Today, videos often describe the current trends of our society. Videos such as Sharkeisha and The Knockout Game have put a bad name to society.
More often than not, the videos that go viral, or become instantly popular, are those of violence between two people. One of the videos that have become popular because of the violence involved was one about a girl named Sharkeisha. In the video, she beat up one of her classmates viciously, and no one stopped her until the girl was on the floor.
“The Sharkeisha video made me cringe because it was so harsh. I could barely watch it, but overall I was scared of watching it,” said senior Nicole Galisatus.
“The Sharkeisha video was very hard for me to watch. I was not expecting it to be so violent, and it made me wince,” said senior Jeanette Chow.
Websites, such as Worldstar Hip-hop, also do not help because of their main focus on fight videos such as Sharkeisha. They often end up in people’s newsfeeds, or a friend will tag them in it to view it. The video will continue to spread until a majority, if not all, of the school has seen or heard about it. After that it gets spread to other surrounding school until the video goes viral.
Even though it can be quickly taken down online, more often than not it gets reproduced. For example, the Sharkeisha video, which was taken off of Instagram, was reproduced and can be seen by everyone on YouTube.
Even with all the promotion of anti-bullying on television, and the consequences of bullying that the school has, these videos continue to be uploaded. This makes the people who star in them instantly popular, such as Sharkeisha, who gained 400 followers on Twitter the night when the video was uploaded. In addition, they receive fame from other social media celebrities who promote the video, or make a parody of it.
One video in particular adds bits of the famous video game Mortal Kombat like one of the fights in the game, in addition it says the famous line ”finish her” when she kicks the girl square in the face.
“I think our exposure to violence has helped these fighting videos rise in popularity. People are more accustomed to seeing violence; violence has become an entertainment of sort, and the line is blurring for what violence is appropriate and what isn’t,” said Chow.
“I find it wrong that people like Sharkeisha get popular after they are in a fight video. It basically consents the violence,” said Galisatus.
There is no way a school can punish a student for watching these type of videos, but as the number of people who watch violent videos increases, teenagers should not spread them. If this is done, there is a chance that these types of videos will become less popular and go out of trend.
“I do not think that people should be punished because not all of the viewers might like violence, some might view it in disbelief,” said Galisatus.
It is up to society to put a stop to videos and people like Sharkeisha from becoming famous for the violent acts they demonstrate in the videos.