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The world is a scary and violent place. Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Until you see the actual violence and gore, it doesn't mean anything, it's ju

The world is a scary and violent place. Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Until you see the actual violence and gore, it doesn't mean anything, it's just empty words. I didn't care at all about wars in the middle east until I saw the reality on Liveleak. Seeing dead children and people with their legs blown off made all the commentary on CNN and Fox seem so understated. A lot is said about desensitization as a result of seeing horrible things on the internet, but in my experience, only the opposite was true. Seeing violence online when I was in my late teens sensitized me and made the stories on the TV real. Frankly, I owe a lot of my political beliefs (especially on foreign policy) to horrible realities I saw on Liveleak.

throwawaysea 5y ago
Agree. I was never that cognizant of what ISIS/ISIL/Daesh were capable of until I saw videos on LiveLeak that made it all very real. You won’t find those anywhere else, but I dare say that the emotions those stir in the viewer create political clarities that are razor sharp, in a way you can’t get through overly academic and stoic news articles.
- 74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
  Getting your head cut off and die within few seconds isn't more cruel than getting half your face ripped off and a leg due to an airstrike and then bleeding to death over the course of several minutes. Isis was just more honest with their inhumanity.
  - secondcoming 5y ago
    There are videos of beheadings where it literally takes minutes for the head to be cut off. It's not a swift blow to the neck with a sword. I remember one where the executioner had to borrow a knife from someone in the crowd because his wasn't sharp enough.
    - 74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
      utterly disgusting ... period. I almost want to vomit reading that. I hope you didn't watch that yourself. my point holds nonetheless.
      - criddell 5y ago
        I think you're being downvoted because you're point is really just whataboutism. It's perfectly valid to talk about the horrors committed without needing to point out that other groups do nasty things too.
        74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
        it's not at all whataboutism because I'm not trying to justify either side. and - being downvoted on HN becomes more and more an endorsement afaic tell.
- op00to 5y ago
  It’s almost as if the propaganda is working.
q_andrew 5y ago
Yes. After the Vietnam war, real footage of violence left the public zeitgeist. Liveleak hosted videos that showed what life was really like when you listened to the guy who was trying to recruit you into the U.S. Army.
nostromo 5y ago
War and terrorism was definitely made “more real” on LiveLeak than what you’d experience via the media or YouTube. I also found a real appreciation for other things: driving safely, worker protections, fire safety. These “boring” things take on more importance when you can see what happens when you ignore them. I don't think people should dwell on these morbid things. But seeing just one or two videos of, for example, a bad car crash, can really give you a healthy fear of these dangers.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  Especially fire safety seems like something people don't realize. Sure, the rules can seem overly strict and sometimes even nonsensical on the first glance, but it's insane how fast the situation can go from "smale flame" to "house on fire". Seeing the worst case play out is really eye-opening.
  - dTal 5y ago
    I don't think it was LiveLeak, but seeing the footage of the Station Nightclub fire online was enough to permanently change how I view crowds and indoor spaces. That stuff is quite scarring - but I'm grateful for the knowledge.
    - stupidcar 5y ago
      Agreed. After seeing that video, any time I'm in a crowded indoor space, I always make sure I take a look around for the nearest fire exit, as well as a couple of alternatives in case it is blocked.
  - leetrout 5y ago
    Test your smoke detectors and change your batteries. Change the entire unit after 10 years.
- argc 5y ago
  I saw someone killed on a lathe on liveleak and ever since that video I've taken tool safety EXTREMELY seriously. Like, I bought safety goggles and wear them for drilling random screws. I never even thought about it before that.
spoonjim 5y ago
Agree. Kayla Mueller would be alive today if she had watched some ISIS execution videos on LiveLeak.
- randomopining 5y ago
  Yeah and these “it’s all good! We’re all humans!” people seriously need to watch it and then realize you need to back up proper diplomacy with force if needed.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
happytoexplain 5y ago
I agree in many cases, but remember that this is a double-edged sword. Being exposed to horrible things can also make people support unreasonable policies and seed hatred. This principle is why the family of victims aren't put on the jury.
trident5000 5y ago
Honestly LiveLeak got pretty soft over time. Final years were nothing like its former years.
georgiecasey 5y ago
It taught me to never get involved in the drugs business in Mexico or Brazil or never drive in Russia.
- randomopining 5y ago
  Dude seriously the stuff in Brazil is next level. Mexico I felt like they were stone cold but had some semblance of reason for doing stuff. Brazil was just primal. I was in Brazil for a month, luckily before I watched a lot of those types of vids. Honestly it’s a dangerous place, right beneath the veneer. If you get off the path and into a hairy situation you might be done.
Barrin92 5y ago
Liveleak doesn't portray the reality of war because it shows you some beheading. Voyeurism and gore are not the same as genuine insight into what scary and violent places are actually like. It's worth reading Baudrillard's 'The Gulf War Did Not Take Place' on how media representation, and stylized, selective footage is used to distort. You didn't get to know the 'reality' of war, but the hyper-reality of it. If you were to actually go see the reality of war what you'd see most of the time is actually soldiers doing nothing, not interating with any enemy. People trying to scrape by, someone fixing a pipe, that kind of thing. LiveLeak was even worse and a better source for propaganda than sensational news. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Plac...
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > what you'd see most of the time is actually soldiers doing nothing True, but that part of the reality of war is hardly relevant. I don’t need to emphasize with the bored soldiers. That’s part of life for me too. I emphathize with the bored soldiers that suddenly had a massive bomb land in their midst.
  - hrktb 5y ago
    Isn’t it actually an issue that soldiers are so bored in completely remote places for months and months? People engaging in the army to get some hot action sure would have liked to know more about that aspect, and for better or worse the general public’s perception would also be different when accurately imagining x thousands of trained people stuck in the desert doing nothing 99% of the time.
    - sundvor 5y ago
      “War is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.”
      - Aeolun 5y ago
        Hah, yeah, that was kind of the quote I had in mind when writing my original comment.
artificialLimbs 5y ago
I saw a couple/few videos on LL and it shocked me to the core. I never wanted to see that kind of thing again. But I also wish that everyone could witness it without becoming psychotic about it, to have a visual imprint of 'as bad as it gets', and hopefully do something about it or at least avoid perpetuating those actions. But that would never happen. A whole lot of people will go to very desperate measures to avoid hard truth, to avoid even thinking about this kind of situation.
