Refusing to Watch Foley Video Avoids Exactly What?

a reply to: The Vagabond

If you are seeing this as a "snuff film", then you are missing out on all sorts of information.

There is more to life than "entertainment", and people who can only see things in that one single dimension, people who have to filter every thing through the sieve of "entertainment", scare me more than any extremist could ever hope to.

The Real World escapes them entirely in their quest for "entertainment".

a reply to: nenothtu

Perhaps I'm missing a linguistic subtlety, because I classify this as snuff by content not by viewer or maker intent. I dont move carebears tapes to my porn shelf just because there are sick pervs out there, and I dont move this video away from faces of death because somebody thinks it steels them or makes them embrace reality without entertainment value.

And the reality / toughening point doesn't impress me because there is more to reality than a true story and more to tough than tolerating a shock.
For most people this doesnt reveal reality, it replaces their immediate interactive reality with the reality of somewhere far away that will never touch them and it toughens their imagination but not their behavior patterns.

You know why they just have a warrior push and scream at you in boot camp instead of showing beheadings? Because a screen is not reality and it doesn't prepare you for reality.

a reply to: The Vagabond

It's not about "toughening" - I would rather no one ever had to be that "tough", which is, after all, more of a deadening, a killing of the soul, than a toughening. At the same time, it's not about entertainment, either. That's neither tough nor dead, it's just brutally sick. If one tries to limit it to either of those dimensions, it's just... limited. Unidimensional. Much easier to dismiss, because, after all, it's just another "snuff film" that no one ought to watch. Meanwhile, back at the desert ranch, Gomer and company are still doing their thing, and since it's been dismissed, they will just continue to get away with it.

There is valuable, actionable intel in that video, as much as they tried to sanitize it and leave out the info. Dismissing it as a "snuff film" throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Does everyone need to see it? NO. Most people don't need to see it, nor would they know what to do with it. At the same time, censoring it to "protect them from themselves", or "protect them from seeing a snuff film" removes their choice in the matter - it removes EVERYONE'S choice in the matter, and thereby removes the chance for it to be broadly analyzed... we then have to take the Think Tanks' words for what's there...

... that doesn't always work out so well. It often plays right into the propagandist's hands, which is, after all, the whole point of censorship in reality to begin with.

a reply to: nenothtu

Actionable intel is different. Good luck with your mission Colonel, I hope you get 'em.

Or are we kidding ourselves here?

originally posted by: The Vagabond
a reply to: nenothtu

Actionable intel is different. Good luck with your mission Colonel, I hope you get 'em.

Or are we kidding ourselves here?

First off, and to be real clear, I'm not a "colonel" - I work for a living.

I may or may not be kidding myself - but whether I am or not, I'm not alone in that assessment. There are others besides myself poring over that vid at this very instant, gaining clues, getting information, formulating plans. Many hands make light the work.

Will they "get 'em", or will they not? I reckon time will tell. Keep an eye on the news.

I would go on and give my ideas on what I think REALLY ought to happen over it (nope, not a general invasion OR a bombing into glass), but you might promote me from colonel to general then, and I really don't think I could stand that - too many tea parties to attend.

a reply to: nenothtu

You'd at least make sergeant just for that admirable grunts attitude (and this I mean as a pure compliment), but seriously, what percentage of the people watching this vid are changing anything besides their own brains and how many of those changed brains are better rather than worse?

It's other people's brains of course, so do as you will and who am I to do anything but disagree passively and live my own life as my opinions dictate actively.

It just seems like there are comparable things closer to home that you can actively engage. What a world it would be if we ran from those who would manipulate us with images of distant violence and trained our eyes and our plans on those in our own back yard who pose an imminent threat to whatever American shows vulnerability? You could be marching a predator to the nearest cop right now if you so chose. But the same arguments that might conceivably lead to that choice have instead given audience and motive to your distant enemy, and presumably dictates that you choose a politician whose motives are not necessarily in line with yours before anything gets done.

As for me, I prefer to focus on what's in my reach when i'm looking for reality- to chase work, to help people I find in need along the way, to better myself tangibly. And when I come online, reality is over there and I'm in my head- nothing wrong with that in and of itself.

