3 ms·

> Seeing the worst output of humanity non-stop can (and _will_) completely break you mentally if consumed at a sufficient amount, as we are at the end of the da

• throwanem 3y ago
  I too have met the guy at the party who can pound vodka shots like water and never notice a difference. I'd say "I don't go home with guys like that any more", but I was never quite naïve enough to go home with guys like that in the first place.
  • sneak 3y ago
    We can measure objectively the damage ethanol does to the tissues in the body, both short and long term, and the impairment it causes to judgement. We have studied its use both intermittently and chronic, and its effects are well-understood. Can we say the same about bad images on a screen? All of this “if you look at enough of them you become broken” seems like folk “wisdom” to me. I don’t want to be the guy holding up the “[citation needed]” sign, but I am truly skeptical of this claim. Just because it’s gross and unpleasant to look at doesn’t mean that lots of exposure causes permanent damage.
    • throwanem 3y ago
      Yes, and just because it's impossible ethically to construct a study showing one way or the other doesn't mean that it doesn't.
  • rvba 3y ago
    OP is writing to completely ban vodka though.
    • throwanem 3y ago
      And now we're just debating LNT vs threshold model vs, I hope no one here wants to actually argue for, hormesis.
• phatskat 3y ago
  “Growing up on the edgy internet” isn’t the same as a work week of seeing non-stop images of CSAM or beheadings or shootings. Even if you were on /b/ all day everyday in 2007, the two aren’t remotely comparable. I was in a Chatroulette one day that did a number on me. 10 seconds, mostly for me and my neighbor to parse what we were seeing. Once we did we immediately exited and shut the laptop and just sat there, completely mindfucked at what we saw. This was maybe like 2010 and I still think about it, it was horrid. If I was subjected to content like that for 40 hours a week I’d either be an alcoholic or checking myself into the psych ward.
  • sneak 3y ago
    Ok, how do we know that your temporary horror would result in alcoholism or mental illness if the exposure were continued? How do we know that most people would respond that way? It seems like a major unexamined assumption to me. I don’t know why everyone just takes this as truth on faith.
  • matrix87 3y ago
    It's actually worse. If you're watching something terrible like gore, there's still some distance between you and the thing that you're watching OTOH, if you're getting emotionally abused in a place that's already full of damaged people (and if you're seeing all of their pathological coping strategies first hand), that has more potential for long term harm
  • ogurechny 3y ago
    Obviously, I can't study the whole database, and give percentages, but in practice most “images of CSAM” are either semi-professional or amateur photos of naked kids and teens in studio or home environments. Most likely with an ever-growing flood of selfies recently. Sometimes with sexual acts. I know we've all been going in a strange direction, but a naked body is still not a “traumatizing experience”. Regular person seeing that content for weeks only gets bored, and probably realizes that regular adult exploitation in entertainment is hardly any different (both meanings of “adult” here), which is actually a good development. However, you got used to cheap thrills coming from stories about “horrors out there” (whether digitally far away in some “darknet”, or geographically, in some “third world country”), and your imagination has already drawn you a picture of countless maniacs recreating slasher movie scenes (“life imitates art”?). It is simply logistically impossible to create that much, not to mention that criminals are not in a hurry to film themselves. As for “shootings” (an American term for media spectacle in which murders are just seeds), many of those have been causally televised for entertainment purposes. I recall some high profile “shooting” even involved some president showing an example of how all good citizens should consume that content in front of TV screens.
• sBqQu3U0wH 3y ago
  There is no source because it's not true. People pretend they are horrified more than they really are because it's more "normal" and socially acceptable. They think more about what others will think about them than what they are actually seeing: "Will others be okay with the way I react to this?", etc.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• fzeroracer 3y ago
  It's funny how many people like you have to pop on and do the opposite of virtue signalling (vice signalling?) to try and fail to prove a point. The 'edgy, uncensored' internet you know about isn't even close to what paramedics and people in the OP experience. I know people that did the same thing, they grew up on that side of the internet. One of them became a paramedic and had to quit after a few years because it was starting to severely break them. But by all means, if you're the kinda person to go 'Nah, I wouldn't break' then you should give these jobs a shot. See how far you get.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• dudeinjapan 3y ago
  > I don’t think it broke me or harmed me in any way. Your denial is a telltale sign of PTSD.