In that past celebrity was Beatle mania, The Sex Pistols swearing on TV, all that stuff. People were obsessed but they had little window into their lives other than what was presented to them on TV appearances, radio or magazine interviews. There was the odd bit of scandal in the tabloids and bizarre stories in The Enquirer but for the most access to even the most juicy stories was limited to police statements etc.

In 1995 OJ Simpson was put on trial for double murder. The decision was made to televise the trial in full. From that moment the public and especially the American public had access to a celebrities life like never before.
I think living here it can be hard to understand just how huge that trial was in America. It ran for 9 months and totally dominated TV schedules during it. I visited America in the July of that year and I remember every channel being constant rolling coverage.
Less than two years later the same man was involved in a live police chase/kidnapping. With people lining the streets to watch/support. They were pressing the like button before there was one.

That was the birth of Celebrity Culture. That was the start of the public wanting more than what was presented to them, more than just the product they wanted the person. Shortly after the hounding of Princess Diana really kicked into gear, everyday she was a main story on the news until she was killed by it. The paparazzi boomed in the mid to late 90s. Going into the noughties where we started getting celeb based shows like I'm a Celebrity and reality TV which made people famous despite having no discernable talent.

By the time Twitter launched people were already famous for fame's sake. Twitter opened up their lives to us all, celebs could now speak to us directly and we could speak to them.
Those barriers that divided celebs and the great unwashed that existed during Beatlemania were long gone.

So it is easy to see how the value of celebrity has been eroded the last few decades while at the same time the access the public want to the lives of these celebrities has increase massively.

Ever increasingly the public don't want talented people performing their art in a restrictive way, they want anyone who is willing to pull their cheeks apart and flash their bumholes.

That's not strictly true either dive, the truth is somewhere in the middle, which is that complex, interesting art made by dedicated talented indviduals will always be around, and so will lowest common denominator bullshit.

There's more of the latter, but it's not as enduring as the former. The present is louder than ever thanks to social media, but it's also stacked up against incredibly shortsighted nostalgia for better times that are only better because we filtered out the massive amounts of shite.

It is higher on YouTube though, by  metric of views and subscribers. There are more of them, getting more views than their left wing counterparts, and that's important to know because it may well skew people's views. Video is a very powerful tool, especially to formative minds.

I'm not so sure it is Tempy. Certainly, when I look at the trending bit I don't find it biased toward the right. In fact, I remember PewDiePie being accused of being a Nazi when he actually being taken out of context. I'm sure their are plenty of mid-ramge Tubers spouting right-wing stuff, but that's because America currently dominates YouTube because amongst other things English is the language of the internet.

Andy wrote:

Am I being too sensitive? Am I out of touch? Is all of this funny? If the answer is yes, I have even less hope for our species, if that’s even possible.

I get your point, and I'm on your side, but this is the dark side of instantaneous mass communication.

Idiots.

I think a certain amount of idiocy is permissible, if no harm is done.

Many people have seen 2 girls one cup... Many of them are kids... Funnily enough, shit eating is not endemic...

The thing about the artefact you cite, is that it is harmful... Dead people have families, and their death is extremely painful to the people they leave behind.

Similar thing with pewdie, or whatever the fuck his name is... Using offensive words so casually, when you know his target audience is undoubtedly bound to repeat the behaviour...

With Owen Wilson above though, I think there are laws regarding filming people without consent...

Someone should throw that book at him, if it's not been suggested already.

T'internet is full of people talking all kinds of shit, offensive or otherwise. Who cares? Problem is when your entertainment comes from actually going out and upsetting other people for laughs. This twat really should do a stint in jail under some law against desecrating or some such and/or be banned from YouTube.

Diluted Dante wrote:

dynamiteReady wrote:

Many people have seen 2 girls one cup... Many of them are kids... Funnily enough, shit eating is not endemic...

And this is the same thing how?

The demand for morally outrageous content in the digital age, and the ever stupid efforts to sate that demand.

You could even possibly scale this idea up to what Trump is doing...

SpaceGazelle wrote:

I'm not so sure it is Tempy. Certainly, when I look at the trending bit I don't find it biased toward the right. In fact, I remember PewDiePie being accused of being a Nazi when he actually being taken out of context. I'm sure their are plenty of mid-ramge Tubers spouting right-wing stuff, but that's because America currently dominates YouTube because amongst other things English is the language of the internet.