You could be right. You could also get played. That's a little tougher when you tighten your focus- it's hard to bluff a guy who never learned to play the game.

originally posted by: The Vagabond
a reply to: nenothtu

You'd at least make sergeant just for that admirable grunts attitude (and this I mean as a pure compliment),

Now that was taken as a compliment - sergeants are what make the gears of history turn.

but seriously, what percentage of the people watching this vid are changing anything besides their own brains and how many of those changed brains are better rather than worse?

I would guess a very low percentage, but for one thing it's not up to me to decide for them how they poison their minds, and for another i think it would behoove us to keep those poisoned minds out in the open where we can watch them - much easier to do without censorship, as censorship tends to drive this sort of thing underground, rather than eliminating it.

It just seems like there are comparable things closer to home that you can actively engage.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there were, and I did. Having recently removed myself from that to a much more... "rural" (and I mean MUCH more rural - it makes the rural look like a positively urban sprawl), there is not so much of human mayhem around here to engage. I'm sure, however, that if it's here, I'll find it - I'm unlucky like that.

What a world it would be if we ran from those who would manipulate us with images of distant violence and trained our eyes and our plans on those in our own back yard who pose an imminent threat to whatever American shows vulnerability? You could be marching a predator to the nearest cop right now if you so chose.

Way back when, years ago, marching predators to the cops was not the way it was done around here, but times change, and I'm afraid I'm not yet fully up to speed on how they do it now. I do know that the latest one, which occurred just before I got here, has now gotten two life sentences without any possibility of parole, so I presume there were cops involved.

But the same arguments that might conceivably lead to that choice have instead given audience and motive to your distant enemy, and presumably dictates that you choose a politician whose motives are not necessarily in line with yours before anything gets done.

I don't believe there are ANY politicians whose motives ARE in line with mine - I've not found any so far. If I choose one at all, it's always a Hobb's Choice as you point out here. To be entirely honest, I don't think there are any politicians currently in existence who are going to be able to deal with Gomer's Crew effectively. My wife, as a Muslim, thinks that Muslims in the Middle East ought to be dealing with it in their own back yard, but sadly they are slow to get started at that, for all of the big talk going on through channels. It seems that the Kurds have been the only ones to put their gun barrels where their mouths are so far, and a couple of isolated Syrian tribes (who are now sending mixed signals since around 1% of their people were recently beheaded in a single operation).

As for me, I prefer to focus on what's in my reach when i'm looking for reality- to chase work, to help people I find in need along the way, to better myself tangibly. And when I come online, reality is over there and I'm in my head- nothing wrong with that in and of itself.

No doubt - it's always best to focus on what is within reach if one aspires to be effective. "Within reach", however, varies from one to another, and at times even for the same individual. Some times, your reach is broader than it is at others.

You could be right. You could also get played. That's a little tougher when you tighten your focus- it's hard to bluff a guy who never learned to play the game.

Hard to bluff them when they've never learned the game, but much easier to sharp them. Life is full of trade-offs, no?

reply to: nenothtu

At this point I've bumped my gums quite a bit and we seem to be coming to terms and finding the gulf between our positions shrinking.

I will just say that you're right, we are nobody to declare who does and does not fall into the "small percentage" and censor it from anyone.

The first amendment that yesterday's sergeants shepherded this far for us forever does permit us to offer whatever benefit there might be in our opinion to encourage, but not enforce, what we see as the correct choice, and that, rather than censorship, has been my agenda.

a reply to: The Vagabond

To be honest, I don't think our positions were that far apart to begin with - it was only the approach routes we take to those positions that differed, and as any good sergeant knows, you always vary your routes!

originally posted by: eNumbra

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed
we in the western world the majority of us are lucky enough not be exposed to it (albeit in movies and so forth)..

Nobody in the western world is exposed to gore or death via movies; I've watched enough of both to know.

Even the best movies, the most well presented, convincing "found footage" films are laughably fake when you've seen any of the plethora of execution videos that are released by terrorist and cartel organizations.
Knowing you're watching a movie immediately removes any sense of real consequence to anything presented by the footage that follows, but then there's the subtle things that movies can never quite get right.

The way the victim takes their final breath, the way a body slumps, the way a wound bleeds, how the attacker's stance changes as he bears the weight of the blow.
There are so many things that we won't even consciously pick up on upon viewing that movies cannot make up for simply because they are staged, even the best actors in the world will never get death just right.

Real gore, real horror is such an awful thing that it does not compare to any movie; I've watched enough of both to know.

ok then...so if this was called out to be a fake......where does that leave you?