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  What does this say about people who cannot see this kind of footage without becoming traumatized? Is it right to just call them incapable of handling the truth? I had seen some things in the past, on similar channels (4chan). The result was that when someone else had to drive me somewhere on a freeway I became so hopelessly anxious that I was constantly reminding them to drive slower, or just not drive me at all, because in my book a weekend trip to the supermarket wasn't worth dying over. I was incredibly immature. My belief is still that cars are the most dangerous things the average human will operate, even though they are necessary in some cases. But the auxillary thoughts surrounding that belief are clearly not healthy for me. I truly felt as if I had been changed for the worse. A few months after that I was nearly involved in a horrific accident with a group of people I didn't know very well because they drove carelessly on a road that was iced over. That only served to solidify my feelings and anguish at the time over the fact that death could come at any time. But it wasn't only that. Whenever I got into a car with somebody, I started to seriously question whether or not I would be alive in half an hour. I seriously began to consider that our vehicle would be struck from the side by an SUV or tanker truck, killing us instantly, without the slightest shred of meaning or insight about life, from every possible angle, over and over again. I do not enjoy feeling like this. Since then I've given up any notion I've had of driving again. I stay away from sidewalks next to the road whenever possible. I allowed my knowledge about "the hard truth" and "reality" of dying at any moment to spread to my closest friends and my family, and that has permanently changed how some of those people perceive me for the worse. I understand that this is not a rational way to approach life. But I still don't trust myself to drive, given how I better understand how I might act in stressful situations, and given that in many diverse aspects of life I'm not much better mentality-wise than "those idiots in cars." Yes, I can make the excuse that it's better for the environment. But in reality I understand that I can only choose this way of life because I'm lucky enough to not have to drive, and I also understand that it is a product of my weakness in accepting that millions of people are capable driving safely for decades and never dying anyways. I feel like the images have only caused me to catastrophize everything I touch. In my opinion, watching these kinds of videos can bring us closer to the truth. People should have the freedom to choose to see them. But they are absolutely not for everyone. I have seen things which have refused to exit my memory ever since, and the exhaustion of having to put so much energy and trust into therapists that ultimately never work out means that they will probably stay there for a long time. For too many of the images, I cannot understand what purpose they have served in my life except to solidify my already preexisting notions that I could die at any moment (in the sense of thinking I could die exactly 47 minutes from writing this comment), and that the world can be a cruel, horrific place. Watching such videos in itself doesn't change that. It does not make the terrible people less terrible. It will never change the fact that people will be mutilated and die in horrendous accidents because of personal or systematic incompetence. It will probably not cause enough wide-scale change to prevent the next authoritarian regime from brutalizing the citizens of another country. Maybe the footage will spur on a new generation of activists, but personally, I was already afraid of too many things for them to make a positive impact in my life. Given that I understand the state of my mind, I should never have let my willingness to see "the unfiltered truth" get the better of me.
staticassertion 5y ago
I had a similar experience. I've lived a relatively privileged life, I've never been in a warzone. Being exposed to the brutality that exists outside of my comfort zone really opened my eyes to the fact that other people live very very differently. You can "know" that, but it's much harder to feel it without some experience - and while a picture is nothing like experiencing that sort of life, it's a hell of a lot more than just reading that it happens. There's a visceral reaction when you see something so brutal and horrific, and an empathy as well with the victim, that I think is extremely hard to obtain via text, especially short text. I'm not saying LiveLeak was perfect or good, I think that it likely also fetishized tragedy - but I will say that there is absolutely something missing in existing news organizations with regards to showing the brutal, hard to watch truth.
acituan 5y ago
> The world is a scary and violent place. Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Counter-point; the world is mostly a neutral, even OK, place, with also violence in it. Our cognition is heavily biased towards saliencing and preserving the scary bits, and being exposed to a planet scale showcase of those bits does not necessarily make us wiser (e.g. better decision makers). At least for me personally it took a decade before I regretted having watered those flowers of morbid curiosity. The redeeming quality of LiveLeak might be, however shocking the content was, it also had an inherent grounding in bare reality, compared to the narratively embellished one of mainstream media. The former is ultimately bound by rules of reality but the latter is only bound by what people are willing to believe in.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >Counter-point; the world is mostly a neutral, even OK, place It isn't, you are lucky to be in a privileged environment. And I don't even mean warzones. People who live paycheck-to-paycheck with family or medical issues wouldn't agree with you.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    But LiveLeak doesn't help anyone understand the constant crushing stress of being unable to afford necessities. OP said 'scary and violent', and on that scale things really aren't that bad.
    - moralestapia 5y ago
      Actually, a significant portion of the videos portrayed the life of the homeless, the sick, people under the influence of drugs/alcohol, and other things that you don't usually find on the usual platforms.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    > People who live paycheck-to-paycheck with family or medical issues wouldn't agree with you. Considering they all go on living anyway, you’d say the good parts must outweigh the bad parts though.
vmception 5y ago
Same for me! I remember the precursor to Liveleak, Ogrish, which was much more graphic than whatever Liveleak became in Liveleak's last final years. It was back in 2004 or so when I had to reconstruct a somewhat censored link on their forum, which took me an FTP server directory with videos, that I waited to download, which showed me Al Queda celebratory videos of killing US soldiers. That was a first for me, I'd never seen footage of US not winning, let alone a side that considered it a good thing. Really just broadened my horizon. Was uncomfortable at first because I felt there might have been a reason with personal legal liability that the footage wasn't available in other places, but much more curious. Anyway, such footage is much easier to come across now, with beheadings and such just occurring. Any Facebook feed assumes you want to see an extrajudicial killing involving a US police officer. But at the time I was amazed such content exists. Not appalled. I can't really relate to people that say they can't watch that kind of stuff and will just take someone's word for it. I get appalled by things out of someone's control, such as a gas leak blowing off the side of an apartment building. But there's never anything real I have any feelings from watching.
lunatuna 5y ago
For me it was seeing close ups of the Chechnyan war. I couldn’t believe what people were doing to each other. It has made the anarchy of war something to be avoided at all costs. Clearly showing that there are no winners on the ground. Soldiers shooting 3 generations of a family unarmed, soldiers having their heads clumsily chopped off with an axe. I’ve avoided all of the not safe for life type stuff since, but agree that these are important things to see. With all the wars since and the easy images found on western news at least I know what is happening outside of what they are willing to show.
joshxyz 5y ago
Sites like that made me more careful about driving, especially on wearing seatbelts good lord.
foobarthrowaway 5y ago
Mainstream news/propaganda organizations want it that way so they can sell you the next war in Iraq, the next genocide in Syria, the next assassination in Libya, etc.
throw37472 5y ago
I personally believe gore videos involving children need to be banned, just like child pornography is. I also feel gore videos that involve non-consenting adults should be judged as "revenge porn." I understand there should be some leeway for journalists reporting the news and shedding light on atrocites. I'm just not sure where that line should be.
- kfprt 5y ago
  I'll never forget the video I saw on liveleak of a 5 year old who's hand was driven over by a car for stealing in Iran with the whole village watching. That minute of video did more to shape my views than anything else.
  - nanoshelter 5y ago
    This was fake news and you fell for it. Look it up!
    - kfprt 5y ago
      I have looked and never found anything, several times in fact. Do you have a source?
      - anthk 5y ago
        I think that's false because even under Sharia driven tribes children under 14 are exempt of any punishment. At least the most severe ones. Just think about it: if every child had those punishments deserved to adult people, they would be extinct in years. Even the most phanatic Mullah is not that idiot.
      - naavis 5y ago
        Took 30 seconds to find it on Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bread-and-media-circuses/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bread-and-media-circuses/
baybal2 5y ago
I remember American TV regularly showing things like Palestinian children blown to bits back in nineties, or atrocities of wars in Africa, and then it somehow just disappeared.
- jonathanstrange 5y ago
