Gimme a fuckin' break

February 17, 2010 7:00 PM

Metafilter, please grow a spine.

What purpose does this serve? Now we know what it's like for someone else's loved ones to be killed?

Videos of people dying are not best of the web.

Oh for fuck's sake. Did you see any bodies flying? Any blood? Yes, people died, but in the footage, it's all metal--I watched it twice and didn't see a single person, alive or dead--and worse is seen in hollywood movies and tv shows everyday. In fact, the still photo in the linked news article is more gruesome than this entire video.

I posted this because I thought the various angles were fascinating to compare. The footage is incredible.

And you know what? People died while you read this post. Dozens of 'em. If that scares the beejezus out of you, turn off your computer, climb under your covers, and cry yourself to sleep.

Totally lame deletion.

posted by You Should See the Other Guy to Etiquette/Policy at 7:00 PM (390 comments total)

cry yourself to sleep

Awww, he's unself-aware!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:02 PM on February 17, 2010 [5 favorites]

Holy shit you just stuck it to the fucking man!
posted by The Straightener at 7:03 PM on February 17, 2010 [63 favorites]

Well, we're NOT rotten.com, first. And second, while googling for context it is apparent that video is linked in a bajillion places, so if someone really wants to see it , it's out there.

I do understand what you are trying to say but on the other hand I don't think this is a precedent the mods want to set, postwise.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 7:03 PM on February 17, 2010 [9 favorites]

Firmly with the mods on this one, fwiw.
posted by restless_nomad at 7:03 PM on February 17, 2010 [8 favorites]

Listen, I feel you. I got pissy after my first deletion. Been there. But you can't draw a parallel between "real people dying in a clinical fashion" and "people fake dying in the movies". Arguing "Yes, people died, but the entertainment value" is pretty terrible.
posted by boo_radley at 7:05 PM on February 17, 2010 [33 favorites]

Yeah the combination of the video [I didn't watch it] and the lulzy jokes sort of made the thread not cool from the get-go, sorry.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:06 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Couldn't agree more, You Should See the Other Guy. The mods are getting a touch over-zealous, I'm afraid.
posted by MrMoonPie at 7:08 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

I did watch it, and yes, no gore visible, but you know what? Metafilter is worldwide. For all we know relatives of the injured and dead could be here as members or visitors. I'm okay with the deletion, altho I wouldn't necessarily have been in rant mode if it had been left up.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 7:08 PM on February 17, 2010

Issues of content aside, a single link to a video of a fatal accident, without any context, seems like pretty thin material for a post.
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 at 7:09 PM on February 17, 2010 [28 favorites]

"and worse is seen in hollywood movies and tv shows everyday."

Right. Except for that small but crucial difference where after the scene of the movie / TV show is done filming, the actors wash off the blood make-up and go home ALIVE. This is not the best of the web, and I'm frankly surprised anyone would argue otherwise. And the point that "well, you don't really see any bodies flying, so it's cool" is obtuse. So a video where real people die is not okay if you see blood, but it's totally fine if it's just "all metal"?
posted by Pontius Pilate at 7:09 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Did you read the translated article? Because if you read about the guy's sister dying while he pleads with her to hang on, and the little kid with the mom pinned in the car and still want to gawk that's really fucked up.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 7:10 PM on February 17, 2010 [24 favorites]

And to be a little more verbose, cortex and I talked about this and were both like "well mathowie commented in it... so maybe...?" and decided to leave it alone but then mathowie decided to delete it. A lot of people flagged it, quickly, and it was one of those cases where we might have gone either way but the rapid flagging made us feel "hmm people really don't like this" which was a stronger push than our particular feelings which I think were more mixed.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:11 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

There are better ways to protest the deletion of your thread than making a rant in Metatalk. Maybe message the mods. But seriously, you can't think that this thread is going to result in any sort of positive outcome. Your whole tone is antagonistic and condescending. Just because your post wasn't deemed amenable to the site doesn't mean that anything is wrong with Metafilter. I certainly don't think that the thread in any way resembled, "the best of the web." Maybe you should reassess what you were trying to do with the post and see if you can come up with something that works.
posted by anansi at 7:12 PM on February 17, 2010 [8 favorites]

This will wend...

_{... damnit. I've got to get to these threads sooner.}
posted by Aizkolari at 7:12 PM on February 17, 2010

Metafilter, please grow a spine.

Grow a hide. Shit gets deleted all the time.

It's not really the sort of post you should be this emotionally invested in defending. It's a rather tragic snuff video. The first time I saw it I nearly threw up.

Just because people die all the time doesn't mean I want to go hang out in the cancer ward being a poison eater.
posted by loquacious at 7:13 PM on February 17, 2010 [56 favorites]

I'm with the mods here. The fact that the deaths occur (kinda, sorta) off screen doesn't change the fact that this is essentially a snuff movie. As an action movie buff, I understand the appeal of the spectacle, but I found this really hard to watch. If you want cool, bloodless bang-em-up footage, please see this post.
posted by brundlefly at 7:16 PM on February 17, 2010

Heh, my first callout (well, partially mine anyways) - hi Mom & Dad!

My problem with this has nothing to do with how gruesome the video is. I agree - it is quite bloodless. I just think it's...what's the word....heartless to post a video of an accident in which four people were killed and many more injured, essentially for our entertainment, and without any other redeeming content. I fully comprehend the fact the people are suffering and dying around the world as we type, and I understand that we can't afford to spend time crying over all of them, but it's distasteful to me to cheerfully gather around videos of their pain and death.

Now, I'm sure you're a very nice person, and I don't think you're a cold blooded psychopath who enjoys watching people be maimed and killed - maybe you thought I was implying that - maybe you didn't even know someone had died, or maybe you just find traffic crashes interesting - that's fine. I just wanted to express my discomfort with the total disregard for the people involved in the spectacle we were enjoying. Also, incidentally, I think it's a pretty lame excuse for "best of the web", even if it wasn't effectively reveling in human misery, but that's my subjective opinion.

I actually wasn't calling for the post's deletion - I'd be fine with it staying on the front page, but I'm also fine with matthowie deleting it - this is his house we're playing in after all, and I would have if I were running it.

Cheers!
posted by Salvor Hardin at 7:17 PM on February 17, 2010 [5 favorites]

I'm with YSSTOG. The mods can do what they want, obviously, but I find the sensitivities weird.
posted by unSane at 7:17 PM on February 17, 2010

Because if you read about the guy's sister dying while he pleads with her to hang on, and the little kid with the mom pinned in the car and still want to gawk that's really fucked up.

But there were various angles! VARIOUS ANGLES!!!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:18 PM on February 17, 2010 [22 favorites]

If that scares the beejezus out of you, turn off your computer, climb under your covers, and cry yourself to sleep.

Also, it doesn't "scare" us. The video wasn't gruesome at all, you're right.

It's just really fuckin juvenile and insensitive to go "hey look at the INCREDIBLE FOOTAGE in this sweet video of people's loved ones being mowed down!! cool video, bro!"

Go get your own blog if you want to rubberneck at car wrecks. This was a weak post on every level.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 7:19 PM on February 17, 2010 [10 favorites]

Grow a hide. Shit gets deleted all the time.

This.
posted by pompomtom at 7:20 PM on February 17, 2010

Metafilter is worldwide.

Tell it to the relatives of the luge rider. That thread stayed and has footage of the guy dying. So much for consistent standards.

So a video where real people die is not okay if you see blood, but it's totally fine if it's just "all metal"?

Um, yeah. If bodies were flying and people were seen being killed, I wouldn't have watched it let alone linked to it. (I didn't click the Luge link, for instance.)

Did you read the translated article?

No. Nor did I link to it; nor was it relevant to why I made the FPP.

A while ago there was a link to security footage of a train derailing. It stayed as well--this video is very similar but, imo, more fascinating.

Your whole tone is antagonistic and condescending.

It was initially a post for the thread and was responding to what I considered antagonistic and condescending comments. I was about to post when the thread got deleted.

It's just really fuckin juvenile and insensitive to go "hey look at the INCREDIBLE FOOTAGE in this sweet video of people's loved ones being mowed down!! cool video, bro!"

Yeah, which is not what I did, is it. You can try and recontextualize the wording of my FPP all you want, but that's not what I said. I'm fascinated with film, filmmaking, angles, editing... and I suspect people with similar interests would likely find this footage as interesting as I do, which is why I posted it. If you don't like those things, don't click the link. But there is nothing inherently wrong with the footage as far as MeFi's past goes--see the train video and luge links as proof.

But whatever... I just think the deletion is lame and I think the given reason is even more lame and not at all in line with past policies.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 7:24 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

I am with the mods on deleting both the deadly bus crash and the pointless bus fight. I would like to title this comment "You Should See The Other Guy please go cultivate a modest amount of humanity and compassion for other peoples suffering" but I can't do that. I would like that title because implying that metafilter as a community or the moderators in particular are spineless is insulting and does not stand up to even casual scrutiny.
posted by shothotbot at 7:27 PM on February 17, 2010 [4 favorites]

Wow. This is where you are making a stand, eh? Fascinating.
posted by dirtdirt at 7:28 PM on February 17, 2010 [15 favorites]

I thought it was a pretty fascinating if somewhat gruesome illustration of the physics involved. That first van that got hit just rolled, and that's not something I think I would have anticipated.

