Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

techstartups.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 717 posts

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#371

Post by andromeduck »

dingoegret wrote: post #226
spoonjim wrote: post #55

Four LiveLeak videos will always stay in my head. WARNING: even in text this stuff is horrifying. Stop reading if you don’t want to have nightmares. 1) an ISIS video where a 7 year old kid or so goes through a building where a bunch of hostages are tied up. He shoots them dead in succession. He looks like he’s about to cry throughout the whole video — but he doesn’t. 2) a completely covered up woman(?) in Iran is exe…

For me it was 1) gruesome abortions conducted in some western country 2) Denmark a man (immigrant?) was immolated outside his home by a crowd. They are shouting 3) man is hacked by a machete in the UK by some edl member 4) America a guy was run over by a truck and gets stuck on the wheels, still alive. crowd just blankly watches. truck begins to move

The guy who got cut in half on a train platform.

lathes, printing presses, other industrial incidents.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#372

Post by capableweb »

dmos62 wrote: post #369
causality0 wrote: post #69

I do hope you also understand our reasons I mean, I'd like to try, except he didn't actually give us any of those reasons. Rest in peace, LiveLeak. You were a beacon of reality that shone through the propaganda, the bullshit, and the sugar-coating. Your demise means that people who want to see something like a shooting that's been removed from mainstream platforms will be forced to visit darker corners of the interne…

> Now if someone asks me "Hey where can I go see that thing that was taken off of Youtube" I don't have a ready answer that isn't an alt-right cesspool. You complain about some sites being alt-right cesspools, as if being a cesspool is not bad on its own.

Of course "cesspool" is bad, "alt-right cesspool" is the same amount of badness.

The reason you don't see a lot of "alt-left cesspool"s is because usually those people don't need to hide on alternative social media, as the mainstream ones are fine with alt-left people. Alt-right are the ones who are currently being fired if their opinion are being shared publicly.

Now I'm neither of those, and have no fists in the fight at all, but I also realize what the current climate is like, even though I'm hoping no one wins and eventually we can all be friends again.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#373

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

Bancakes wrote: post #190
spoonjim wrote: post #55

Four LiveLeak videos will always stay in my head. WARNING: even in text this stuff is horrifying. Stop reading if you don’t want to have nightmares. 1) an ISIS video where a 7 year old kid or so goes through a building where a bunch of hostages are tied up. He shoots them dead in succession. He looks like he’s about to cry throughout the whole video — but he doesn’t. 2) a completely covered up woman(?) in Iran is exe…

For me, it was a Kurdish soldier on the ground getting shot in the head with a AK from point blank. There were no bits and fragments flying around, his skull just broke apart and his head flattened uncannily like a squished rubber toy and his eyes popped out. In another video, a ISIS (?) soldier gets shot in the head, and falls to the ground. We see him struggling to get up while a viscous red liquid pours out the si…

Those types of videos gave me a new fear. I've never been one to fear death, but now I fear being in severe agony where I question why I'm not dead and wish I was.

The worst I saw was one where they gouged a guy's eyes out, skinned his face, and cut off his hands and feet, and he was still alive and seemed conscious and aware.

Then there's the infamous 2-guys-1-hammer video.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#375

Post by lotsofpulp »

spoonjim wrote: post #294
causality0 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LiveLeak definitely had the ability to change you. There was a video from a dashcam where a couple is driving down a road, and a brick or rock falls off a truck driving the opposite way. It bounces on the road before slamming through the windshield and instantly killing the wife sitting in the passenger seat. Whenever I feel like a member of my family has gotten on my last nerve, pushed me to my limit, I think of the…

I know that video and I think it’s his mother.

If I recall, you hear a baby’s cry at the end, so presumably it was the driver’s wife and mother of the baby.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#376

Post by GordonS »

nickysielicki wrote: post #17

The world is a scary and violent place. Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Until you see the actual violence and gore, it doesn't mean anything, it's just empty words. I didn't care at all about wars in the middle east until I saw the reality on Liveleak. Seeing dead children and people with their legs blown off made all the commentary on CNN and Fox seem so understated. A lot is said about desensitization as…

As a kid, I always wanted to be a pilot in the British airforce. I'd grown up on games like F19 Stealth Fighter, and I thought it would be the coolest thing in the world to fly planes like that and drop bombs on the bad guys.

