same species. It's the exact opposite of what you suggest.

All research shows that humans don't like killing other people. That's what makes Serial Killers so interesting as a topic, because they don't have the instinct to not kill.

Losing your instinct to not kill takes a lot of conditioning.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baudrillard himself freely admitted at the time that his work was not meant to be taken as "political analysis," or even poetry. He is quoted as suggesting it be read as a SF novel, even :) I usually don't read French philosophers, but when I do, I simply take it as an elaborate language game. It's like enjoying any team sport, where when one players says, "we are going to crush them!", it's generally not an actual p…

I really love Baudrillard's writing and I'm particularly fond of America. But, I do take issue with this idea of "the larger context in which it took place" being the American media. When the context in which took place, is Saddam beginning his plan of conquering the middle east. He's not wrong about the American Media, but he really does go three essays about the gulf war, without mentioning Kuwait.

I made that phrase up, though Baudrillard would probably have somewhat agreed - at any rate, he was a cultural critic, so he wasn't interested in the geopolitical causes of events, and more the "semiotic" causes, so to speak. I can't think of the right word here, I am not a sociologist/media studies major, but it's something like, How do the cultural symbols prevalent at the time and the media in which they are expressed form our notion of "the thing that happened."

Yes, there is one way of answering the question, like you say, which is, Saddam invades Kuwait for oil, and the US has to take action to restore the geopolitical balance in the area. For a post-modern philosopher, the interesting tack is more like, "The recognition by the administration of the opportunity to turn this into a show worth watching about American heroism is what drove the sequence of events."

edit: grammar

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baudrillard himself freely admitted at the time that his work was not meant to be taken as "political analysis," or even poetry. He is quoted as suggesting it be read as a SF novel, even :) I usually don't read French philosophers, but when I do, I simply take it as an elaborate language game. It's like enjoying any team sport, where when one players says, "we are going to crush them!", it's generally not an actual p…

> Baudrillard himself freely admitted at the time that his work was not meant to be taken as "political analysis," or even poetry. He is quoted as suggesting it be read as a SF novel, even :) Sounds an awful lot like Alex Jones. "I'm just asking a question, talkin about hypotheticals". If you toss out a theory and then suggest it should be read as fiction then it's got about as much value to anyone as Klingon philoso…

I have read no Klingon philosophy but I have no doubt it's way more consistent than Continental philosophy - possibly because it describes a made-up world, which can be shaped to the philosophy, rather than the other way round.

With all continental philosophy, my general attitude is that the best approach is to see it as an attempt to narrate the human condition rather than to theorize about it, in the strict sense. And yes, it's impossible to know which mode a particular Continental philosopher is in. As in, just how seriously is this dude taking himself? (it's mostly dudes.) We can tell from accounts of their lives that they were pretty serious in their pursuits of course - maybe not the French as much, certainly the Germans and Scandinavians.

Comparing this philosophy to demagoguery is a bit of a cheap insult mostly because the Continental philosophers weren't trying to rile the masses up. Maybe Nietzsche made the most serious attempt at doing so, though I think most of his work gained prominence posthumously.

I think the comparison to sci-fi is apt - SF writers perhaps are the most self conscious about the metaphysical implications of their subject matter or storylines, out of all writers, I'd say. But seeing as so much of that era was really a response to the vacuum left by the decline in Christianity's influence, it couldn't help being somewhat bizarre and self-contradictory. It's a tough act to follow if you aren't going to let yourself rely on divine intervention, and have to be the bastard child of Enlightenment thought as well as a millennia of Christian metaphysics. So of course, so much of it sounds like some kooky alien story.

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