Functions as a damn good reminder to buckle up for me. You never know what's out there on the road with your name on it.
posted by namespan at 7:28 PM on February 17, 2010

I'm fascinated with film, filmmaking, angles, editing...

It's a single link to footage of a bus crash. I haven't watched it, and don't intend to, but I find it hard to believe that it's Citizen Kane.
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 at 7:29 PM on February 17, 2010 [22 favorites]

You Should See the Other Guy: "I'm fascinated with film, filmmaking, angles, editing... and I suspect people with similar interests would likely find this footage as interesting as I do, which is why I posted it."

Then why didn't you highlight that in some way? You surely had to know that gruesome trumps interesting film hack any day? It's like, "Oh hey, look at this porn! I mean...the angle of that camera! How *do* they get so close like that? Fascinating!"
posted by iamkimiam at 7:32 PM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

Sorry, I didn't really mean to be that harsh, You Should See the Other Guy, but you're kind of tilting at windmills.

I could see this kind of emotional investment about some art, or maybe even a politically focused thread or something genuinely redeeming or controversial, but this is a hell of a windmill to tilt at.

The mods are also human, not robots, and the sort of consistency you seek in this kind of web community is considered harmful.

Arguing for excessive consistency or "established rules" is not a good feature for MetaFilter. Flexibility and staying human is a good feature. Otherwise you might as well replace MetaFilter with any other link or news aggregator.

Anyway, look at the bright side. Your post was deleted just before I hit post on a 10 paragraph anti-car screed where I used silly phrases like "packet-based human transport networks" and "cars are really just expensive little explosive tin-can death machines", so count your blessings.
posted by loquacious at 7:32 PM on February 17, 2010 [8 favorites]

The luge post consisted of links to contextualizing news articles, and it was left to the commenters to dig up the video to gawk at. Your post consisted of a video to gawk at, and it was left to the commenters to dig up the context.
posted by eggplantplacebo at 7:33 PM on February 17, 2010 [37 favorites]

You know what dude watching you act like a spoiled kid because your post about a bus load of people who got handed a shitty life ending deal got deleted from Metafilter? So you're here to let everyone know it wasn't fair? Really? CRY ME A FUCKING RIVER.
posted by nola at 7:33 PM on February 17, 2010 [29 favorites]

That thread stayed and has footage of the guy dying. So much for consistent standards.


The post itself had no footage of the guy dying, actually. Plus it was flagged significantly less. The thread had very little in the way of lulz and there were a lot of people discussing how reasonable it was or was not to have any footage of the guy's death at all, even though it was also captured from a variety of angles. It was actually a lot of prosaic discussion about the olympic committee and home court advantage and olympic training regimens in addition to the guy dying.

Really this is the kernel of the "will encourage discussion" aspect of what makes a good post. I don't know if it was you, the post, what you decided to link to, what, but the thread was, when I saw it, a few "oh my" reactions, a few shitty jokes, a few reactions to the shitty jokes and what is there to say? I get that you're interested for one specific reason but that didn't manage to make the thread into something different. I am sorry, getting posts deleted sucks. But I do think this deletion was consistent with how we usually do things.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:34 PM on February 17, 2010 [8 favorites]

Metafilter, please grow a spine.

I think this is better solved by you getting a thicker skin.
posted by Ironmouth at 7:38 PM on February 17, 2010 [7 favorites]

When everyone agrees with St. Alia of the Bunnies you pretty much know you've lost.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:43 PM on February 17, 2010 [81 favorites]

it's like GI Joe and Cobra teaming up to fight the Fakistan villains, yes.
posted by boo_radley at 7:45 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm sorry I came on so harsh but for god sake man.

I don't think it was necessarily an obvious bad post. But when you get shut down because it seems ghoulish and unnecessary to the user base here, you come charging in here to Meta to demand the righting of a wrong. Given the subject of your post a touch of humility would show some deference to other people's suffering. Instead of this selfish display
posted by nola at 7:45 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

You know, in general, I think the whole "This thread shouldn't have been deleted, the mods overreacted" goes over slightly better when it isn't your own thread. I mean, it's one thing to be outraged by the mods and their near-fascist-like penchant for censorship and double standards. But how can we be certain you're not just pissed that your thread got deleted?

You found a video that you thought was neat. And then you went through the incredible effort of posting it on MetaFilter. By your own admission you knew little about the reasons or circumstances of the accident. And then a bunch of people were upset, and flagged it. I don't see how the world is a worse-off place now that a widely-publicized video is not also linked from MetaFilter.

Also, worse things are not seen in hollywood movies and tv shows, because those are fictional and no matter how realistic the special effects, do not involve the deaths or injuries of other human beings.

MetaFilter has never, to my knowledge, claimed to have consistent standards. Yes, there is some amount of what for lack of a better word we might call precedence, but allowed and deleted threads should not ever be considered normative. I think I can live in a world where the odd context-free video of a vehicle being smashed to smithereens is not linked from the front page of MetaFilter.
posted by Deathalicious at 7:48 PM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

Metafilter, please grow a spine.

Grow a hide.

Grow a prehensile tail, while you're at it. Just cause it'd be cool.
posted by jonmc at 7:51 PM on February 17, 2010 [52 favorites]

The problem, also, is that the thread wasn't going particularly well. The deletion reason aside, I bet it might have stayed if the content were framed differently. To call the people who reacted negatively wimps, or whatever, seems kind of off-target in light of that.
posted by invitapriore at 7:54 PM on February 17, 2010

not at all in line with past policies

I don't know that mefi has an objective standard, and if it did, I'm not sure I'd want to be a member. When the thread is a train wreck about a train wreck, it's a train wreck; similarly for a bus wreck.

I've been guilty of poorly framed posts too. Thankfully not deleted because they weren't flagged enough to be.

If you'd put together a list of film scenes that failed to capture the chaos of a bus wreck adequately, or succeeded in doing so that'd have been something, but you didn't put anything into this except a link, so I fail to see why you are so excitable.

FWIW, I found the footage interesting too. That doesn't make it a good post.

Crap, I can't write very well when my blood sugar is low...
posted by BrotherCaine at 7:54 PM on February 17, 2010

A bus crash isn't appropriate but a plane crash is.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 7:55 PM on February 17, 2010

Then why didn't you highlight that in some way?

I don't think that's my job--to contextualize or editorialize. I realize this isn't the standard (these days), but the video is exactly what I said it was.

You surely had to know that gruesome trumps interesting film hack any day?

The video isn't gruesome. It contains no visible people or animals, living, dead, or going from one to another.

I am sorry, getting posts deleted sucks.

Ya know, it'll be hard to believe, but it being my post isn't what bothered me about it being deleted. Had it been someone else's, I would have had the same reaction.

Really this is the kernel of the "will encourage discussion" aspect of what makes a good post.

Huh? I didn't think how discussion-encouraging a FPP was was relevant. Personally, I always find the least-commented-on threads to be the most interesting. Hell, if I make an FPP that gets more than 30 comments, that's a failure in my book.

I think it's a pretty lame excuse for "best of the web"

This canard has got to die. Metafilter hasn't been best of the web in years. There's a video on the front page now that's a press release for a friggin beer, for goodness sake. With 60 comments!

Perhaps that's why my reaction is so base. I'd rather watch great footage than talk about pisswater--and places to do it are getting harder to find.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 7:57 PM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

"I'm fascinated with film, filmmaking, angles, editing... and I suspect people with similar interests would likely find this footage as interesting as I do, which is why I posted it."

Really? Because that footage contains no filmaking or editing in any real sense, its not film, but found security camera footage and the only angles are static and largely co-incidental. All in all there nothing of any real relevance to film making, certainly not the different angles in that clip, and if you had actually been in any way interested in any of this you might just have chosen to link to some actual filmmaking which illustrated this rather than random crash footage.
posted by tallus at 7:57 PM on February 17, 2010 [16 favorites]

The frequent deletions and rare banhammering are what make MetaFilter great. Eventually, you'll learn, through conditioning, what makes a good post.

This post didn't make it, but I'm sure you'll make better ones in the future. Hopefully with less people dying, because that's kind of inconsiderate to their relatives. Gawking at a vehicle crash just because it looks cool makes light of a very real and personal tragedy.
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:59 PM on February 17, 2010

I sat through the Dnepropetrovsk footage and sometimes spend an hour or so in the evening with a bottle of wine looking at the various ogrish-esque video sites that have begun to proliferate the web in the past few years and frankly don't think much about any of it (except the animal ones, which I mostly avoid but which sometimes slip through and make me crazy angry) but honestly this kind of stuff is not what I come to Metafilter for. It would have been better with a bit of context, and I understand that SLYT posts pop up quite frequently, some of it is interesting or incredible or lulzy, sometimes it's just rubbish, and sometimes shit gets deleted on here but far more often than not it's for the good of the community and I wouldn't take it personally. Chillax!
posted by turgid dahlia at 8:01 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'd rather watch great footage than talk about pisswater-

it's actually quite alcoholic
posted by Solon and Thanks at 8:03 PM on February 17, 2010

I don't think that's my job--to contextualize or editorialize.

