The media is just one those things in life that you either love or you hate, probably both on more that one occasion. We need it in order to know about world issues, or to vent our anger out in the form of a blog, or to research important documents on the internet. But we still loathe the effect it can have on the society we live in today, one of the more serious effects being violence. And this is not petty domestic fights about whether to watch Big Brother or Top Gear tonight that I’m talking about, but the violence we see on phone cameras posted on the internet because the owner of the phone thought it would be funny to attack an individual in the street and record it. And what does the youth of today do as a response to this idiot? They laugh.
There has been an alarming increase in cases of attacks being recorded on mobile phones for fun, a craze now known as “happy slapping” and the media frenzy on this issue is only making it worse. The more people hear about this new form of entertainment for disturbed individuals, the bigger the craze will get and then we will see more brutal attacks, even murders being recorded.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/article/0,2763,1470214,00.html
According to this article from the Guardian website, the new fad started off as a craze on the UK garage music scene before catching on through school playgrounds throughout London, and is now a nationwide phenomenon. The report from the Guardian states that as the craze spreads towards the north of England the attacks become more menacing and involve more adult victims, as there has been a longer period of time for the attackers to adjust to this new way of intimidating people and the more it is reported on the more attention is given to these attackers therefore they will get more ruthless. Even on the internet these happy slappers are promoting the use of ones mobile to record an assault, with a forum member “happyslapper2” describing the fad as a joke and that people should do it when they are bored! It has been shown in the media that it is mainly youths who play the attackers and they are often wearing hooded jackets to conceal their identity, contributing also to the hysteria surrounding “hoodies” and how we as a nation perceive those wearing them.
Sources used:
www.theguardian.co.uk
