Does The Internet Desensitize Us?

(Now with an editors note!)

A few weeks ago on Lewis Black’s Comedy Central Show, The Root of All Evil, one comic argued that porn had desensitized us to sex. South Park followed that up the following week as Stan’s dad could not get off to regular porn and instead relied on crazy fetish sites to whet his appetite.

This brings up the idea: Has the Internet desensitized us? I’d argue yes. Here’s why:

1) As soon as you start up your browser you’re berated by headlines. Whether you use Google News, Yahoo, Digg, The New York Times, or other sites to get your news, you’re constantly greeted by depressing headlines everyday. “Family of 4 dies in tragic train/car crash.” “Dog split in half by fallen tree [pics].” “Seven-year-old girl raped by family dog.” After a while the shock that should come with these stories just doesn’t show up anymore. Combine these headlines with shock videos on YouTube and the most tragic news stories are nothing more than words. No more sympathizing with these humans who have actually experienced a loss, we read the headline and move onto the next depressing reality of our world.

2) Since the days of Napster and the Peer-2-Peer music piracy revolution that followed, the Internet has gotten rid of our sense of guilt. Most people would never walk into a store, steal four CD’s and walk out. But since the start of piracy, MP3’s, and the changes that the music industry is facing, stealing a CD or two has never been easier or more guilt free. Hell, artists barely make anything off of CD sales anymore, concerts are where they get most of their money. But the point here is, there was a time when we used to feel even a little bit bad about stealing from our favorite musicians. Now we find a link, wait and hour and poof! The new leak from your favorite artist is buzzing through your ears a month ahead of release. Do you feel bad? Do you feel guilt? No. Do you feel excited that you have something that your less tech-savvy friends don’t? Yes.

3) Perhaps the biggest desensitizer that the Internet has ever seen was 2girls1cup.com, the infamous video of 2 girls shitting and vomiting all over one another. Some people made it through the whole thing, only to shock their friends, others couldn’t get through the first minute (me). Point being that no one would ever watch that display in public, regardless of the clear legality issues of two girls puking and shitting everywhere. After that video, even the 45 seconds that I lasted I felt invincible. I felt I could watch a kid stick his leg out only to have two cars hit it simultaneously, splitting his lower-leg into 3 part. I felt I could watch a guy cut off his penis and then staple it back to the nub that it came from. I felt I could do a Rubix Cube. I was the fucking man.

The point of all of this is, the Internet allowed humanity to take a step back from itself. The Internet let us watch each other from the comfort of our rooms with all of the windows and doors locked and say, “That could never happen to me, but boy does it suck for that guy.” We’ve learned to steal and not feel any remorse for the people we take from. We’ve learned to observe the world from our deskchairs and emotionally become distant from the world we used to live in.

Has the Internet made us less of a people? Yes. And thank God for that. Now Google News is filled with hilarity. I can tackle beastiality videos without so much as a blink. Does this make be a bad person? Probably, but welcome to the Internet: Desensitivity training for the rest of us.

If I could rewrite the last paragraph now, I would. For the record, I don’t think tragedies are funny, I’m just not as effected by them now. I don’t thank God for us being less of a people, it’s a bad thing actually. Now you have 12 year old screaming the N-Word on Xbox Live just because they can; no one’s there to beat them up or tell them no. I feel like the Internet has taken a bit of my soul, I feel less for people in bad situations that I read about because there are just so many stories and I only have so much emotion for that sort of thing.