Well, you did editorialize. You titled your post "Ouch." That gives me a pretty good idea of where you're coming from, claims about interest in "filmmaking, angles, editing" notwithstanding.
posted by neroli at 8:05 PM on February 17, 2010 [15 favorites]

Because that footage contains no filmaking or editing in any real sense, its not film, but found security camera footage and the only angles are static and largely co-incidental. All in all there nothing of any real relevance to film making

Tell it to Michael Snow.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:07 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

"Ouch" is actually a French filmmaking technique wherein the story is told in a first-person perspective, but the cameraman/protagonist is covered in acupunture needles, which are CGI'd out in the final cut, and you get some interesting interactions and acting techniques. How to approach the love scene, or the final dramatic confrontation? Mainly it's whimpering and staying as far away from the sets as possible but, hey, I'm not a filmmaker.
posted by turgid dahlia at 8:09 PM on February 17, 2010 [5 favorites]

The post didn't really bother me at all.

Folks do die all the time, in horrible ways. People I love are dying right now. It happens. The value I get from watching something like that is in seeing how things break down in real life. It's interesting to me to watch just how the bus crashes. Some of you disagree. I'm cool with that.

For many of us in western culture, we've grown up watching the flashy, Hollywood version of death, calculated to be revolting only when the story needs us to be revolted, and noble when the story needs us to be inspired. The real world we all inhabit is much less clear-cut. I don't think it hurts us collectively to stop and think about these facts. Why is it that it's completely ok to watch a fictional person die, but watching real people die is seen as a mark of sociopathy?

I'm not a psychopath. I'm a human being, just like you. I cry when I hear a sappy Storycore entry on Friday morning on the way to work. I cry when the underdog wins Wimbledon. Some of us spend our whole live cowering from death. Some of us choose to look it in the eye and realize that at any moment it could all be over in an instant. Some of us have no choice in the matter and every moment, day-in and day-out, death is right there waiting for one little slip, one mistake.

I don't know where I'm going here. I'm not fighting for this post. I'm just trying to be introspective. The only thing certain in life is death. I wonder if it helps us or hurts us to shy away from it. In the long run, does it help or hurt to watch videos like this? It probably varies from person to person.
posted by BeerFilter at 8:12 PM on February 17, 2010 [22 favorites]

Hell, if I make an FPP that gets more than 30 comments, that's a failure in my book.

Then you should be thanking Matt for the deletion. That post was only eight comments away from failure, and it wasn't even an hour old.

Seriously though, I get where you're coming from, and kinda sorta agree to a certain extent. But the absence of context in that post, the assishness of this one, and the really compelling argument that the mods' ability to make judgment calls is a feature, not a bug, puts me squarely on the side of pro-deletion. Not that my opinion counts for anything, but there you go.
posted by Balonious Assault at 8:13 PM on February 17, 2010

BeerFilter: "Storycore "

Holy moly.
posted by boo_radley at 8:16 PM on February 17, 2010

Thanks, BeerFilter.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:17 PM on February 17, 2010

I think the takeaway from this is that a lot of people are uncomfortable watching videos of events in which people die. Personally, I don't find this unbelievable...mostly because I am one of them, but even if I weren't it wouldn't necessarily come as a shock.

If reducing such a video to its filmmaking components and geeking out about them is your bag, then it's probably a good idea to do that with a group of like-minded individuals and not expect a community comprised of thousands of people to conform to your expectations of what is tolerable and what isn't. You maybe able to watch such footage and not be upset, and that's fine. But to go so far as to call the people who are affected by it spineless? Man, I don't know what to say about that.
posted by DrGirlfriend at 8:17 PM on February 17, 2010 [5 favorites]

brundlefly writes "The fact that the deaths occur (kinda, sorta) off screen doesn't change the fact that this is essentially a snuff movie."

Even if that were true, and I can't see how this fits even a lose definition of snuff film as murder is neither shown nor the intent of the footage, that didn't stop footage of Challenger being posted in the last few weeks.
posted by Mitheral at 8:19 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Lame post, good call on killing it, though it didn't bother me (just weak FPP)... but most of all thanks for not closing this thread that's talking about the deleted post.

(A couple times today I have thought we need a MetaMetaTalk to talk about stuff being prematurely closed or deleted in MetaTalk.)
posted by rokusan at 8:19 PM on February 17, 2010

Why is it that it's completely ok to watch a fictional person die, but watching real people die is seen as a mark of sociopathy? [...] In the long run, does it help or hurt to watch videos like this? It probably varies from person to person.

This is all an interesting philosophical discussion and I don't think there's anything wrong with watching someone die. I agree people are very disconnected from death.

However, I think that given a video of strangers dying it's in bad taste to distribute it for entertainment. This is my opinion because if my sister had died in that crash, I would be very upset if it were passed around the internet as an example of interesting video editing techniques. I think it's important to consider those who are grieving and not be a part of the gawkers, even if you find it intellectually or morally stimulating.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 8:20 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

I like bad posts because often great conversations or ideas spring from them.

For example, "Offscreen Snuff" is a great sockpuppet name.
posted by rokusan at 8:22 PM on February 17, 2010

boo_radley,

Storycorps.
posted by hydrophonic at 8:23 PM on February 17, 2010

hee, StoryCorps of course. Silly phonetic brain.
posted by BeerFilter at 8:25 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

I watched it. I think it should be seen, because, thirty years ago, I almost did it.

I fell asleep at the wheel of a car on a 4-lane highway, and then the traffic got heavier and slower. I woke up feet from the car in front of me, and managed to scoot over to the shoulder, where I passed about ten cars (say 150 feet) before I could stop. There was no 'accident', but it is a hell of a way to get smarter.

On long drives, falling asleep sneaks up on you, then sits on your head. The cure (five damn minutes of real sleep; yes, I did it right there on the shoulder) is quick and painless. You might not even get a ticket. I didn't. This was in Chicago, btw.
posted by hexatron at 8:26 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

It was a crappy, contextless single video link. Casualty vampire videos are like porn -- so prevalent on the internet that you need something more than just "look, another one!" to make for an interesting FPP.
posted by Forktine at 8:27 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

* I think there are situations in which such videos could thoughtfully be distributed, but it really requires more care than "this is a video of a crash. ouch!"
posted by Solon and Thanks at 8:31 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

St. Alia of the Bunnies: Well, we're NOT rotten.com, first. And second, while googling for context it is apparent that video is linked in a bajillion places, so if someone really wants to see it , it's out there.

I do understand what you are trying to say but on the other hand I don't think this is a precedent the mods want to set, postwise

Holy shit.

It's hard to even type it out, but: I agree with Alia.

Wow.
posted by paisley henosis at 8:37 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Hah, hexatron. I saw you coming up behind me, and got over to the left so you could get to the shoulder. You looked over at me as you stopped. We nodded in acknowledgment.

But wait, that was in Newnan, Georgia. Ever been to Newnan?
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:39 PM on February 17, 2010

Huh? I didn't think how discussion-encouraging a FPP was was relevant. Personally, I always find the least-commented-on threads to be the most interesting. Hell, if I make an FPP that gets more than 30 comments, that's a failure in my book.

65 comments already. This MetaRant is a failure.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 8:39 PM on February 17, 2010

It's hard to even type it out, but: I agree with Alia.

Here's the thing. She may be a kook, but she's no dummy.
posted by Deathalicious at 8:43 PM on February 17, 2010

Alia jokes? Really? Way to go for the low hanging fruit.
posted by mlis at 8:51 PM on February 17, 2010 [8 favorites]

I don't mind the deletion, but St. Alia is dead wrong in presenting this as a criterion for worthiness:

For all we know relatives of the injured and dead could be here as members or visitors.

That's one of the worst reasons for deleting a post I can imagine, on a par with "But there might be children watching!"
posted by mediareport at 8:51 PM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

If I wanted to look at videos like that I would go to Liveleak, not MetaFilter.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:54 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

RubrNeckr 2.0
posted by Rhomboid at 8:59 PM on February 17, 2010

I'm jumping on the "just because you like to watch car crashes doesn't mean the rest of us do" wagon. I was actually in a bad accident last year and if people were posting it and making jokes about it, I'd be pretty pissed off.

