Keeping your head online
The Washington Post has an article this morning about how Mexican drug cartels are using the Internet in a highly sophisticated way. Among other things, they have been posting videos of killed or tortured enemies on Youtube and other video sites as both a deterrence and as bragging rights. Decapitation and autopsy videos are shown with voice overs warning traitors not to trait and presumably kids to not try this at home.
The anonymity of the Internet coupled with the powerful reach of even a simple website, (let alone a leviathan like Youtube) creates this capability--the option to disseminate multimedia of highly charged video that would almost certainly be censored by most governments or their regulated media lapdogs. And this isn't the only case like this--remember the mideast decapitations popping up after the very public killing of reporter Danny Pearl? BTW, I just looked with Google and found that the Pearl video is still out there--I won't publish the link.
What's it mean? It means that the Internet is the greatest source for mass propaganda ever created. Whether said salesjobs are terrorist recruiting or commercial advertising from Disney is simply a matter of degrees and orientation. The only saving grace is that it will always be possible for dissenting messages to also be aired, implying that the future will be some sort of game where we are like ping pong balls, perpetually caroming off opposing messages, flying from one side to the other based on the strength and the spin. I can't wait.
Posted on April 09, 2007
