TV's fetish for making the internet sound evil

Tuesday, April 15, 2008, 11:13 AM
Thoughts by John

The other evening I was, for some inexplicable reason -- I think there was some Barrack versus Hillary stuff on -- watching the NBC Nightly News. And they were discussing that incident down in Florida with the girls who filmed their rather tame beating up of another girl and were going to put it on YouTube. And of course, the news fixated on the internet aspect of it.

Am I the only person alive who thinks this is a covert marketing ploy? That the fine folk who bring us the Nightly News are trying to smear the internet?

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I think television is trying to put a hit out on the internet. Watch the cop shows now. Every police procedural on TV now runs like every third episode as some form of "Your kids will go on the internet and they will be raped and mutilated."

Now, let's start off with the easy points. First, if your kid is dumb enough to go trucking off with a stranger, it was probably going to happen even without teh internets. Second, blaming the internet as a whole is no more valid than blaming the telephones they all used to arrange this hootenanny. Third, constantly banging the drum of "the internet is evil, and it eats children, and who wants bad things to happen to children, what's wrong with you you cyber degenerate IMing social networking space aliens with no souls?!?!?!!" is an invitation to further hyperbole that makes TV look like what it already is: the medium of choice for old folks.

As to the hard points. Yes, the internet does enable some serious stupidity. But, it didn't make these kids stupid in the first place. Yes, the internet does entice idiotic behavior. But, should law enforcement be happy that the internet functions to help them?

Think about it. Prior to cheap camera phones and YouTube, the odds of LE actually coming across this kind of damning evidence was low. Nowadays, even if folks weren't deliberately taping it like these teens did, the odds are much higher that a concerned person near the incident might sneak a camera into the equation.

And understand, for as much as an open-and-shut case this is, that video is going to be the whole deal. How do you make an orderly defense against a video that proves premeditation, organization, forethought and an overt disregard for the painfully obvious fact that all of this is illegal? Without that video, the prosecutors have to go into court and make the case these teens were in a straight-headed mode when they beat this girl. With it, the prosecution merely says, "Look at the video. Who makes a video like this? This is just a softcore snuff video for teenage female shaming ritualists."

Of course they knew what they were doing. But, taking the time to organize lookouts and and film it escalates the entire argument. There is no room for misconstruing whether something got out of hand, who is lying, etc.

But, you don't hear anyone on television saying "thank you" to the internet for all that it brought to light.

Nope. The internet is evil. Look! Stupid teenagers, who prior to the internet were just languishing fields and eating grass, suddenly are stupider than ever!!!

Get it?

It's a friggin hit job by the TV industry to encourage people to think negatively about the web.

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