Remember last year when that PSA about texting while driving went around, with the 3 teenage girls getting in a bad accident? Yeah, I was even pissed that people were making jokes about that, and saying things like "I hoped the rescue helicopter would crash." It was not long after my accident and I could still remember the smell of the airbag explosion and the fear at my friend in the passenger seat losing consciousness, let alone seeing her arm and leg ripped open, and not knowing if I had broken ribs. I'm guessing if you get off on watching car accident videos, you've never been hurt in a serious crash.
posted by IndigoRain at 9:06 PM on February 17, 2010 [4 favorites]

So who gets to decide what is offensive and what isn't? Accidents are offensive because someone might have been in a car crash? Whut? But cock rings on the front page, wahay!
posted by unSane at 9:12 PM on February 17, 2010

I'm fascinated with film, filmmaking, angles, editing...

I'm fascinated by people that exhibit all the classic symptoms of Aspergers. Lack of empathy, intense focus on single subjects, pedantry...
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:14 PM on February 17, 2010 [8 favorites]

I'm guessing if you get off on watching car accident videos, you've never been hurt in a serious crash.

Not unless you're David Cronenberg.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:18 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

I watched the video several times. I kept thinking I missed something. At first I thought the sound affects from the left side angle was added after the fact. Now I am not so sure. Regardless, I thought the post should have stood. Many of the joke comments could have been deleted, but with video and surveillance cameras EVERYWHERE these days, these types of videos will be more and more prevalent. I do not see the point of the deletion or why it is not for Metafilter, but the mods can be mods and can delete as they see fit.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:25 PM on February 17, 2010

Area Man Goes And Gets Himself Hit By A Goddamn Bus
posted by neuron at 9:29 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Not having a spine would probably serve one quite well in a bus crash.

Failing that, a super-bendy one, like a cat's.
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:34 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Metafilter needs more blood lust.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:39 PM on February 17, 2010

You don't get to complain about the deletion of your own thread. It's bad form.

If you care so goddamn much why don't you start a blog? I hear horriblebuscrashes.com is available.

Walk away from the thread now, before you hurt yourself.
posted by ged at 9:42 PM on February 17, 2010

I vote you save "Metafilter, Grow a Spine" for when Metafilter really needs to grow a spine, not for when an accident-porn post gets pulled for being too much up Ogrish.com's alley.
posted by dunkadunc at 9:42 PM on February 17, 2010 [4 favorites]

Sometimes a SLYT will work. Generally, those are happy or funny in some way. This video was not. I think with some background information, links to stories about what happened and why, it could've been a good post. It was not.

The video was pretty fascinating, because from the front angle it seemed like a relatively mild crash, but the two side angles were violent and horrific.
posted by graventy at 9:46 PM on February 17, 2010

Remember last year when that PSA about texting while driving went around

Remember? I believe it was FPP'd and not deleted though yes, it was gruesome.

I'm guessing if you get off on watching car accident videos, you've never been hurt in a serious crash.

You'd be guessing wrong. Nor did I say I "get off" on car crashes.

I'm fascinated by people that exhibit all the classic symptoms of Aspergers. Lack of empathy, intense focus on single subjects, pedantry...

So make a post about it so I can ignore it.

"Ouch" is actually a French filmmaking technique

I can't tell if you're implying I'm lying or rationalizing why I made the FPP or not. I understand that if you are not taken with film (or physics) you'll find it hard to believe that many who are would find this footage fascinating. I sent it to every sound and film editor I know and so far all who've responded thought the same thing I did. Two have already started a conversation about how they would edit the footage and the inherent problems in camera placement that is indicative of multi-camera setups. You might find this foolish or lacking in empathy or whatever, but you know what, not everyone is you. People have different reasons for liking things. Whether you agree with them or believe them or not is really not that important. I would say the vast majority of things I see on Metafilter every day bore the shit out of me but I usually don't cry for their deletion or question the poster's motives. I come here because usually I find something every day that I like--usually it's something like the kinds of things I link to (film or art related items that don't require the OP's contextualization). For instance, mccarty.tim's posts are the bane of my Metafilter experience--I can't scroll past them fast enough. But it doesn't bother me that other people seem to like his gyob-style posts.

You don't appreciate the footage and don't seem to believe that I do (or why I do). I get it. Really. But is it really too hard for you to accept that perhaps you're, you know, wrong, and that some people are different than you and that at the very least you don't have to suggest I'm lying and am really just a carcrashpornfreak or whatever?

I made this MeTa post because I thought the deletion was lame. I thought it was lame that Matt commented in the thread and then after people started making shit jokes, it was easier to delete the thread than babysit it and delete/warn/ban the threadshitters. Obviously, many people disagree. I'm fine with them disagreeing and I shoulda reworded this post before moving it from blue to grey, but whatever, it's done.

The video was pretty fascinating, because from the front angle it seemed like a relatively mild crash, but the two side angles were violent and horrific.

Indeed. As one responder to my email said, "They should show this in classes to emphasize when a master shot is necessary. It'd be a good counter to all the footage that emphasizes when it ain't."

Alia jokes? Really?

Yeah, and I'm the one that should be ashamed of myself.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 9:53 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

I flagged it on the basis that it was an arguably entertaining thing that had about zero chance of fostering interesting discussion, particularly with no context or ancillary information. When I want to see things like that I go to pretty much anywhere on the internet except here.
posted by Nomiconic at 9:53 PM on February 17, 2010

I would say the vast majority of things I see on Metafilter every day bore the shit out of me but I usually don't cry for their deletion or question the poster's motives. I come here because usually I find something every day that I like

So basically: I come here to flaunt what this community generally finds compelling despite my disinterest, but I can't understand why they don't find me compelling
posted by setanor at 10:03 PM on February 17, 2010 [7 favorites]

For instance, mccarty.tim's posts are the bane of my Metafilter experience--I can't scroll past them fast enough. But it doesn't bother me that other people seem to like his gyob-style posts.

Evidence would seem to indicate otherwise. I realize I'm probably not the guy to say this, but holy Jesus does that come off as assholish and really, really meanspirited; sure his comment here was a little patronizing, but it didn't feel so intentionally dickish as to deserve that.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:03 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Poster wrote in comment #742130">> I'm fascinated with film, filmmaking, angles, editing... and I suspect people with similar interests would likely find this footage as interesting as I do, which is why I posted it.

This does NOT speak in your favor.

I'm more interested in film than you, unless you're working on studying it . People who are interested in film this way are actually only interested in sensationalism.

Yeah, yeah, people die all the time. People also shit all the time. Why should we be looking at either? What does it do to inform us?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:04 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Also, given everything you say about your complex interest in this video, why in the fuck did you give the thread such a banal, lulzy title?
posted by setanor at 10:04 PM on February 17, 2010 [14 favorites]

I'm fascinated by people that exhibit all the classic symptoms of Aspergers. Lack of empathy, intense focus on single subjects, pedantry...

That's a major low blow, totally uncalled for and pretty much the shittiest comment made in this thread, hands down. But then again, I'm fascinated by assehole-ish comments.
posted by dead cousin ted at 10:05 PM on February 17, 2010 [7 favorites]

^^ working on studying it [gripe about the time I spend studying redacted by accident]. ^^
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:05 PM on February 17, 2010

That's a major low blow, totally uncalled for and pretty much the shittiest comment made in this thread, hands down. But then again, I'm fascinated by assehole-ish comments.

Two other commenters have already started a conversation about how they could edit it into an even more asshole-ish comment.
posted by setanor at 10:06 PM on February 17, 2010

Also, given everything you say about your complex interest in this video, why in the fuck did you give the thread such a banal, lulzy title?

As Det. Columbo might say, it's always the littlest detail that gives it away.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:08 PM on February 17, 2010

I'm more interested in film than you, unless you're working on studying it.

And now we've entered the intellectual genital comparison portion of our program...
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:13 PM on February 17, 2010 [4 favorites]

I'm more interested in film than you, unless you're working on studying it. unless you're working on studying it . People who are interested in film this way are actually only interested in sensationalism.

You know, even a brief, casual look at YSSTOG's posting history reveals a familiarity and knowledge of film - it always bugs me when people don't even give someone the courtesy of looking at their comments or favorites before taking shots at them.
posted by mlis at 10:17 PM on February 17, 2010 [5 favorites]

Never underestimate the hyperventilating, outraged sensitivity of the Metafilter userbase. I don't know how a lot of these people make it through the day. Not sure I want to.
posted by planet at 10:17 PM on February 17, 2010 [5 favorites]

Hey man, just sayin', "being interested in film" is worth diddly squat from where I'm standing, with this, who in this blighted culture isn't? And I'll be happy to take my academic wang and whack YSSTOG's notions of fascination with mobile surveillance out his head with it.

This video is evidence of things we already know, evidence of the ways we are all more subject to programmed points of view, represented by the uncanny resemblance of these camera captures to thrills constructed in game worlds. It still sucks and is tasteless, though.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:21 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Never underestimate the hyperventilating, outraged sensitivity of the Metafilter userbase. I don't know how a lot of these people make it through the day. Not sure I want to.

Never underestimate the grandstanding, hyperbolic com... fuck it, never mind.
posted by setanor at 10:22 PM on February 17, 2010

And now we've entered the intellectual genital comparison portion of our program...

