Social responsibility, practical joke, social
experiment whatever you may call it, you see these videos popping up on the
internet about rape, women empowerment, social response to a crime and wonder
if there actually exists more crimes than fake viral videos of it. Now we're
all for educating the world about empathy and creating an ideal world where
people act as parts of a well-oiled machine called 'the society' over the new
and exciting medium, we remain skeptical as to thinking whether 'crying wolf'
is the best way to go about a social revolution that the world is desperately
crying out for.
While there are several reasons for us to
strongly condemn this supposedly genuine act of social responsibility, we’re
not planning on elaborating the obvious just to prove a point. From a more
logical point of view let’s start off by admitting that these poor attempts at
social reforms are in all respects for entertainment purposes and plays
absolutely no part in changing the way people live, think or act. From a
standalone perspective of the matter it cannot be considered to be acts of
social responsibility since it is purely commercial at heart, cause if these
videos or social media posts actually did share something common with it,
poverty stricken Somalian children would be billionaire driving their Mercedes
and enjoying the high life based on the attention it commands over the new
medium.
The viral nature of such videos
increases the likelihood of an actual person who may come across an incident
such as rape viewing the same, furthermore, be influenced by it when faced with
an actual scenario, not necessarily in a good way, since this to them is
nothing more than a prank by bored adolescents trying desperately to create a
viral video that nobody wants to be a part of.
The fight or flight response
triggered by the human brain when faced with an unfamiliar social situation is
purely instinctual and situational. Our point being that by creating a fake scenario
in a video all they accomplish is showing how an average brain would function
under the prevalent stress of the simulated situation, which isn’t necessarily
the ideal solution to the problem we are facing right now. Aside from the fact
that it is only done for pointing fingers at people who might not function well
under stress. Let’s not forget the all too familiar social and judicial
repercussion an individual is faced with on a genuinely heroic attempt to fight
the ‘social malice’. We’ve seen it, read about it and at least some of us have
questioned the integrity of a person who tried to help out a girl being invaded
or a wounded guy by the sidewalk. Could we be blamed for thinking so? With the
world being so twisted as it is who could be trusted?
Basic human behaviour is the
social infection here and that is something that exists within the system. Our
efforts to cure this infection is compromised by the fact that we ourselves are
working within the system. Adding commercialism to the mix doesn’t help the
cause either. For those of you who are supposedly helping the cause by
capitalizing on it, we suggest you help by not helping such that the true
heroes of our society are open to do their jobs without being tainted by
influence of this unfiltered medium soiled by human thoughts, selfishness and
whims. It might be the innocence of a kid who is unable to fathom the
seriousness of a dangerous situation or a helpless old man crying out for aid
for a fellow being being wronged that could save the day.
With hopes that the hero that
exist within each one of us could rise up to the challenges set by the society
and the mechanical mob behavior, we leave you with nothing more than
information and influential thought, not videos.
Jugal Joseph
PGP Marcomm -2015-16
