Last week I shared about the church’s opportunity to fully integrate faith with media, social media, and technology. The post was intended as a discourse on the “good” uses of media. The flip side of that argument is that there remain negative, even evil, uses of technology.
Last Wednesday, seven teenagers were arrested after their YouTube video went viral. And, by viral, I don’t mean the kind of viral you and I aspire to, like Rebecca Black’s “Friday”. {I know you sing that song into your hairbrush every Friday morning!}
The three minute video depicts the attackers yelling at the visibly terrified victim, punching and kicking him in the face with apparent glee as he curled up on the snow-covered ground. After robbing the victim, the teens {one of whom is the son of a sheriff’s deputy} posted it on YouTube. Shortly thereafter, their names and identities were provided in the comments of the video, which aided in their arrest.
Photo courtesy of Creative Commons
Call me cynical, jaded, or heartless, but this article didn’t cause my eyes to widen. I didn’t scratch my head in bewilderment. It didn’t strike me as anything I hadn’t heard before.
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