Web 2.0 – The Royal Albert Hall for extremist ideas

Recent mass shootings in Virginia Tech USA, and just yesterday in the sleepy village of Jokela, Finland have highlighted to me the clear dangers of the increasing power of web 2.0 phenomena such as blogs, social networking spheres and websites such as YouTube to enable people to voice an outrageous and often extremely radical viewpoint. But perhaps more alarmingly is the capacity such websites have to enable individuals to project their dangerous viewpoints to a wider public, and most frequently to an open-minded and highly impressionable youth (as, after all, these are the most common users of such sites as MySpace and YouTube).
For those unaware of the most recent horror: the 18-year old pupil Pekka-Erik Auvinen recently shot dead 8 people at his high school, before turning the gun on himself. Previously he had posted a video on YouTube where he described the warped logic behind his killings as some attempt to redefine the process of natural selection. But in this video he detailed his “philosophy” behind the massacre and the plan of what he was intending to do, even labelling the video ‘The Jokela High School Massacre’ and ending with an image of him pointing his .22 calibre handgun at the camera.
6 months earlier a similar incident happened when 33 students were shot dead at Virginia Tech University in the US, by a killer who once again had previously posted radical videos on YouTube and even sent a video to a main news channel detailing the massacre he intended to carry out.
The question that immediately springs to my mind is whether websites such as these, rather than encouraging an innocent form of free journalism, in reality provide the perfect canvas for people to put forward radical, often racist, viewpoints and misguidedly empower them to feel celebrity status and a justification for their actions. You only have to trawl through a page of comments on almost any video on YouTube and you will immediately see offensive comments, either about the video content or about other fellow commentators, in some instances it is possible to follow a whole thread of an argument between two users that frequently strays into the realm of racial harassment. This is because the users are placed in a bizarre position of absolute anonymity while at the same time a form of celebrity status, as their pseudonym/alias can become known across the whole website. There is a strong feeling of power that is granted when you know people are listening to you and responding, and where you are given as good as free reign to voice whatever opinion you choose. You may well argue that they monitor the website regularly, attempting to stamp out such instances of abuse but it is obviously an impossible task given the rate of video-loading on such websites, it is impossible for the administrators to keep track of all that is going on across their website.
The same applies for blogs (perhaps it may seem hypocritical given I am writing this in one) but the main feature of a blog is that people subscribe to them - people register their interest in the blog content. The fact that blog users have a captive, often responsive audience, not only gives them a sense of empowerment but more alarmingly, if they have people registering support (behind their respective masks of anonymity), this can instill a sense of justification in the mind of the blogger. I am in no way in a position to say this (given my lack of knowledge of the psychotic mind) but it is highly likely that without support and interest, Auvinen may never have been pushed to perform his unspeakable massacre. It is precisely the fact that he had a captive audience, and that he was able to “advertise” himself and to project his ‘extreme Darwinism’, that put his thoughts into action.
This is yet another danger of social networking, while in one case it brings like-minded people together, perhaps in the form of a shared intellectual pursuit, on the other side of the coin it also brings extreme radicals together. Who is to say whether there are dozens of followers of Auvinen, or Cho Seung-hui (the Virginia Tech shooter) still out there, waiting to replicate their idols’ actions in another innocent high school in some other corner of the world? People talk of viral advertising, as being the mass distribution of particularly exciting advertisements, but what about viral serial killing? The power of the Internet today is something that makes this an all too plausible reality.In December 2006 Time Magazine voted “You” as the person of the year due to the rise of community journalism and websites such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace but the question I put to you today is whether, come 2008, Time Magazine’s “worst serial killer in history” will be the World Wide Web it so rigorously supported two years ago. For it is undoubtedly certain that the Internet is a two-headed monster, and recent trends seem to suggest that the ugly head of that monster is in danger of devouring the good…

A New Dusk

Hello anyone!

So, I have decided to finally embrace the revolution that is Web 2.0! I was actually inspired to start writing a blog after I read about the harrowing tale of the Finnish serial killer who massacred 7 fellow pupils and 1 head teacher without remorse. An event that truly shocked me to the bone, considering particularly that the event happened in a quiet village in rural Finland - we have increasingly been seeing shocking events like this happening elsewhere in the world, particularly in the US (with the incredibly disturbing Virginia Tech Massacre), but now it has reached to the far corners of Finland and the increasing impact and power of the Internet makes us all well aware of such tragic events.
However what struck me most about the recent killing in Finland was the fact that Pekka-Erik Auvinen before ending the lives of his 8 innocent victims had posted a video on YouTube detailing the mass-murder he was about to commit. This immediately set me to thinking about the power and potentially very damaging influence that the Web 2.0 phenomenon can have on the lives of so many people. Was it the feedback Auvinen received from his video, or perhaps his blog, that pushed him over the edge and made him feel, in his mind alone, that he was justified to carry out those horrendous actions and to brazenly be the judge of people's right to live? In any case, the actions he committed were truly awful, and I felt the need to express my viewpoint on the potential dangers of Web 2.0 in today's society, and perversely, the concept of starting a blog seemed the perfect way to do it.
So, this is my blog, it is intended to be my musings on certain things that happen in the world, it is not intended to be a personal blog about my life, but more a general study of today's cultures and particular stories that strike me and that I deem to be worthy of further exploration. In no way will I claim to think I am right in what I discuss, in fact it is quite the opposite - I welcome any form of constructive criticism or debate, and hope for this blog to be a "canvas" for some form of interesting discussion. I hope you find it rewarding and engaging.

Please find above my original reactionary article about the Jokela High School Massacre and my opinions on the dangers of Web 2.0.

Thanks for reading.