  Showing these kind of things has always been against the ethical standards of journalism and exceptions to it used to be discussed intensively by editors - excluding the tabloid yellow press who make their living from this trash, of course. I guess some of the more recent American TV channels realized at some point, after they had gained fame for showing everything, that quotas are not everything and that relatives usually don't want the death of their beloved ones displayed all across the Internet without their consent. Sites like Liveleaks are very hypocritical, they pretend to show videos for "freedom of speech" while instead their main purpose is simply to satisfy their viewers' voyeurism. Cheap thrills are the main reason for viewing this kind of material - and don't pretend to be someone better, you've looked up that kind of stuff yourself for precisely that reason just like I have. People who watch this material only want to satisfy their curiosity and get the thrills from it. That's also why Truffault once said "There’s no such thing as an anti-war film." (There are exceptions, like "Taxi Driver", and perhaps also "Deer Hunter" and "Killing Fields", but these are rare.)
  - baybal2 5y ago
    Excuse me, but showing "Palestinian children blown to bits" was probably the biggest contributor to global pressure on Israel which resulted in Oslo accords, Israeli military pullout from Lebanon, and Rwanda not burning to the ground completely. Such things indeed play a vitally important role.
    - jonathanstrange 5y ago
      Even if what you claim was true, emotional knee-jerk reactions have never helped in any conflict. You give the best example, the situation in Palestine has not improved and looks as dire as ever. Showing things like "Palestinian children blown to bits" will first and foremost escalate a conflict and instigate more violence. I stand by what I said, people almost solely look up these videos to satisfy their personal morbidity and voyeurism. It's the same reason why there are always many bystanders around accidents who stare at the victims without doing anything. On a side note, there is also a false dichotomy in your argument. I haven't said that the press should never show such pictures or videos, just pointed out that it generally violates ethical standards of the press and it has always been hotly debated when exceptions should be allowed. Sites like Liveleaks are nothing more than trash in comparison.
pfranz 5y ago
While I think visibility of these horrific things is important, watching too many or dwelling on them just isn't healthy. It reminds me of this opinion article on watching police videos: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/12/why-i-cant-watch-police-videos-anymore/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/12/why-i-can...
Bancakes 5y ago
True. Too many people protest police actions and recommend "shooting the legs" and such. That's just one example that is readily disproved with a few liveleak videos of police shootouts, yet takes paragraphs to describe in text. These videos help people shape their own opinions instead of trusting authority.
Salgat 5y ago
This is why reddit's /r/watchpeopledie ban was such a loss. I didn't go to the subreddit often, but when I did, it was an intense reality check at how good I and others have it, and how much of the world still needs help. Also helped me to really appreciate OSHA at my workplace...
mrtksn 5y ago
It's fascinating to see how the sausage is made. It gives the most important datapoint before you can preach your higher ideals. It's different if you seen a war(even if it's a liveleak video), it keeps your feet on the ground when you have to decide to cast a pro/anti war vote or argue about it's merits. That's what worries me about our sterilised internet: Things happen, but we are not allowed to peak under the cover to see what actually happen. Unless it’s something nice, it must be limited to the commentary of people who themselves may never seen how it is made or even worse, having their own agenda. Sure, gore can brutalise people but if it's happening everyone deserves to see it. Much more people used to claim that the Covid-19 is just the flu, until the footage of hospital corridors emerged.
- vaylian 5y ago
  It's the same thing with climate change. A lot of people still don't understand how bad it actually is.
  - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
    The think that really drove that home for me is remembering how after long trips you'd have bugs splattered all over your windshield and front end. People even used to sell deflectors. That doesn't happen anymore cause we've killed off most of the bugs...
drawkbox 5y ago
LiveLeak is like those old drivers ed videos, it can make you better by showing how bad things can get. I remember pre-internet it was Faces of Death [1] (lots faked but still intense), then Ogrish then the makers of Ogrish going to LiveLeak. There is some value in seeing the worst humans have to offer as it gives you a wider picture, but also too much of that is depressing. People should seek out the full spectrum to be based in reality, but also push better quality of life. As a kid, horror movies were our superhero movies really with late 80s/90s slasher flicks. Fangoria was a big magazine. Then you see things like what actually goes on, seeing the true horrors of the world. Sometimes seeing those things can make you appreciate calm, quality of life focused ways, be nicer to people and try to make the world a better place as it can be raw. LiveLeak was one of those places you could go to see the video that everyone else was blocking or censoring. ItemFix looks similar just not as intense, more on the WhatCouldGoWrong or IdiotsInCars type level. Always good to have another video site for seeing the broad spectrum of the human condition. Just balance time more towards quality of life, but always know how bad it could be, makes you respect today and appreciate things. Everything in moderation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faces_of_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faces_of_Death
- specialist 5y ago
  I am dumbfounded by how snuff films went from taboo to infotainment. ~30 years ago, the Rodney King beating and the movie Natural Born Killers were shocking. Today, it's just another day.
  - dfxm12 5y ago
    Even 30 years ago, police violence against black men was just another day. The difference is you're now aware of the truth. That's a good thing. We can't learn from our mistakes until we're aware of them & can confront them without writing them off as merely a shocking outlier. I wouldn't conflate movies and real life. A snuff film is not the truth. Woody Harrelson is not a murderer, Derek Chauvin is.
hughrr 5y ago
Agree with this entirely. So much is never said or seen on commercial media. It’s easy it’s shrug off a censored report and carry on with your day. However the comments section was nasty. There are a lot of really not very right people out there waiting to have their world view and prejudices legitimized. And that’s quite worrying.
cosmodisk 5y ago
We used to watch the stuff on Ogrish back in the day,when we were teenagers. I couldn't say it desensitized me but made me realise I can't do shit about it. When one side of the planet is launching rockets to space and the other throwing stones on people because they looked at someone, there's no fixing of this only slow, agonising passing of time,with the hopes that it will eventually improve as people will be less and less willing to do certain things. It also made me realised,how we, people in the Western world,are insulated from many horrors of this world both directly and indirectly by the lack of coverage on them.
- Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
  Don't forget that the rocket side of the world does, in fact, also tend to throw some of those rockets at other people. That insulation you mention is heavily intentional. How many Americans would have continued to support the military actions in the Middle East if live videos of mangled bodies were being broadcast right into people's homes on a nightly basis? We in the West live in relative safety yet we refuse to recognize as a culture how much harm is done by our societies' actions to others' safety. We subconsciously know it's happening but we say "meh." It's the ultimate privilege -- yet we wonder why so many in the Middle East hate the west. "They just hate our freedoms!!" They hate that we reserve the right to a relatively safe life for ourselves.
  - cosmodisk 5y ago
    "Don't forget that the rocket side of the world does, in fact, also tend to throw some of those rockets at other people." Oh absolutely! Rockets vs stones was a simplified example and I do agree that the world is much more complex than that. I'm in Europe,so some of the issues are slightly different than those on the other side of the pond but there's also plenty underneath the surface. Just yesterday was reading how many thousands of people died because a few countries decided to switch off radios that were supposed to capture distress calls from the boats with refuges in the sea. That's the ultimate stick fingers in your ears and do la la la kind of thing. And the list goes on,while we can sit in our safe homes thinking it's all out there,too far from me to care too much.
74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
This also changed my perspective on Isis cutting heads off and filming it. The act of filiming it is just of medial relevance. Of actual relevance is the suffering caused to the victim. Having said that - our media tries to sell the idea of a clean war. Air strike -> Bad people dead. First of all if a bomb goes off more often than not also innocent civilians are hurt and killed. Further more - and that is my main point - if a rocket goes off somewhere not everybody is dead immediately. Instead people will get random parts of their body ripped off and will bleed miserably to death. It's arguably more painful to die that way compared to getting one's head cut off within twenty-three seconds.