Looking at the trending stuff is never a good indication though. I am talking about the very real AltRight/Sceptic movement on YouTube. It might be cannibalistic in its viewer counts, but it makes money and spreads a lot of misinformation.

People like Paul Joseph Watson, Stefan Molyneux, Thunderf00t and fuckin' "Sargon of Akkad" have 100x the subs and views of the people opposing them. Sure, it might be the same 700,000 people following all of them, but it gives them a platform, and gives them a claim of legitimacy. No one in the mainstream is going to invite a astute 50k sub count video maker to talk about an issue they know in-depth, but they might invite Mister Paul "Malmo is DANGEROUS" Watson with his tick and 1.5mil subs. It's the Farage problem, but digital.

One thing I want to add about 2 girls one cup, is that I've never seen it. Despite numerous invitations, because the very thought of it physically sickens me... That's not true for everything in this class (i.e. happy slapping, videos of accidents, and possibly other shit that I've not been exposed to yet), but I do have some very strong ideas on what I would/wouldn't like to see.

Not everyone is the same, and not everyone found to have such morbid interests are bad either. So I'm not rushing to advocate absolutes.

That said, I think degrees of harm can be quantified. And we should definitely now start prospecting people are guilty of the type of infraction described in the OP...

Because the family of the deceased should probably be compensated.

Another difference is that 2G1C is isolated. Logan Paul does regular videos, builds an audience and community around him, and then serves up a dead body to millions of unsuspecting teens. They aren't necessarily looking for it. It's like a CBBC presenter cutting to footage of an open grave.

Tempy wrote:

Another difference is that 2G1C is isolated. Logan Paul does regular videos, builds an audience and community around him, and then serves up a dead body to millions of unsuspecting teens. They aren't necessarily looking for it. It's like a CBBC presenter cutting to footage of an open grave.

That was what I was getting at, thank you Tempy for providing the words.

Tempy wrote:

Another difference is that 2G1C is isolated. Logan Paul does regular videos, builds an audience and community around him, and then serves up a dead body to millions of unsuspecting teens. They aren't necessarily looking for it. It's like a CBBC presenter cutting to footage of an open grave.

I think it's less about programming now, and more about what the audience is willing to share.

The video was entitled 'Suicide Forest', right?

If you were the type of mofo to click on that, you'd probably be disappointed if you didn't see a dead body in there...

Especially as you'd already know what kind of guy this prick is from other videos.

Basically, I'm saying I still think it is equivalent. The intention is to gain attention (read as fame) by shocking people.

I think doing that is permissible, but the degree of harm should now constitute a hard boundary.

Because the floodgates were opened looong ago, and the only time we really discuss the whole thing, is when an extreme case comes to mind.

So what I'm saying, is that we should punish all cases equally, but use a clear rule to prevent this from becoming arbitrary, and leaving organized idiots like pewp' 'free speech' as a loophole.

So I'm suggesting that you apply very specific punishments, and see how the pricks act after that.

Pew? Inciting racism.
Who this prick is? Unauthorized filming.

Take them both to court.

Kudos for building an audience, but you're harming people now.

You can communicate the same (idiotic) message without harming anyone?

Fine.

That's how I think it should work...

Not sure what Gonzo would say, but looks like their very own work constitutes evidence of crimes in both cases, right?

I mean, that's why we don't have so many happy slapping vids online anymore, surely...

Jontron was repeating the lines of the presidential campaign winner so doubt any court would do much about him.

This Logan guy. 
Desecration of a corpse would be a crime committed on Japanese land so would require extradition. No way a blonde, white, rich american is getting extradited to Japan, image the votes that would be lost for the Republicans.
So it would be something along the lines of sharing of obscene material. Given the documentary format he could afford a lawyer that would get him off.


Pewdeepie I am unfamiliar with all of the stuff he did.
There was something about an anti-semitic video which from what I can remember of it a decent lawyer could swing it as parody.
When he said the n word. He passed it off straight away as a slip of the tongue, even if a court didnt believe that they aren't going to convict for hate preaching because he said the n word once.

You take these people to court and lose, or if they only get a minor punishment like a fine or community service then you are playing into their hands.

Prison or internet bans are the only things that will impact them because their down time will make them irrelevant. I don't think what these clowns have done so far would result in either of those punishments though.