Oh goody! I hope there's video footage!
posted by hydrophonic at 10:22 PM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

And now we've entered the intellectual genital comparison portion of our program...

I'm not even sure it is relevant (regardless of who brings it up) since the original post makes no mention of film studies or camera angles or anything even vaguely, remotely related to said topic, such that said topic would provide some kind of defense for this post.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:23 PM on February 17, 2010

I'm jumping on the "just because you like to watch car crashes doesn't mean the rest of us do" wagon. I was actually in a bad accident last year and if people were posting it and making jokes about it, I'd be pretty pissed off.

My little brother, who in a better world would have been blowing out a bunch of candles on his cake tonight, died on a highway on-ramp four years ago. I wonder if anyone has some footage of his car rolling into the ditch that they could get up on Youtube. You know, for the camera angles and the editing.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:23 PM on February 17, 2010 [24 favorites]

I will agree that making a post like this is all around a terrible way to make your point. Of course, that's no reason for everyone else to act like the biggest pricks as possible, but that's pretty much par for the course in metatalk.
posted by dead cousin ted at 10:24 PM on February 17, 2010

It's not helping that you've framed this MeTa in terms of having the courage to look, YSSTOG, as to me it suggests a certain mindset or attitude to what it means to view the footage you posted. As has been pointed out above, the post title of the deleted FPP does you no favours either. I'm not a mind-reader and may well have you wrong, but if I was in the jury and you were up for the crime of posting a shit link, I'd convict.
posted by Abiezer at 10:26 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Of course, that's no reason for everyone else to act like the biggest pricks as possible

Clearly, responding to "Gimme a fuckin' break" and "climb under your covers, and cry yourself to sleep" and "grow a spine" requires the utmost charm and tact.
posted by setanor at 10:26 PM on February 17, 2010 [16 favorites]

I'm kind of thinking there'd be zero chance of this post flying if it was a SLYT of a tradgedy that happened in the US framed as "hey look at this neat crash!", and so I'm pretty okay with it not flying when it's somewhere else.
posted by Artw at 10:27 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I think the comments suggest a knowledge of the industry from working in it rather than a general fascination with film. Also it is late and you are wrong on the Internet and I am reminded of the comment above about Aspergers which has me thinking "perseveration" so I will cease writing about YSSTOG's film credentials.
posted by mlis at 10:30 PM on February 17, 2010

Try Digg.
posted by Artw at 10:32 PM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

Clearly, responding to "Gimme a fuckin' break" and "climb under your covers, and cry yourself to sleep" and "grow a spine" requires the utmost charm and tact.

Well yeah, that's pretty much the problem. A poster comes into metatalk with guns blazing and everyone thinks that's it's a-ok to say whatever they want to however nasty it is. You might think you look clever and get favorites, but you come out covered in shit too. So congrats, there.
posted by dead cousin ted at 10:34 PM on February 17, 2010 [4 favorites]

A poster comes into metatalk with guns blazing and everyone thinks that's it's a-ok to say whatever they want to however nasty it is. You might think you look clever and get favorites, but you come out covered in shit too.

No. He's the one that covered us in shit. We're the ones trying to wipe ourselves off.
posted by setanor at 10:36 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm not even sure it is relevant (regardless of who brings it up) since the original post makes no mention of film studies or camera angles or anything even vaguely, remotely related to said topic, such that said topic would provide some kind of defense for this post.

In fairness to YSStOG, he does mention how incredible the footage is in his second comment in the FPP. Despite the lulziness of the title, I have no real reason to doubt he was sincerely interested in the video for technical reasons, rather than 'It's funny because I don't know them!' sensationalism that's been alleged. My disagreement is mostly along the lines of "Dude, them's the breaks, don't be a fucking baby about it."

AV's comment was pretty funny in a "More about this subject than you can possibly yaddablah" meets No True Scotsman sort of way; like film studies doesn't have just as many pricks and poseurs as any other field of academic endeavor.

Oh goody! I hope there's video footage!

I repeat, VARIOUS ANGLES!!!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:37 PM on February 17, 2010

Dear You Should See the Other Guy,

I'm sorry for your loss.
posted by dirigibleman at 10:37 PM on February 17, 2010 [10 favorites]

That was one hell of a tame accident video. And we've had uncountable SLYT posts, and a good number of stories and videos that have featured people being harmed. IMO, this one was unique; the multiple angles was interesting.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:38 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

In fairness to YSStOG, he does mention how incredible the footage is in his second comment in the FPP

he compared it to another video where "some guy popped up like wtf"
posted by setanor at 10:41 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

My point was, film doesn't have shit to do with common decency.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:42 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

AV's comment was pretty funny in a "More about this subject than you can possibly yaddablah" meets No True Scotsman sort of way; like film studies doesn't have just as many pricks and poseurs as any other field of academic endeavor.

I do agree there that the "I know more than you can possibly etc. etc." trope does open one up to criticism. Right or wrong, if you're going to take that position on Metafilter, having an Oscar would help, or at least a few Golden Globes.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:42 PM on February 17, 2010

IMO as well, the problem is not with the video, which is tame, but the astounding asshattery that almost immediately went down in the thread.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:44 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Enough people flag any post (probably even one about ADORABLE BUNNIES AWW) and it will get deleted. Enough people flagged this post. It got deleted. Not really challenging to grasp, I don't think.
posted by that girl at 10:53 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Enough people flag any post (probably even one about ADORABLE BUNNIES AWW) and it will get deleted. Not really challenging to grasp, I don't think.

As you have outlined it, no not challenging to grasp. But worth asking, the inmates are running this place? The mods do not make decisions about whether to delete a post independant of the flag queue? Metafilter is not a democracy and my understanding of the flags were that they alerted the mods to a potential problem on the site - not that they are a absolute call to delete.
posted by mlis at 11:00 PM on February 17, 2010

I vote you save "Metafilter, Grow a Spine" for when Metafilter really needs to grow a spine...

I have this Scientology post all queued up...
posted by rokusan at 11:01 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

MLIS, I think that's sort of a false dichotomy. I'm pretty sure mods do whatever they think is best, and flags are an indication that maybe a lot of people don't want to see something, so they take that into consideration too.
posted by Nomiconic at 11:06 PM on February 17, 2010

thank you for deleting that post.
posted by aielen at 11:09 PM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

My point was, film doesn't have shit to do with common decency.

Thanks for clarifying. I was a little baffled by it, to be honest. However, you're not giving me the benefit of the doubt--you're suggesting I viewed the footage as carnage central and thought, "Meh, so what. Look at that crash!" instead of the truth, which is I didn't see it as people dying (I still don't) but as great footage. I understand that you seem to see it as people dying and your thoughts on the footage are then not relevant. Obviously, we think differently.

I also find it interesting that people consider the footage gruesome when there's nothing but metal on screen. (Obviously, as I've stated, I'm perfectly capable of finding things gruesome--even still shots--so I don't think it's a lack of empathy on my part.)

Also, given everything you say about your complex interest in this video, why in the fuck did you give the thread such a banal, lulzy title?

I didn't say my interest was complex. Second, all of my FPPs have lame titles for the same reason: I can never think of anything to type there. Since I don't like to editorialize or contextualize, I usually just end up typing the same thing as my link or some equally lame single word. It wasn't meant to belittle the people who aren't visible. I really wasn't thinking of them and don't think they're relevant to the FPP.

Not really challenging to grasp, I don't think.

I don't recall asking for clarification on why the post was deleted. I posted here to take issue with the deletion itself, especially after Matt had commented in the thread.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 11:11 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

I really wasn't thinking of them and don't think they're relevant to the FPP.

Do you see how this might point to the appearance of a lack of empathy?
posted by setanor at 11:13 PM on February 17, 2010 [6 favorites]

I'm of two minds on the FPP. On the one hand, single-link post with no context--You Should See the Other Guy, generally FPPs should have *some* contextualization as to *why* you posted it, even if it just comes from the title and the text used for the link, which according to your stated reasons here (film-making, whatever), it didn't. On the other hand, if something says "bus crash footage," nobody's making anybody watch it.

But I do object to the "their relatives could be reading" argument as a reason not to post. I've used "Die in a fire" more than a few times in my personal blog (yes, yes, DIAF's 15 minutes are probably up) to express my outrage with public figures, or previously unknown people who wind up in the news for doing heinous things. I got a comment the other day from someone that basically said "A friend of mine died in a fire in December really close to Christmas, could you please not say that anymore?" And all I could think of was the "Why I hate Christmas" monologue from Gremlins.