GordonS 5y ago
As a kid, I always wanted to be a pilot in the British airforce. I'd grown up on games like F19 Stealth Fighter, and I thought it would be the coolest thing in the world to fly planes like that and drop bombs on the bad guys. I think it was during the gulf war in 1991, when I a TV news piece, shot by a war journalist. He was filming from inside a helicopter, and there was a US gunner using a fixed gun (50-cal?), gunning down enemy forces, shooting them in the back as they ran away. I was horrified - this was not what I thought war was. My silly ideals of valour and honour, were not real. As I grew older I saw and came to learn of yet more horrors - US and British bombs dropped on schools and residential blocks. Children blown to pieces. The US and UK selling arms to anyone with the money. And going back further, the indiscriminate use of cluster bombs during the Vietnam war. One of the worst aspects, was how the military often seemed to try to bury their mistakes. When they didn't, all we got was platitudes until they did it again. Perhaps the worst of all, was seeing how everyone else seemed to maintain the "them and us" stance - we were the good guys, and all those brown people were the bad guys. Very few cared one iota if a bomb was dropped on a school in the Middle East or Pakistan. I was disgusted by the apathy around me. And so, my dream became a nightmare, and I, thankfully, took a different path. I largely have journalism and truth seekers to thank for that.
- op00to 5y ago
  I see my kids going through this same pattern. They idealize war guns and violence, and it really pains me because I know it sets them up to minimize the realities of war and violence.
andrepd 5y ago
Liveleak opened my eyes to about two things: - The horror of the Mexican Drug War. The unbelievable violence and cruelty, which is almost the exclusive responsibility of the United States' catastrophic War on Drugs. - Car accidents. I'm always much more alert, as a driver and as a pedestrian. Actually, add fires into that list. Terrifying stuff.
curation 5y ago
Yes. I watched Saddam Hussein hanged on Liveleak. Just before it was taken down. Horrible realities. Yes.
Lev1a 5y ago
The change most immediately apparent to myself is that I actually wear a helmet while riding my bicycle now after having seen peoples heads pop like melons from even small accidents notwithstanding being run over by trucks (think of an opened tube of tomato paste being slammed by a fist).
chefandy 5y ago
It's powerful, important content, but collecting and promoting it as shock entertainment, entirely out of context, doesn't strike me as the right way to do it. Our media's lack of willingness to portray the human cost of our overseas exploits is clearly a huge problem, but I don't think this really addressed it. It's all impact without usable information. While incredibly violent things do happen in the world regularly— and we should not be ignoring them— the world is safer than it has ever been, and that should also be front-and-center in people's minds when considering this. People predominantly concerned with the scariness and violence in the world will be more likely to promote overly violent responses to relatively innocuous situations through war, policy, policing, etc. I wish there was a publicly accessible, nonprofit archive a la Wikileaks that focused on similar content including oversight for things like privacy issues. It would be nice to see citizen pundits paying attention to it for issues that matter to them and putting things in context as they're shared instead just blasting streams of violence at people. But wish in one hand and successfully monetize in the other and see which one fills up first...
- junon 5y ago
  WatchPeopleDie was supposed to do this. I wish the mods had been better about the garbage comments, but even then I think the reddit admins were hell-bent on shutting down any subs they didn't personally like. But I agree fullheartedly. Seeing such things really made me 'feel' how precious life is and how terrible the world can be. It helped me navigate moving to Europe a few times, even.
  - badRNG 5y ago
    > but even then I think the reddit admins were hell-bent on shutting down any subs they didn't personally like. Or shutting down subs that might make the site advertiser unfriendly.
    - chefandy 5y ago
      I really think for something like a violent video archive to do as much good as possible, it needs to be entirely grant funded. Aside from the obviously problematic approach of monetizing violence, I don't think you can be too heavy-handed in protecting privacy with this sort of thing. Though I wonder how this might change with deepfake videos gaining momentum. I think the entire venture would be really expensive to do well.
ErikVandeWater 5y ago
Independent journalists seem more willing to show the brutal reality. I recently saw this video of an officer being sent into an ambush by a man Homeland Security knew was armed and dangerous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94afIBzOb5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94afIBzOb5I Fair warning: The video shows the murder.
duxup 5y ago
> Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Are we having problems finding horrible things to watch other than on Liveleak... because I sure am not... I really don't think Liveleak is some paragon of "truth" or the content you describe.
- joshsyn 5y ago
  Its not, but there is a saying picture are worth a thousand words.
dfxm12 5y ago
Seeing dead children and people with their legs blown off made all the commentary on CNN and Fox seem so understated. The US understood that the media's unprecedented access & real time accurate portrayal of the Vietnam war was one of the reasons Americans got disillusioned with the war. Your sensitized reaction to the real scenes of conflict are common. The US doesn't want to make this same mistake again.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lo_lo_lo_lo_ol 5y ago
When I was younger I drove way over the speed limit. Then I discovered places like Liveleak and saw videos of crashes, mangled wrecks and mutilated bodies.
birthday 5y ago
I agree that ignoring and avoiding reality of this world is not good. However, sometimes I wonder how much I fucked up my mind by watching all the horrible stuff online during my teenage years.
hbosch 5y ago
> The world is a scary and violent place. ... A lot is said about desensitization as a result of seeing horrible things on the internet, but in my experience, only the opposite was true. Seeing violence online when I was in my late teens sensitized me and made the stories on the TV real. I can understand this idea. I tend to agree that confronting the harshness of reality (death, suffering) is an important act, particularly in your formative years, so that those confrontations don't paralyze you as an adult. Traditionally this is also done, differently, but getting your kid a pet and ceremoniously allowing them to process the grief of that pet's inevitable death (however it may come). But... I don't know. Are any of us better people for watching a US soldier get executed on our computer screens when we were 14? Does that content, in fact, give people a sense of hopelessness and dread? When a confrontation with death or violence becomes a common (everyday?) occurrence, what does THAT do to the psyche of a child? Certainly if you watch enough, the hyperreality of exuberant violence serves to disassociate the viewer from conscious engagement and does become a morbid form of entertainment and I personally believe (despite the "free speech" angle) it is dangerous to condition your mind to be entertained by suffering.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Death and violence were a daily occurrence in not-so-distant past. The current era is an aberration when viewed from this perspective (a welcome one - but an aberration still). We'd do well to remind ourselves that reality is not sterile and violence-free like the mass entertainment/information industry wants to present it. That doesn't mean you should watch such violent materials, but they do spark reflection and conversation.
sdgasg 5y ago
I never had courage to watch any such videos. But read a few things about torture and such, just reading these things traumatized me and triggered years long depression and anxiety. I lost my faith in God and humans. I lost my desires to make the world better place. Now I just focus on my family and ensuring their safety. I guess different people will react differently to such images, some may become desensitized, some will become more sensitive like you, or some will go in shock and depression like me.
nsgi 5y ago
That's a very good point. Bit of a shame to only learn the importance of it after it shuts down. Is there any alternative?
mathieubordere 5y ago
Reading 'Maus' by Art Spiegelman had a similar impact on me.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Agree. I was never that cognizant of what ISIS/ISIL/Daesh were capable of until I saw videos on LiveLeak that made it all very real. You won’t find those anywhere else, but I dare say that the emotions those stir in the viewer create political clarities that are razor sharp, in a way you can’t get through overly academic and stoic news articles.

