I realize though, that you don’t want to either, anymore.

But now when I look at the clips I have amassed on my hard drive of people dying in various terrible ways, it’s depressing. I don’t want to see people die (at least, my mood on average doesn’t descend that low anymore), which was pretty much the reason I sought after them in the first place.

Having said that, there are a couple things within your post you need to understand:

1. Death clips are very rarely shot by a best friend or even an aquientance of the victim. Most of the time it’s a reporter, a fellow terrorist, a security camera, etc.

2. At no point do I say anyone else should actively seek out this material if they don’t want to. My point was that you should understand what death really is before becoming scared of it and trying to shun it from your life. If you don’t fear it but haven’t ever seen these videos, great. Watching them is merely one way to try and achieve that goal, and I would agree it’s not what we as a society define as “tasteful”, but that’s how I went about it.

3. “I doubt that you could actually watch the real thing without having a reaction. The difference between a movie and reality is everything.”

As I said: I realize it can’t compare to actually standing there, seeing somebody you’ve known for years die while screaming in vein and I wouldn’t want it to.

4. Before you attempt to lecture at me about what is disgusting and immoral to watch, try and tell me you’ve never gotten off to porn. Then I’ll take that line of thought seriously.

5. “Don’t watch movies like that. They serve no purpose, and it’s a terrible disrespect for the dead and dying (as cliched as that sounds) for you to get entertainment out of their suffering.”

As I said above, it was never about the entertainment factor of watching people die. Why does a pathologist do what he does? Because he loves sticking his hands inside corpses? No, it’s his fascination with the subject matter, as is the case with me. Videos with people dying in them show us a side of reality that is rarely seen (hence the title of this post), and I find that having watched them, I have a much firmer grasp on the horrible things that people are capable of than I did before.

Again, I have little desire to revisit these clips anymore. I know what can be seen in them, so I’ve moved on. Right now I’d rather look at the beauty in life than the sad parts, but that’s just my personal preference and I won’t dare say that it has to be anyone else’s. It’s not my right, just as it is not yours to tell me what I should/shouldn’t be watching.

And thank you for the intelligent comment. Really, there’s nowhere near enough of them around here.

I actually am pretty desensitized. I could watch one of those videos, I suppose, and be able to handle it without difficulty. Even if I tried, I couldn’t make myself get terribly emotional, or anything. It would be upsetting. That’s pretty gross stuff, but I could deal with it.

Never, however, would I go seeking this or take any part in watching it if I had to. So you ask how am I desensitized if I don’t watch anything like this? I think that sort of thing is partly just programmed into people. It’s something that you can’t change, really. (Although it’s true that society also plays a role in whether you can stand things like that or not.)

I doubt that you could actually watch the real thing without having a reaction. The difference between a movie and reality is everything.

As far as times when “tragedy strikes”, I dont act “like it was something unfathomable.” In fact, I can’t fathom it at all, really. Because I wasn’t there. I didn’t experience it. If I had, then that would be something totally different. Other people have reactions, and get upset. I sometimes really try to get a reaction out of myself. Often, I pretend to be upset, thinking that I then will become upset. It doesn’t work.
Graphic things like that aren’t really terrible to watch, but I find it sort of disgusting that you actively seek them out and watch them when you have the opportunity not to.

And the fact that you think we should watch things like that “because sooner or later something terrible will happen and you won’t be able to cope” is laughable. Nothing like that is ever going to happen to any one here, really. Not only is it too safe and ridiculously protected to have anything like that happen, but the chances of having that happen even in “any 3rd world former Soviet Union countries” is still basically zilch, unless you’re politically and sociologically active.

Don’t watch movies like that. They serve no purpose, and it’s a terrible disrespect for the dead and dying (as cliched as that sounds) for you to get entertainment out of their suffering.

And if you “really think about it”-desensitization, I mean- it’s SENSIBLE. As I said, what good is being scared of death and violence? It doesn’t help you in any way, shape, or form, so you may as well cope with it.