So, no, I'm still going to say it. None of us can know what might offend/upset *someone* who is reading. We just can't account for what baggage or experiences every single reader is bringing to a post. Most people have personal triggers we can't warn for. Some people lost relatives to suicide. Should we never talk about that? Cancer? What if someone's child is terminally ill with it? Hell, two of my high-school friends were murdered in the attack on the World Trade Center (they worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, which means that the first plane basically incinerated them), and I get to "see" them die over and over and over in various situations, and I'll never not feel like I've been punched in the gut when 9/11 comes up. But what can I do?
posted by tzikeh at 11:14 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

unSane: "So who gets to decide what is offensive and what isn't? Accidents are offensive because someone might have been in a car crash? Whut? But cock rings on the front page, wahay"

Not offensive... I said I and perhaps others don't like to watch car crashes because we've been hurt in them. And if I had been in that particular accident, I wouldn't want people making lulz about it.

ricochet biscuit: "My little brother, who in a better world would have been blowing out a bunch of candles on his cake tonight, died on a highway on-ramp four years ago."

I'm sorry for your loss.
posted by IndigoRain at 11:21 PM on February 17, 2010

I have broken
the spine
that was in
the medlab

and which
you were probably
growing
for mefi

Forgive me
there were angles
so sweet
and so bold
posted by Artw at 11:21 PM on February 17, 2010 [13 favorites]

1: "Ouch" is actually a French filmmaking technique

2: I can't tell if you're implying I'm lying or rationalizing why I made the FPP or not.

Both, probably, but I think he's making fun of this whole "I'm purely interested in it as aesthetic product" argument you're presenting here, with the actual fact of your post's "Ouch!" title.

The title seems to imply you considered the people being hurt while making the post.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 11:22 PM on February 17, 2010

None of us can know what might offend/upset *someone* who is reading.

Well, okay, but don't you see a big difference between someone being upset at "Die in a Fire" (an abstract expression not related to any personal individual) and someone being upset at a very real video of a car crash in which people are killed?

I mean, have a little empathy. If that was your loved one being crushed to death down in the car how would you feel if the video was being passed around the internet of the crash with headlines like "ouch!" ?
posted by Solon and Thanks at 11:24 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Also, worse things are not seen in hollywood movies and tv shows, because those are fictional and no matter how realistic the special effects, do not involve the deaths or injuries of other human beings.

I spent a bunch of weeks holed up working on the not-good 2007 remake of The Hitcher, and we would run the footage of a particularly grisly moment back and forth over and over again in my office for the lulz. Think the Zapruder tape scene in JFK, just with a really unconvincing practical torso being severed and goo spilling out, then goo flying back in and the torso reattaching itself. It was pretty funny for the first five or so minutes, especially when the rest of the day just sucked.

There aren't any lulz in the real thing regardless of how much is or is not revealed by the footage.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 11:26 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

By "have a little empathy" I'm not referring to you at all, tzikeh, because I agree: these things happen and people post pictures of other people being mutilated and everything all over the internet. It's rather an appeal to those people posting to maybe reconsider if it's necessary. It'd be hard to never talk about fires or 9/11, but we'd all probably be fine not having seen the video of this one accident.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 11:27 PM on February 17, 2010

Context matters. Discussion value matters. That's why MetaFilter is what it is. I see why you're upset, but you're confusing content with the other things. If you don't like context or discussion, I'm not sure what your interest in MetaFilter is at all.

At that, the content was thin, so it didn't even succeed on that level for a bunch of users, as comments above indicate. Which is fairly standard reasoning for deleting a post, so fits the usual & customary quite neatly.
posted by batmonkey at 11:47 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Grow a prehensile tail, while you're at it. Just cause it'd be cool.

jonmc, please join the Blood Bowl league over at Mefight Club, already in progress.
posted by vrakatar at 11:55 PM on February 17, 2010

If that was your loved one being crushed to death down in the car how would you feel if the video was being passed around the internet of the crash with headlines like "ouch!" ?

I'd be absolutely gutted. But I don't think that fact on its own is reason to not post things like this--not that I watched it or had any desire to. I'm not defending this post in particular--just voicing my opinion that the possibility that people who were directly, horribly, irrevocably affected by it might see it is a not enough of a reason to bring it down. That is clearly not why it was brought down, but that argument has been posted here in this thread, and I don't agree with it.
posted by tzikeh at 12:27 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Also I suggest you drop this little stratagem of "oh but mathowie commented in the thread", as if somehow his early comment indicated approval of the post's content. Clearly based on his deletion reason he was not aware that this was a multiple-fatality when he commented, nor was he aware that the comments would hear sour.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:34 AM on February 18, 2010

(head, not hear)
posted by Rhomboid at 12:35 AM on February 18, 2010

I don't think that's my job--to contextualize or editorialize.

I agree. No to editorializing.

I disagree. Yes to contextualizing. Particularly if the subject of a post has provocative potential. If this FPP had been properly contextualized, we would not be having this discussion. But that would have taken some hard work.

At least that's the decision I rather lazily came to this afternoon when I first stumbled onto the footage at Digg. I instantly thought of posting it here, precisely because of the multi-angles, precisely because I was interested in the kind of reflection and discussion that the MeFi community might offer. But then I wondered if anyone had been killed or badly injured in the accident (it wasn't clear via the Digg links) and as I couldn't quickly find out either way, I dropped it. Because, like I said, I was too lazy and the last thing I wanted to do was post something for fun and discussion that actually featured people being killed.

And anyway, it was already posted to Digg.

I also find it interesting that people consider the footage gruesome when there's nothing but metal on screen. (Obviously, as I've stated, I'm perfectly capable of finding things gruesome--even still shots--so I don't think it's a lack of empathy on my part.)

Not a lack of empathy, a lack of imagination. It's gruesome precisely because people died. Who cares what the cameras did or didn't reveal? Case in point, this DISTURBING SEQUENCE from the movie Mysterious Skin (which came up in an AskMe a while back).

Break it down shot by shot and you'll see it reveals nothing at all; just various shots (most of them close-ups) which on their own have no particular impact. But skillfully edited (with sound and music), they add up to something that, for my imagination at least, is more than just a little upsetting.
posted by philip-random at 1:10 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Anyone watch those planes crash into those tall buildings in NYC a few years ago?
posted by pianomover at 1:14 AM on February 18, 2010

"I also find it interesting that people consider the footage gruesome when there's nothing but metal on screen."

Yes and in the shower scene in Psycho you never see the blade actually go into the woman in the shower. You just see shadows on a curtain and chocolate syrup go down the drain, and the whole thing edited together such that if you show a group of people and ask them what they saw, many will say they actually did see the knifing. If the viewer is caught up in the scene, that is.

Once you break something down to a series of shots and look at things as an editor sometimes you can divorce yourself from the reality of documentary footage. So much so that everything is weighed equally, and Hollywood fantasy is the same to you as B roll on the evening news. Problem is that when people who don't divorce content from technical process view such things - who don't look at such footage with an editor's/cameraperson's perspective - many of these people are going to have real emotions as a result of viewing, and in many cases feel empathy.

Short version: not everyone sees things as an editor. It helps to realize this, and be understanding when people are upset at behavior they see as ghoulish.

And yes, I took film classes and edited a lot of random things. Taught me how to look at film differently, and how human subjects relate to certain emotional film content. Interesting stuff, or to me anyway - I don't suppose everyone would be fascinated.

I probably would have been a tad more understanding of You Should See the Other Guy if he hadn't been so pissy in all his comments here, not to mention not making a good case for why his post should have remained. Mocking the "best of the web" thing isn't winning you any points, no matter if the content here isn't always epic.

And as philip-random just noted - yes, contextualizing it is your job in a FPP. Not everyone is going to look at footage with an editor's eye - you have to tell us why it's worth our time to look, unless the content is going to blow us away. And your words were, in full:
"Ouch (title), Footage from multiple security cameras of a Taiwanese bus as it crashes on the freeway."
That comes off as "hey look over here, bet that left a mark, har har" and not much more. I shouldn't have to hunt through the comments to figure out why YSStOG felt it was important I watch this video.
posted by batgrlHG at 1:24 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

I don't actually care about the post or why it was deleted, but starting a metatalk thread about your own post being deleted is lame. If it was a worthy enough post, somebody else would have argued the point for you.
posted by empath at 1:48 AM on February 18, 2010

Will no one call eponysterical? Sheesh.
posted by fleacircus at 1:49 AM on February 18, 2010

I was going to call eponysterical in the thread during its short life, but I already felt bad about laughing at some of the jokes on the YouTube comments.
posted by namespan at 2:06 AM on February 18, 2010

You Should See the Other Guy: “I'm fascinated with film, filmmaking, angles, editing... and I suspect people with similar interests would likely find this footage as interesting as I do, which is why I posted it. If you don't like those things, don't click the link. But there is nothing inherently wrong with the footage as far as MeFi's past goes--see the train video and luge links as proof... I understand that if you are not taken with film (or physics) you'll find it hard to believe that many who are would find this footage fascinating. I sent it to every sound and film editor I know and so far all who've responded thought the same thing I did. Two have already started a conversation about how they would edit the footage and the inherent problems in camera placement that is indicative of multi-camera setups. You might find this foolish or lacking in empathy or whatever, but you know what, not everyone is you. People have different reasons for liking things. Whether you agree with them or believe them or not is really not that important.”