74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
Getting your head cut off and die within few seconds isn't more cruel than getting half your face ripped off and a leg due to an airstrike and then bleeding to death over the course of several minutes. Isis was just more honest with their inhumanity.
- secondcoming 5y ago
  There are videos of beheadings where it literally takes minutes for the head to be cut off. It's not a swift blow to the neck with a sword. I remember one where the executioner had to borrow a knife from someone in the crowd because his wasn't sharp enough.
  - 74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
    utterly disgusting ... period. I almost want to vomit reading that. I hope you didn't watch that yourself. my point holds nonetheless.
    - criddell 5y ago
      I think you're being downvoted because you're point is really just whataboutism. It's perfectly valid to talk about the horrors committed without needing to point out that other groups do nasty things too.
      - 74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
        it's not at all whataboutism because I'm not trying to justify either side. and - being downvoted on HN becomes more and more an endorsement afaic tell.
op00to 5y ago
It’s almost as if the propaganda is working.

q_andrew 5y ago

Yes. After the Vietnam war, real footage of violence left the public zeitgeist. Liveleak hosted videos that showed what life was really like when you listened to the guy who was trying to recruit you into the U.S. Army.

nostromo 5y ago

War and terrorism was definitely made “more real” on LiveLeak than what you’d experience via the media or YouTube. I also found a real appreciation for other things: driving safely, worker protections, fire safety. These “boring” things take on more importance when you can see what happens when you ignore them. I don't think people should dwell on these morbid things. But seeing just one or two videos of, for example, a bad car crash, can really give you a healthy fear of these dangers.

Sebb767 5y ago
Especially fire safety seems like something people don't realize. Sure, the rules can seem overly strict and sometimes even nonsensical on the first glance, but it's insane how fast the situation can go from "smale flame" to "house on fire". Seeing the worst case play out is really eye-opening.
- dTal 5y ago
  I don't think it was LiveLeak, but seeing the footage of the Station Nightclub fire online was enough to permanently change how I view crowds and indoor spaces. That stuff is quite scarring - but I'm grateful for the knowledge.
  - stupidcar 5y ago
    Agreed. After seeing that video, any time I'm in a crowded indoor space, I always make sure I take a look around for the nearest fire exit, as well as a couple of alternatives in case it is blocked.
- leetrout 5y ago
  Test your smoke detectors and change your batteries. Change the entire unit after 10 years.
argc 5y ago
I saw someone killed on a lathe on liveleak and ever since that video I've taken tool safety EXTREMELY seriously. Like, I bought safety goggles and wear them for drilling random screws. I never even thought about it before that.

spoonjim 5y ago

Agree. Kayla Mueller would be alive today if she had watched some ISIS execution videos on LiveLeak.

randomopining 5y ago
Yeah and these “it’s all good! We’re all humans!” people seriously need to watch it and then realize you need to back up proper diplomacy with force if needed.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

happytoexplain 5y ago

I agree in many cases, but remember that this is a double-edged sword. Being exposed to horrible things can also make people support unreasonable policies and seed hatred. This principle is why the family of victims aren't put on the jury.

trident5000 5y ago

Honestly LiveLeak got pretty soft over time. Final years were nothing like its former years.

georgiecasey 5y ago

It taught me to never get involved in the drugs business in Mexico or Brazil or never drive in Russia.

randomopining 5y ago
Dude seriously the stuff in Brazil is next level. Mexico I felt like they were stone cold but had some semblance of reason for doing stuff. Brazil was just primal. I was in Brazil for a month, luckily before I watched a lot of those types of vids. Honestly it’s a dangerous place, right beneath the veneer. If you get off the path and into a hairy situation you might be done.

Barrin92 5y ago

Liveleak doesn't portray the reality of war because it shows you some beheading. Voyeurism and gore are not the same as genuine insight into what scary and violent places are actually like. It's worth reading Baudrillard's 'The Gulf War Did Not Take Place' on how media representation, and stylized, selective footage is used to distort. You didn't get to know the 'reality' of war, but the hyper-reality of it. If you were to actually go see the reality of war what you'd see most of the time is actually soldiers doing nothing, not interating with any enemy. People trying to scrape by, someone fixing a pipe, that kind of thing. LiveLeak was even worse and a better source for propaganda than sensational news. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Plac...

Aeolun 5y ago
> what you'd see most of the time is actually soldiers doing nothing True, but that part of the reality of war is hardly relevant. I don’t need to emphasize with the bored soldiers. That’s part of life for me too. I emphathize with the bored soldiers that suddenly had a massive bomb land in their midst.
- hrktb 5y ago
  Isn’t it actually an issue that soldiers are so bored in completely remote places for months and months? People engaging in the army to get some hot action sure would have liked to know more about that aspect, and for better or worse the general public’s perception would also be different when accurately imagining x thousands of trained people stuck in the desert doing nothing 99% of the time.
  - sundvor 5y ago
    “War is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.”
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      Hah, yeah, that was kind of the quote I had in mind when writing my original comment.

artificialLimbs 5y ago

I saw a couple/few videos on LL and it shocked me to the core. I never wanted to see that kind of thing again. But I also wish that everyone could witness it without becoming psychotic about it, to have a visual imprint of 'as bad as it gets', and hopefully do something about it or at least avoid perpetuating those actions. But that would never happen. A whole lot of people will go to very desperate measures to avoid hard truth, to avoid even thinking about this kind of situation.