I think it was during the gulf war in 1991, when I a TV news piece, shot by a war journalist. He was filming from inside a helicopter, and there was a US gunner using a fixed gun (50-cal?), gunning down enemy forces, shooting them in the back as they ran away.

I was horrified - this was not what I thought war was. My silly ideals of valour and honour, were not real.

As I grew older I saw and came to learn of yet more horrors - US and British bombs dropped on schools and residential blocks. Children blown to pieces. The US and UK selling arms to anyone with the money. And going back further, the indiscriminate use of cluster bombs during the Vietnam war.

One of the worst aspects, was how the military often seemed to try to bury their mistakes. When they didn't, all we got was platitudes until they did it again. Perhaps the worst of all, was seeing how everyone else seemed to maintain the "them and us" stance - we were the good guys, and all those brown people were the bad guys. Very few cared one iota if a bomb was dropped on a school in the Middle East or Pakistan. I was disgusted by the apathy around me.

And so, my dream became a nightmare, and I, thankfully, took a different path. I largely have journalism and truth seekers to thank for that.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#378

Post by StanislavPetrov »

Barrin92 wrote: post #42
nickysielicki wrote: post #17

The world is a scary and violent place. Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Until you see the actual violence and gore, it doesn't mean anything, it's just empty words. I didn't care at all about wars in the middle east until I saw the reality on Liveleak. Seeing dead children and people with their legs blown off made all the commentary on CNN and Fox seem so understated. A lot is said about desensitization as…

Liveleak doesn't portray the reality of war because it shows you some beheading. Voyeurism and gore are not the same as genuine insight into what scary and violent places are actually like. It's worth reading Baudrillard's ' The Gulf War Did Not Take Place ' on how media representation, and stylized, selective footage is used to distort. You didn't get to know the 'reality' of war, but the hyper-reality of it. If you…

>Liveleak doesn't portray the reality of war because it shows you some beheading.

What it did is give people a glimpse at the horrible results of war - a glimpse that (before sites like liveleak) most people in the USA had not been allowed to see on the "news" since the Vietnam war. Its one thing to hear a throwaway line on the evening news about more air strikes in a far off country and quite another thing to see the results of an air strike. To see the bodies ripped and torn and the lives that are destroyed. Binging on these sort of horrible images is not useful or healthy but everyone should be exposed to them at least once to understand what the consequences of war look like.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#379

Post by agilob »

imranq wrote: post #216

Why is there so much fetishization of violent content in the comments? Sure maybe liveleak provided some footage you couldn't get on youtube and that is indeed a loss, but to think that the violence you see represents the truth is just as bad as denying that any bad happens in the world. The world is far larger than any one mind can handle. I wouldn't judge it from a few videos taken out of context. The world can be…

Watching a compilation of car accidents from dashcams and cctv made me treat my car and motorcycle like a 2 tonnes weapon not a transport method where I can text, chat and fight search results on youtube. Don't accelerate on roundabout or that guy on a sidewalk might lose his hips with legs. Nope, I don't want to see that video again, but you should.

Me, and others, see such change of perspective a good thing, no other medium can provide. Many people here don't see that a positive fetish, but a warning. I watched that video like 14 years ago, and images are still in my head.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#380

Post by b0rsuk »

Bancakes wrote: post #190
spoonjim wrote: post #55

Four LiveLeak videos will always stay in my head. WARNING: even in text this stuff is horrifying. Stop reading if you don’t want to have nightmares. 1) an ISIS video where a 7 year old kid or so goes through a building where a bunch of hostages are tied up. He shoots them dead in succession. He looks like he’s about to cry throughout the whole video — but he doesn’t. 2) a completely covered up woman(?) in Iran is exe…

For me, it was a Kurdish soldier on the ground getting shot in the head with a AK from point blank. There were no bits and fragments flying around, his skull just broke apart and his head flattened uncannily like a squished rubber toy and his eyes popped out. In another video, a ISIS (?) soldier gets shot in the head, and falls to the ground. We see him struggling to get up while a viscous red liquid pours out the si…

I think they do it for lower age ratings. In video games, people just drop and stop moving, and often there's even no blood. No visible pain or struggle. I think it desensitizes people to violence.

In reality, after a large scale battle the field is littered with people writhing in agony. It commonly takes several hours for a wounded person to die. Several hours of pain, as you slowly realize no one is going to help you and you're not going to make it.

Post reply on HN