Look, I'll say it, since nobody else is: you don't know shit about film. You know about 'camera angles' a little bit maybe, but you don't know about film. You can blather all fucking day about 'look at this neat shot!' and 'wow, this really demonstrates when master shots are necessary!' but if the basic fact that people were dying didn't become a significant factor in the whole film-watching experience, you've become so incredibly dissociated from reality that film doesn't actually matter to you anymore. What, are you some Eisensteinian fetishist that has to have every single major idea depicted in symbol in a montage of perfectly-framed shots? You have to see the knife before death on screen affects you? Go back and watch a few of the movies you really care about, movies that really hit home for you, movies that first made you want to think about film, and ask yourself if you can or should ever detach yourself so completely from life or art that what is clearly happening on screen does not disturb your passive observation of the framing in the slightest - seriously, is that the sensation you get when you watch the movies that are most important to you?

On second thought, you probably do. I got that feeling when I watched Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen, too.
posted by koeselitz at 3:20 AM on February 18, 2010 [25 favorites]

I can't tell if you're implying I'm lying or rationalizing why I made the FPP or not.

I...I just don't know any more.
posted by turgid dahlia at 3:39 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Your "grow a spine" commentary would make much more sense if you weren't currently whining about a thread being deleted on a website.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 4:45 AM on February 18, 2010 [36 favorites]

So who gets to decide what is offensive and what isn't?

Well, I'd say the answer to that is everybody and that's why we've got flagging. Who gets to decide what stays and what goes is the mods and, in particular, mathowie because this is his place and we're all just visiting. It's very cool that we all get to participate, if we so choose, but in the end he, and his modding delegates, get final say on what stays and what goes.

And I like the fact that this place works on a case by case basis, not precedents.

My crooked spine didn't even see your post before it was whisked away so I have no comment on its worthiness.
posted by h00py at 4:54 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

There are plenty of sites out there for people who love to watch children being killed. Let's reserve this site for people who prefer to wedge cats into scanners and view images of same.
posted by DU at 4:56 AM on February 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

I'm still trying to get over the image of St. Alia checking out rotten.com (and my agreeing with her about this deletion). Alia, we hardly knew ye.

My own view is that no one should complain about deleted posts. It's not your website. My favorite reason for deletion, which should be used in every instance in my opinion, is simply "this is not a good post for metafilter" (with an implied "because I said so" from any of the mods). What a pointless thing to debate.

This video is all over the web. It's not like those of us who wanted to see it haven't had it waved in front of us elsewhere. I'm not afraid to look at such things, so I don't need to grow a spine. I do find such things in poor taste and not at all what I come to Metafilter for. If I want to watch people dying, I'll watch the evening news.
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:39 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

koeselitz: but if the basic fact that people were dying didn't become a significant factor in the whole film-watching experience

mathowie: Had no idea people were dying from this.

Not everyone has the same thought-processes you do, koeselitz.

Anyway, I'm out for the day and probably won't pop back in to repeat myself again.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 5:43 AM on February 18, 2010

I don't like to watch accidents in which people are killed. Twin Towers, Shuttle destroyed, etc. Spineless, I know. However, others are less bothered so I could see a post like this working. But in case like this I believe full disclosure is necessary. It's one thing to be tricked into watching a cat get scanned. It's another to be tricked into witnessing deaths.
posted by cosmac at 5:43 AM on February 18, 2010

I didn't see it as people dying (I still don't) but as great footage.

Yeah, I think that's the problem. The other posts with footage of people dying (luge, 9/11) weren't just "Hey look at this awesome footage (&, oh yeah, someone died)!" There was more to them than just people dying in a really neat way.

Also, I've lost two people very close to me in car accidents, and agree that "relatives might see it" isn't a good reason not to post something. I think it can be one factor among many in favor of this deletion, though.
posted by Mavri at 5:57 AM on February 18, 2010

When I started reading this thread, which was framed in a wholly insulting and demeaning way, I really had no doubt that it was a thread primarily motivated by personal pique. I don't think the post was the worst thing in the world, or that the post itself shows a gross lack of empathy or human feeling. I also don't think that there's anything about the post that really cries out for defending, other than a sort of standard defense that deleting things like this harms the diversity of content at MetaFilter. (I don't believe this, but I do think it's a legitimate argument.) And so, given You Should See the Other Guy's insistence, and general derision for other users in this thread, and then his insistence again, I almost laughed out loud when I read this:

Ya know, it'll be hard to believe, but it being my post isn't what bothered me about it being deleted. Had it been someone else's, I would have had the same reaction.

I do find it hard to believe. I find it impossible to believe. As much as I'm fascinated by rhetoric and argument and passion and vehemence, even I can recognize that context is very important. When your passion is all about how you've been wronged as a poster, it's simply not the same as when your passion is all about how the community is letting itself down. "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone," is almost never as compelling as it sounds to the "me."

So that's where I started the thread, and what I mostly carried, along with some pique of my own at You Should See the Other Guy's unjustified disdain, into the middle of the thread. And then I got to his two long defenses of this as of interest for its filmic qualities, and his discussion about how his film editor friends have reacted to it, and his insistence that he never thinks of the death associated with the footage when he watches it. And those comments make me sick.

That kind of detachment and lack of empathy is horrible, much scarier than the footage itself. The talk about the need for master shots etc reads like a parody of rank psychopathy. It's one thing to make a joke about it, jokes frequently function to release tension and allow one to confront the thing joked about in a more controlled way. But jokes about horrors like this, or gallows humor, are also predicated on the emotional and physical reality of the issue at hand. Viewing this kind of destruction as just another film angle is much worse than that. It displays a complete lack of human feeling. I'd also point out that that sort of detachment can be used to justify many different types of abuses, and if it's ok to care so much about film that human beings disappear, then surely it's ok to care that much about profit or science or plastics or bombs. I'm obviously not suggesting that the first position leads to any of the later ones, but I do think it implies that they're acceptable.

What I'd like to think, given the, to me, obvious investment by You Should See the Other Guy in this because it was his post, is that the defenses of this as just fascinating film, the sequelae of which we need not care about, are overstated in order to make his personal investment seem less. They read, too, as the defenses of someone kind of young.

I could see an argument for why the front page post should have stayed, but I actually read Metafilter because it is not the type of place where arguments about how human life and death doesn't really matter because of "cool" X, or "interesting" Y, or "fascinating" Z tend to be prevalent.
posted by OmieWise at 6:02 AM on February 18, 2010 [28 favorites]

please join the Blood Bowl league over at Mefight Club

wait holyshit what?!?!?
posted by Shepherd at 6:03 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Look man, you're so many flavors of fail here that I don't even think you can comprehend them all.

You've got no context (how about some info about the overcrowding on the taiwanese public transit system, or about the hours of bus drivers, or about the volumes of vehicles on the road, or about the effects of the g-forces on a human body when it comes to sudden stop, or...something?) SLYT posts are generally fail on their own, regardless.

Second, we don't really care about how much you like film or how entitled you feel to publish a link on somebody else's website. Had you come in here and asked "why", politely, with some background links to other gory posts that weren't deleted, you might have been received better. Wandering in and throwing around insults while you prattle on about everyone picking on you and how much you love film and how we just don't get you is, again, not helping you.

Third, it's not your job to tell Metafilter what metafilter is. It is your job to have an opinion, and it's even Ok to voice that opinion, but you don't get to make the rules. In case you haven't noticed, this isn't a community who respects whiners. You've actually got a valid point buried somewhere underneath your lulz and your bitching, but you've lost it, and unfortunately, you won't get it back and...further, you've probably damaged your chances of being taken seriously ever because of this angry flameout.

Fourth, I'm super glad that you believe MF is here for you to..what did you say?
... rather watch great footage than talk about pisswater--and places to do it are getting harder to find. again, we're not here for your ... whatever it is you think we're here for. If you feel like the web would seriously benefit from a website where people can post videos of people dying/puking/shitting/crashing/fucking/whatever it may be, you go ahead and make that highly intellectual website, maybe we'll visit it sometime. That's not what Metafilter is, and hopefully it never will be. There are lots of sites you can see as many of those videos as you like, as often as you like them.

However, if you're looking for engaging conversation about those videos, and you feel like you're the one who needs to spark said discussion and you want MF's audience, then you need to learn how to make an FPP. Here's a quick litmus test:
If your FPP takes fewer than 30 seconds to type/link/post...it sucks.
If you summarize an entire video/site/event in one word.....it sucks.
If you worry you might have to metaflameout yourself.........it sucks.

Get over yourself brah, we all know where to find vids of crashes when we wanna see 'em.
posted by TomMelee at 6:15 AM on February 18, 2010 [8 favorites]

You should check out Portal of Evil's video site. There's too many gruesome classics like Austin bus crashes, dog pukings, the Whitesnake show fire, the floor collapsing at a wedding party, Maseokis' cooking, etc etc etc. I go there to watched fucked up and inappropriate videos, I go to metafilter for less point-and-laugh/cringe, and more high-quality subjects and discussion.