nonbirithm 5y ago
What does this say about people who cannot see this kind of footage without becoming traumatized? Is it right to just call them incapable of handling the truth? I had seen some things in the past, on similar channels (4chan). The result was that when someone else had to drive me somewhere on a freeway I became so hopelessly anxious that I was constantly reminding them to drive slower, or just not drive me at all, because in my book a weekend trip to the supermarket wasn't worth dying over. I was incredibly immature. My belief is still that cars are the most dangerous things the average human will operate, even though they are necessary in some cases. But the auxillary thoughts surrounding that belief are clearly not healthy for me. I truly felt as if I had been changed for the worse. A few months after that I was nearly involved in a horrific accident with a group of people I didn't know very well because they drove carelessly on a road that was iced over. That only served to solidify my feelings and anguish at the time over the fact that death could come at any time. But it wasn't only that. Whenever I got into a car with somebody, I started to seriously question whether or not I would be alive in half an hour. I seriously began to consider that our vehicle would be struck from the side by an SUV or tanker truck, killing us instantly, without the slightest shred of meaning or insight about life, from every possible angle, over and over again. I do not enjoy feeling like this. Since then I've given up any notion I've had of driving again. I stay away from sidewalks next to the road whenever possible. I allowed my knowledge about "the hard truth" and "reality" of dying at any moment to spread to my closest friends and my family, and that has permanently changed how some of those people perceive me for the worse. I understand that this is not a rational way to approach life. But I still don't trust myself to drive, given how I better understand how I might act in stressful situations, and given that in many diverse aspects of life I'm not much better mentality-wise than "those idiots in cars." Yes, I can make the excuse that it's better for the environment. But in reality I understand that I can only choose this way of life because I'm lucky enough to not have to drive, and I also understand that it is a product of my weakness in accepting that millions of people are capable driving safely for decades and never dying anyways. I feel like the images have only caused me to catastrophize everything I touch. In my opinion, watching these kinds of videos can bring us closer to the truth. People should have the freedom to choose to see them. But they are absolutely not for everyone. I have seen things which have refused to exit my memory ever since, and the exhaustion of having to put so much energy and trust into therapists that ultimately never work out means that they will probably stay there for a long time. For too many of the images, I cannot understand what purpose they have served in my life except to solidify my already preexisting notions that I could die at any moment (in the sense of thinking I could die exactly 47 minutes from writing this comment), and that the world can be a cruel, horrific place. Watching such videos in itself doesn't change that. It does not make the terrible people less terrible. It will never change the fact that people will be mutilated and die in horrendous accidents because of personal or systematic incompetence. It will probably not cause enough wide-scale change to prevent the next authoritarian regime from brutalizing the citizens of another country. Maybe the footage will spur on a new generation of activists, but personally, I was already afraid of too many things for them to make a positive impact in my life. Given that I understand the state of my mind, I should never have let my willingness to see "the unfiltered truth" get the better of me.

staticassertion 5y ago

I had a similar experience. I've lived a relatively privileged life, I've never been in a warzone. Being exposed to the brutality that exists outside of my comfort zone really opened my eyes to the fact that other people live very very differently. You can "know" that, but it's much harder to feel it without some experience - and while a picture is nothing like experiencing that sort of life, it's a hell of a lot more than just reading that it happens. There's a visceral reaction when you see something so brutal and horrific, and an empathy as well with the victim, that I think is extremely hard to obtain via text, especially short text. I'm not saying LiveLeak was perfect or good, I think that it likely also fetishized tragedy - but I will say that there is absolutely something missing in existing news organizations with regards to showing the brutal, hard to watch truth.

acituan 5y ago

> The world is a scary and violent place. Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Counter-point; the world is mostly a neutral, even OK, place, with also violence in it. Our cognition is heavily biased towards saliencing and preserving the scary bits, and being exposed to a planet scale showcase of those bits does not necessarily make us wiser (e.g. better decision makers). At least for me personally it took a decade before I regretted having watered those flowers of morbid curiosity. The redeeming quality of LiveLeak might be, however shocking the content was, it also had an inherent grounding in bare reality, compared to the narratively embellished one of mainstream media. The former is ultimately bound by rules of reality but the latter is only bound by what people are willing to believe in.

moralestapia 5y ago
>Counter-point; the world is mostly a neutral, even OK, place It isn't, you are lucky to be in a privileged environment. And I don't even mean warzones. People who live paycheck-to-paycheck with family or medical issues wouldn't agree with you.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  But LiveLeak doesn't help anyone understand the constant crushing stress of being unable to afford necessities. OP said 'scary and violent', and on that scale things really aren't that bad.
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    Actually, a significant portion of the videos portrayed the life of the homeless, the sick, people under the influence of drugs/alcohol, and other things that you don't usually find on the usual platforms.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > People who live paycheck-to-paycheck with family or medical issues wouldn't agree with you. Considering they all go on living anyway, you’d say the good parts must outweigh the bad parts though.

vmception 5y ago

Same for me! I remember the precursor to Liveleak, Ogrish, which was much more graphic than whatever Liveleak became in Liveleak's last final years. It was back in 2004 or so when I had to reconstruct a somewhat censored link on their forum, which took me an FTP server directory with videos, that I waited to download, which showed me Al Queda celebratory videos of killing US soldiers. That was a first for me, I'd never seen footage of US not winning, let alone a side that considered it a good thing. Really just broadened my horizon. Was uncomfortable at first because I felt there might have been a reason with personal legal liability that the footage wasn't available in other places, but much more curious. Anyway, such footage is much easier to come across now, with beheadings and such just occurring. Any Facebook feed assumes you want to see an extrajudicial killing involving a US police officer. But at the time I was amazed such content exists. Not appalled. I can't really relate to people that say they can't watch that kind of stuff and will just take someone's word for it. I get appalled by things out of someone's control, such as a gas leak blowing off the side of an apartment building. But there's never anything real I have any feelings from watching.

lunatuna 5y ago

For me it was seeing close ups of the Chechnyan war. I couldn’t believe what people were doing to each other. It has made the anarchy of war something to be avoided at all costs. Clearly showing that there are no winners on the ground. Soldiers shooting 3 generations of a family unarmed, soldiers having their heads clumsily chopped off with an axe. I’ve avoided all of the not safe for life type stuff since, but agree that these are important things to see. With all the wars since and the easy images found on western news at least I know what is happening outside of what they are willing to show.

joshxyz 5y ago

Sites like that made me more careful about driving, especially on wearing seatbelts good lord.

foobarthrowaway 5y ago

Mainstream news/propaganda organizations want it that way so they can sell you the next war in Iraq, the next genocide in Syria, the next assassination in Libya, etc.

throw37472 5y ago

I personally believe gore videos involving children need to be banned, just like child pornography is. I also feel gore videos that involve non-consenting adults should be judged as "revenge porn." I understand there should be some leeway for journalists reporting the news and shedding light on atrocites. I'm just not sure where that line should be.

kfprt 5y ago
I'll never forget the video I saw on liveleak of a 5 year old who's hand was driven over by a car for stealing in Iran with the whole village watching. That minute of video did more to shape my views than anything else.
- nanoshelter 5y ago
  This was fake news and you fell for it. Look it up!
  - kfprt 5y ago
    I have looked and never found anything, several times in fact. Do you have a source?
    - anthk 5y ago
      I think that's false because even under Sharia driven tribes children under 14 are exempt of any punishment. At least the most severe ones. Just think about it: if every child had those punishments deserved to adult people, they would be extinct in years. Even the most phanatic Mullah is not that idiot.
    - naavis 5y ago
      Took 30 seconds to find it on Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bread-and-media-circuses/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bread-and-media-circuses/

baybal2 5y ago

I remember American TV regularly showing things like Palestinian children blown to bits back in nineties, or atrocities of wars in Africa, and then it somehow just disappeared.

