Thoughts on Ryan Clementi and the Rutgers Tragedy - Ryan John

 

 

When freshman Dharun Ravi and his lady friend set up the web cam on Tyler Clementi's laptop in Rutgers this month, I'm sure they didn't anticipate Clementi jumping off the GW Bridge.  But, what did they expect?  They expected to extremely expose Clementi's most hidden secret to willing viewers in an effort to achieve some short lived Internet fame that would increase their popularity around a very large and intimating college campus. 

 

Ravi probably assumed maybe a few Rutgers students would take his Twitter advice and log into iChat to view the video and like wild fire the video would spread to hundreds of Rutgers students before making it's way to the rest of the world. Ravi's name would be attached to this video as the funnyman prankster who caught his roommate in the act. How hilarious, right? A great way to kick off his freshman year!

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is scouring Youtube watching the widest range of videos the site has to offer.  And I figured out why.  I am obsessed with reality.  I'm obsessed with figuring out the world through analyzing real people and situations... what people are really thinking or what happens when someone is caught off guard.  That is the type of video I really enjoy- Basically people's candid reactions when they believe no one is watching.   

 

The barrier to this is that most people put on a show in front of other people. They go by the character that they want the world to know them by and their lines are almost rehearsed like that of an actor. But when individuals are given an opportunity to watch other peoples real selves in action, it reminds us of our own imperfect selves and we feel comforted to know that we are not alone in our human imperfection.  

 

Hence the unquenchable thirst for reality television. But lets not get it confused.  The reality television of 2010 isn't what first caught our eye back in the days of America's Funniest Video's and Cops.  It has turned into a scripted reality that shows what people might do for money, but I guess the majority of people fall for it. 

 

If I could have one wish, it would probably be to be invisible so that I could figure out the world little by little. The Internet is a gateway to figuring out the world.  I think we all have that desire to be invisible and a computer screen is often the projection of what that invisible eye picks up.

 

These moments of candor expose other peoples humanity.  Ravi probably felt better about himself and his human flaw because he was exposing something he thought was humiliating about another.  It just so happens we all have that personal need for comfort and when someone or something can make us feel better about it, we'll entertain it. There is strength in numbers.  The people watching that video are the equivalent to the kids on the playground laughing and pointing when a bully beats up a "wimp."

With the internet, the bully doesn't have to be the biggest kid on the playground.  With the internet, Ravi was able to bully Clementi to this extent.  But without the internet, this story probably wouldn't have the reach that is has and perhaps the lesson learned wouldn't be to so many people.

Find the Cost of Goodies Buried in the Ground - David Loftus

When you get your latest electronic toy -- iPhone, iPad, Xbox, Wii, Guitar Hero: Metallica, Playstation, Game Boy, Nintendo -- do you ever think about how many people died to put it in your hands?

Probably not. Human sacrifices (unwilling ones) in the course of bringing conveniences, amusements, and luxuries into our homes and hands are not the most natural thing that comes to mind when we enjoy a brand-new purchase. They’re not a particularly pleasant thought, either.

Yet many of our possessions today have come to exist through a process that included the waste of precious human lives. When slaves worked outside the door (and sometimes inside a well-to-do household), and slave-trading ships carrying more cheap labor from Africa lost and dumped up to a third of their human cargo on the voyage across the Atlantic, this was a little more obvious.

Today, the truth becomes evident only once in a while … such as with the recent rash of suicides among workers in the Chinese factories that make iPhones.

This year, at least 12 assembly-line workers, many of them young women, have committed suicide at Foxconn plants in China, and at least two more have attempted to kill themselves. The most recent “successful” attempt was on August 4 when a 22-year-old woman leaped to her death from her factory dormitory.

Foxconn is the registered trade name of Hon Hai Precision, the primary manufacturer of iPhones and iPads for Apple. A Hon Hai company spokesman said Friday that it had been “blinded” by its success, and didn’t cater to the emotional needs of its young workforce, of which 75 percent is between the ages of 18 and 24.

The company has responded by doing everything from installing nets around its buildings to catch falling workers, and holding morale-boosting pep rallies, to announcing a 20-percent pay raise in May. An entry-level worker at the company’s Longhua plant was reported to make 900 yuan, or $131.80, a month before overtime or bonuses.

Suicidal pressure and deadly working conditions are nothing new, even in the U.S. The old phrase “a Chinaman’s chance” (meaning slim to none) dates from just after the Civil War when Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad in California, Nevada, and Utah were lifted up or down rock cliff faces in baskets to set dynamite charges for construction of the transcontinental railroad. Many of them fell or were accidentally blown up.

When my wife and I investigated her ancestors in southwestern Pennsylvania, I noticed that local newspapers from the late 19th and early 20th century were full of stories of fatal coal mining accidents. These workers were digging coal to fuel trains, steamboats, and factories, and to heat homes. Dead white miners were usually identified by name, but only numbers were provided for foreign immigrant fatalities.

There’s been plenty of talk about American jobs outsourced to overseas locations. We’ve also exported some of the employee fatalities that are also an inherent factor in industry -- diminished in more recent decades by detested government regulation.

(On the flip side, one might also note that suicide rates go up among unemployed Americans; an August 17 news report in the Washington Independent noted skyrocketing suicide rates in high-unemployment areas such as Elkhart County, Indiana and Macomb County, Michigan.)

I’m not saying any American consumer desires or expects such deaths. There isn’t really anything the buyer at this end of the process can do about them. But it behooves us to be aware of how interconnected we really are in the developing global economy, and that no “free market, individual rights” argument is going to overcome the fact that what people do (or buy) on one side of the planet can affect, and be affected by, events on the other.

That’s a fact of life today. And death.