jonathanstrange 5y ago
Showing these kind of things has always been against the ethical standards of journalism and exceptions to it used to be discussed intensively by editors - excluding the tabloid yellow press who make their living from this trash, of course. I guess some of the more recent American TV channels realized at some point, after they had gained fame for showing everything, that quotas are not everything and that relatives usually don't want the death of their beloved ones displayed all across the Internet without their consent. Sites like Liveleaks are very hypocritical, they pretend to show videos for "freedom of speech" while instead their main purpose is simply to satisfy their viewers' voyeurism. Cheap thrills are the main reason for viewing this kind of material - and don't pretend to be someone better, you've looked up that kind of stuff yourself for precisely that reason just like I have. People who watch this material only want to satisfy their curiosity and get the thrills from it. That's also why Truffault once said "There’s no such thing as an anti-war film." (There are exceptions, like "Taxi Driver", and perhaps also "Deer Hunter" and "Killing Fields", but these are rare.)
- baybal2 5y ago
  Excuse me, but showing "Palestinian children blown to bits" was probably the biggest contributor to global pressure on Israel which resulted in Oslo accords, Israeli military pullout from Lebanon, and Rwanda not burning to the ground completely. Such things indeed play a vitally important role.
  - jonathanstrange 5y ago
    Even if what you claim was true, emotional knee-jerk reactions have never helped in any conflict. You give the best example, the situation in Palestine has not improved and looks as dire as ever. Showing things like "Palestinian children blown to bits" will first and foremost escalate a conflict and instigate more violence. I stand by what I said, people almost solely look up these videos to satisfy their personal morbidity and voyeurism. It's the same reason why there are always many bystanders around accidents who stare at the victims without doing anything. On a side note, there is also a false dichotomy in your argument. I haven't said that the press should never show such pictures or videos, just pointed out that it generally violates ethical standards of the press and it has always been hotly debated when exceptions should be allowed. Sites like Liveleaks are nothing more than trash in comparison.

pfranz 5y ago

While I think visibility of these horrific things is important, watching too many or dwelling on them just isn't healthy. It reminds me of this opinion article on watching police videos: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/12/why-i-cant-watch-police-videos-anymore/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/12/why-i-can...

Bancakes 5y ago

True. Too many people protest police actions and recommend "shooting the legs" and such. That's just one example that is readily disproved with a few liveleak videos of police shootouts, yet takes paragraphs to describe in text. These videos help people shape their own opinions instead of trusting authority.

Salgat 5y ago

This is why reddit's /r/watchpeopledie ban was such a loss. I didn't go to the subreddit often, but when I did, it was an intense reality check at how good I and others have it, and how much of the world still needs help. Also helped me to really appreciate OSHA at my workplace...

mrtksn 5y ago

It's fascinating to see how the sausage is made. It gives the most important datapoint before you can preach your higher ideals. It's different if you seen a war(even if it's a liveleak video), it keeps your feet on the ground when you have to decide to cast a pro/anti war vote or argue about it's merits. That's what worries me about our sterilised internet: Things happen, but we are not allowed to peak under the cover to see what actually happen. Unless it’s something nice, it must be limited to the commentary of people who themselves may never seen how it is made or even worse, having their own agenda. Sure, gore can brutalise people but if it's happening everyone deserves to see it. Much more people used to claim that the Covid-19 is just the flu, until the footage of hospital corridors emerged.

vaylian 5y ago
It's the same thing with climate change. A lot of people still don't understand how bad it actually is.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  The think that really drove that home for me is remembering how after long trips you'd have bugs splattered all over your windshield and front end. People even used to sell deflectors. That doesn't happen anymore cause we've killed off most of the bugs...

drawkbox 5y ago

LiveLeak is like those old drivers ed videos, it can make you better by showing how bad things can get. I remember pre-internet it was Faces of Death [1] (lots faked but still intense), then Ogrish then the makers of Ogrish going to LiveLeak. There is some value in seeing the worst humans have to offer as it gives you a wider picture, but also too much of that is depressing. People should seek out the full spectrum to be based in reality, but also push better quality of life. As a kid, horror movies were our superhero movies really with late 80s/90s slasher flicks. Fangoria was a big magazine. Then you see things like what actually goes on, seeing the true horrors of the world. Sometimes seeing those things can make you appreciate calm, quality of life focused ways, be nicer to people and try to make the world a better place as it can be raw. LiveLeak was one of those places you could go to see the video that everyone else was blocking or censoring. ItemFix looks similar just not as intense, more on the WhatCouldGoWrong or IdiotsInCars type level. Always good to have another video site for seeing the broad spectrum of the human condition. Just balance time more towards quality of life, but always know how bad it could be, makes you respect today and appreciate things. Everything in moderation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faces_of_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faces_of_Death

specialist 5y ago
I am dumbfounded by how snuff films went from taboo to infotainment. ~30 years ago, the Rodney King beating and the movie Natural Born Killers were shocking. Today, it's just another day.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  Even 30 years ago, police violence against black men was just another day. The difference is you're now aware of the truth. That's a good thing. We can't learn from our mistakes until we're aware of them & can confront them without writing them off as merely a shocking outlier. I wouldn't conflate movies and real life. A snuff film is not the truth. Woody Harrelson is not a murderer, Derek Chauvin is.

hughrr 5y ago

Agree with this entirely. So much is never said or seen on commercial media. It’s easy it’s shrug off a censored report and carry on with your day. However the comments section was nasty. There are a lot of really not very right people out there waiting to have their world view and prejudices legitimized. And that’s quite worrying.

cosmodisk 5y ago

We used to watch the stuff on Ogrish back in the day,when we were teenagers. I couldn't say it desensitized me but made me realise I can't do shit about it. When one side of the planet is launching rockets to space and the other throwing stones on people because they looked at someone, there's no fixing of this only slow, agonising passing of time,with the hopes that it will eventually improve as people will be less and less willing to do certain things. It also made me realised,how we, people in the Western world,are insulated from many horrors of this world both directly and indirectly by the lack of coverage on them.

Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
Don't forget that the rocket side of the world does, in fact, also tend to throw some of those rockets at other people. That insulation you mention is heavily intentional. How many Americans would have continued to support the military actions in the Middle East if live videos of mangled bodies were being broadcast right into people's homes on a nightly basis? We in the West live in relative safety yet we refuse to recognize as a culture how much harm is done by our societies' actions to others' safety. We subconsciously know it's happening but we say "meh." It's the ultimate privilege -- yet we wonder why so many in the Middle East hate the west. "They just hate our freedoms!!" They hate that we reserve the right to a relatively safe life for ourselves.
- cosmodisk 5y ago
  "Don't forget that the rocket side of the world does, in fact, also tend to throw some of those rockets at other people." Oh absolutely! Rockets vs stones was a simplified example and I do agree that the world is much more complex than that. I'm in Europe,so some of the issues are slightly different than those on the other side of the pond but there's also plenty underneath the surface. Just yesterday was reading how many thousands of people died because a few countries decided to switch off radios that were supposed to capture distress calls from the boats with refuges in the sea. That's the ultimate stick fingers in your ears and do la la la kind of thing. And the list goes on,while we can sit in our safe homes thinking it's all out there,too far from me to care too much.

74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago

This also changed my perspective on Isis cutting heads off and filming it. The act of filiming it is just of medial relevance. Of actual relevance is the suffering caused to the victim. Having said that - our media tries to sell the idea of a clean war. Air strike -> Bad people dead. First of all if a bomb goes off more often than not also innocent civilians are hurt and killed. Further more - and that is my main point - if a rocket goes off somewhere not everybody is dead immediately. Instead people will get random parts of their body ripped off and will bleed miserably to death. It's arguably more painful to die that way compared to getting one's head cut off within twenty-three seconds.

GordonS 5y ago

As a kid, I always wanted to be a pilot in the British airforce. I'd grown up on games like F19 Stealth Fighter, and I thought it would be the coolest thing in the world to fly planes like that and drop bombs on the bad guys. I think it was during the gulf war in 1991, when I a TV news piece, shot by a war journalist. He was filming from inside a helicopter, and there was a US gunner using a fixed gun (50-cal?), gunning down enemy forces, shooting them in the back as they ran away. I was horrified - this was not what I thought war was. My silly ideals of valour and honour, were not real. As I grew older I saw and came to learn of yet more horrors - US and British bombs dropped on schools and residential blocks. Children blown to pieces. The US and UK selling arms to anyone with the money. And going back further, the indiscriminate use of cluster bombs during the Vietnam war. One of the worst aspects, was how the military often seemed to try to bury their mistakes. When they didn't, all we got was platitudes until they did it again. Perhaps the worst of all, was seeing how everyone else seemed to maintain the "them and us" stance - we were the good guys, and all those brown people were the bad guys. Very few cared one iota if a bomb was dropped on a school in the Middle East or Pakistan. I was disgusted by the apathy around me. And so, my dream became a nightmare, and I, thankfully, took a different path. I largely have journalism and truth seekers to thank for that.

op00to 5y ago
I see my kids going through this same pattern. They idealize war guns and violence, and it really pains me because I know it sets them up to minimize the realities of war and violence.

andrepd 5y ago

Liveleak opened my eyes to about two things: - The horror of the Mexican Drug War. The unbelievable violence and cruelty, which is almost the exclusive responsibility of the United States' catastrophic War on Drugs. - Car accidents. I'm always much more alert, as a driver and as a pedestrian. Actually, add fires into that list. Terrifying stuff.

curation 5y ago

Yes. I watched Saddam Hussein hanged on Liveleak. Just before it was taken down. Horrible realities. Yes.

Lev1a 5y ago

The change most immediately apparent to myself is that I actually wear a helmet while riding my bicycle now after having seen peoples heads pop like melons from even small accidents notwithstanding being run over by trucks (think of an opened tube of tomato paste being slammed by a fist).

chefandy 5y ago

It's powerful, important content, but collecting and promoting it as shock entertainment, entirely out of context, doesn't strike me as the right way to do it. Our media's lack of willingness to portray the human cost of our overseas exploits is clearly a huge problem, but I don't think this really addressed it. It's all impact without usable information. While incredibly violent things do happen in the world regularly— and we should not be ignoring them— the world is safer than it has ever been, and that should also be front-and-center in people's minds when considering this. People predominantly concerned with the scariness and violence in the world will be more likely to promote overly violent responses to relatively innocuous situations through war, policy, policing, etc. I wish there was a publicly accessible, nonprofit archive a la Wikileaks that focused on similar content including oversight for things like privacy issues. It would be nice to see citizen pundits paying attention to it for issues that matter to them and putting things in context as they're shared instead just blasting streams of violence at people. But wish in one hand and successfully monetize in the other and see which one fills up first...

junon 5y ago
WatchPeopleDie was supposed to do this. I wish the mods had been better about the garbage comments, but even then I think the reddit admins were hell-bent on shutting down any subs they didn't personally like. But I agree fullheartedly. Seeing such things really made me 'feel' how precious life is and how terrible the world can be. It helped me navigate moving to Europe a few times, even.
- badRNG 5y ago
  > but even then I think the reddit admins were hell-bent on shutting down any subs they didn't personally like. Or shutting down subs that might make the site advertiser unfriendly.
  - chefandy 5y ago
    I really think for something like a violent video archive to do as much good as possible, it needs to be entirely grant funded. Aside from the obviously problematic approach of monetizing violence, I don't think you can be too heavy-handed in protecting privacy with this sort of thing. Though I wonder how this might change with deepfake videos gaining momentum. I think the entire venture would be really expensive to do well.

ErikVandeWater 5y ago

Independent journalists seem more willing to show the brutal reality. I recently saw this video of an officer being sent into an ambush by a man Homeland Security knew was armed and dangerous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94afIBzOb5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94afIBzOb5I Fair warning: The video shows the murder.

duxup 5y ago

> Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Are we having problems finding horrible things to watch other than on Liveleak... because I sure am not... I really don't think Liveleak is some paragon of "truth" or the content you describe.

joshsyn 5y ago
Its not, but there is a saying picture are worth a thousand words.

dfxm12 5y ago

Seeing dead children and people with their legs blown off made all the commentary on CNN and Fox seem so understated. The US understood that the media's unprecedented access & real time accurate portrayal of the Vietnam war was one of the reasons Americans got disillusioned with the war. Your sensitized reaction to the real scenes of conflict are common. The US doesn't want to make this same mistake again.

deleted 5y ago

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lo_lo_lo_lo_ol 5y ago

When I was younger I drove way over the speed limit. Then I discovered places like Liveleak and saw videos of crashes, mangled wrecks and mutilated bodies.

birthday 5y ago

I agree that ignoring and avoiding reality of this world is not good. However, sometimes I wonder how much I fucked up my mind by watching all the horrible stuff online during my teenage years.

hbosch 5y ago

> The world is a scary and violent place. ... A lot is said about desensitization as a result of seeing horrible things on the internet, but in my experience, only the opposite was true. Seeing violence online when I was in my late teens sensitized me and made the stories on the TV real. I can understand this idea. I tend to agree that confronting the harshness of reality (death, suffering) is an important act, particularly in your formative years, so that those confrontations don't paralyze you as an adult. Traditionally this is also done, differently, but getting your kid a pet and ceremoniously allowing them to process the grief of that pet's inevitable death (however it may come). But... I don't know. Are any of us better people for watching a US soldier get executed on our computer screens when we were 14? Does that content, in fact, give people a sense of hopelessness and dread? When a confrontation with death or violence becomes a common (everyday?) occurrence, what does THAT do to the psyche of a child? Certainly if you watch enough, the hyperreality of exuberant violence serves to disassociate the viewer from conscious engagement and does become a morbid form of entertainment and I personally believe (despite the "free speech" angle) it is dangerous to condition your mind to be entertained by suffering.

selfhoster11 5y ago
Death and violence were a daily occurrence in not-so-distant past. The current era is an aberration when viewed from this perspective (a welcome one - but an aberration still). We'd do well to remind ourselves that reality is not sterile and violence-free like the mass entertainment/information industry wants to present it. That doesn't mean you should watch such violent materials, but they do spark reflection and conversation.

sdgasg 5y ago

I never had courage to watch any such videos. But read a few things about torture and such, just reading these things traumatized me and triggered years long depression and anxiety. I lost my faith in God and humans. I lost my desires to make the world better place. Now I just focus on my family and ensuring their safety. I guess different people will react differently to such images, some may become desensitized, some will become more sensitive like you, or some will go in shock and depression like me.

nsgi 5y ago

That's a very good point. Bit of a shame to only learn the importance of it after it shuts down. Is there any alternative?

mathieubordere 5y ago

Reading 'Maus' by Art Spiegelman had a similar impact on me.