A place for everything, and everything in its place. Seriously, if you didn't know about poetv.com check it out.

There's also videos of kittens! Yay Kitties!
posted by fuq at 6:17 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Clearly based on his deletion reason he was not aware that this was a multiple-fatality when he commented, nor was he aware that the comments would hear sour.

Yeah, it is interesting that it was an OK post until someone posted a link saying people died. The video itself didn't change, just the context.
posted by smackfu at 6:19 AM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

that girl writes "Enough people flag any post (probably even one about ADORABLE BUNNIES AWW) and it will get deleted. Enough people flagged this post. It got deleted. Not really challenging to grasp, I don't think."

Boy I really hope it doesn't work that way. A few hundred dollars and a little effort would give anyone or any group veto power over the front page.

Solon and Thanks writes "By 'have a little empathy' I'm not referring to you at all, tzikeh, because I agree: these things happen and people post pictures of other people being mutilated and everything all over the internet. It's rather an appeal to those people posting to maybe reconsider if it's necessary. It'd be hard to never talk about fires or 9/11, but we'd all probably be fine not having seen the video of this one accident."

Stuff like this should be required viewing every time drivers renew their licences (in between several hours of practical and theory testing). It would hopefully give the stupid wankers driving 1500 kg cars an appreciation for what happens when 10,000+ kgs of vehicle over runs them and maybe they should think twice about cutting me off and then slamming on the breaks when I'm loaded to the nuts. Obviously the non bus drivers aren't at fault in this accident but it is a good example of the physics. It's interesting that no one in front of the bus upon hearing the horn blowing and carnage, with the possible exception of one black minivan driver, had the presence of mind to use the empty emergency lane to get out of the way of the bus barrelling down on them.
posted by Mitheral at 6:32 AM on February 18, 2010

Metafilter, please grow a spine.

*flagged as vertebratist*
posted by lukemeister at 6:35 AM on February 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

> Ya know, it'll be hard to believe, but it being my post isn't what bothered me about it being deleted. Had it been someone else's, I would have had the same reaction.

Wow, you have no self-awareness whatever, do you? Nobody believes this, and if you do, I don't know what to tell you. But whiny posts like this are always a bad mistake, and at least you've learned that by now.
posted by languagehat at 7:03 AM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Enough people flag any post (probably even one about ADORABLE BUNNIES AWW) and it will get deleted.

Not really. Flags are strong influencing factor on how we look at a post, but they don't overrule our judgement about whether to delete or keep a post. In this case, flags were definitely a factor because we were all varyingly on the fence about it and it was getting heavily flagged, which gave us an indication that folks in volume were not so much on the fence.

Raw crash footage is (I think I just used this phrase in the Bus Fight thread too) darkly fascinating stuff; I can understand the instinct to post it and don't think it's like fundamentally verboten or anything like that. But it is kind of context sensitive. And there was frankly no real context here, no answer to the question of why we were looking at this crash footage other than the implicit "it is crash footage, look, stuff is crashing on camera", and that's pretty thin. Throw in some It's Upsetting People (actively, as in people flagging the post, not some theoretical offended family-of-a-victim, that's really not likely to be a big part of our moderation calculus) and it's a recipe for deletion.

I feel like whereas Jessamyn and I both came at it with an initial reaction more in the "really, single link to crash footage apropos of nothing?" territory, Matt initially saw the "wow, that's some fascinating footage" thing before sort of stepping back and seeing the implications. I don't think either reaction is wrong, but the first blush fascination with, uh, applied physics (and I share it) has less to do with the moderation we do on the site than does the Why Is This Here question.

You Should See The Other Guy, I think you basically acknowledge this upthread already, but, yeah, taking a can't-post-it-because-the-thread-was-deleted comment and turning it into a Metatalk thread is usually just not a good idea. Next time let it simmer, rewrite, and come back to it an hour or three later when you're sure you're saying what you want to say how you want to say it. This got off to a lousy start, where I think the central question of permissibility and the collective community reaction to and preference/dispreference for this kind of content could be an okay discussion in a better context.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:09 AM on February 18, 2010 [5 favorites]

...probably won't pop back in to repeat myself again.

Heading over to the Department of Redundancy Department?

But seriously, folks, I just dropped by to compose a little wisp of poetry... I call it "Metafilter!"

ahem...

Metafilter! Grow a spine!
Grow some grapes and make some wine!
Metafilter! Drink it down!
At a meetup in your town!
Metafilter! Make good posts!
From the heartlands! From the coasts!
Metafilter! If deleted!
Don't go cryin' "been mistreated!"
Metafilter! Where we say,
"Tomorrow is a brand new day!"

!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:15 AM on February 18, 2010 [62 favorites]

I like the ! at the end, flapjax. I imagine it stands for tambourines and jazz hands. (And the whole thing is done like the musical number in Citizen Kane.)
posted by ocherdraco at 7:26 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

RAH RAH SIS BOOM BAH!
posted by The Whelk at 7:27 AM on February 18, 2010

This is just the first day of you being SILENCED ALL YOUR LIFE!
posted by WinnipegDragon at 7:59 AM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Late to this party, but one more vote for appropriate deletion.
posted by caddis at 8:05 AM on February 18, 2010

YSSTOG: "...which is I didn't see it as people dying (I still don't) but as great footage."

How sad.
posted by terrapin at 8:13 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

to reiterate: thank you for deleting that post.
posted by crush-onastick at 8:21 AM on February 18, 2010

Before it was deleted and before this MetaTalk thread was started I watched the clip (clap?). I didn't read the comments. I moved on without flagging. It wasn't that interesting out of context. The outrage both here and there is so Haro! Haro! Haro!
posted by tellurian at 8:23 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

You Should See The Other Guy, I think you basically acknowledge this upthread already, but, yeah, taking a can't-post-it-because-the-thread-was-deleted comment and turning it into a Metatalk thread is usually just not a good idea. Next time let it simmer, rewrite, and come back to it an hour or three later when you're sure you're saying what you want to say how you want to say it.

Several years ago, I tried to prevent a post of mine from derailing. I wanted the conversation to remain On Topic, Dammit and I didn't like the direction it was heading. So I commented. And commented. I got antagonistic and defensive. And I commented some more. And you know what? I made things worse.

LarryC gave me a great piece of advice then which I've tried to remember ever since. Don't Steer Your Own Thread. He was right. It's a recipe for disaster.

You didn't get a chance to do so. But it seems obvious you were about to try. Then when you were robbed of the opportunity, you posted this MeTa.

Most of my FPP's are link-fests. I suspect they're not always well-received because of it. But I like to give some context without editorializing, when possible. If you would like the conversation in a thread to cover certain topics, then your FPP should mention them. If you don't, and it doesn't, then it's useless to complain.

Once you click Post, your thread doesn't belong to you anymore. It belongs to this site and its users. Something to think about.
posted by zarq at 8:30 AM on February 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

I accidentally deleted the first sentence of my comment, which was:

"Seconding this." I agree with what cortex was saying, which is why I quoted him.
posted by zarq at 8:32 AM on February 18, 2010

.
posted by miyabo at 8:38 AM on February 18, 2010

I claim this thread in the name of J.G. Ballard and all of his heirs ...

"I think the 20th century reaches its highest expression on the highway. Everything is there: the speed and violence of our age; the strange love affair with the machine, with its own death."

posted by octobersurprise at 8:39 AM on February 18, 2010 [7 favorites]

First Trucker's Delight was deleted, then I AM A MOTHERFUCKER, and now this?!?@!?

WHAT IS THIS HAMBURGER COMING TO?!?
posted by Admiral Haddock at 8:45 AM on February 18, 2010

WHAT IS THIS HAMBURGER COMING TO?!?

*boop*
*beep*
*click*
*boop*
*beep*
*whirr*

By my calculations, $20. Same as in....
posted by zarq at 8:52 AM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

OH GOD IT'S GONNA BLOW!
posted by The Whelk at 8:54 AM on February 18, 2010

Wish the fucking lame mods would man up and let us post pictures of corpses!! It's real life and if you can handle that its YOUR problem, bub! Now if youll excuse me I've got a training session in the Danger Room,
posted by Damn That Television at 8:56 AM on February 18, 2010

The post was framed well, in my opinion, as a study of the physics or what have you. I think more flags came as a result of the utterly tasteless humor in the thread.

I can tell you from experience that you never know, when you make a post, which direction the thread will take, and you have to take the good with the bad. This one, unfortunately, went downhill fast, and the mods were deluged with flags as a result.

I can certainly see why, based on those flags, mathowie decided to delete the post, but I agree with you that the link, as it was presented, was not gruesome or gory in the least, especially when compared to the luge footage (which, yes, did not show a man dead, but certainly showed his injuries). We've also had footage of hockey players with their jugulars sliced by ice skates stand up, probably because it was carefully framed to read, "Hey, this is not for the squeamish."
posted by misha at 9:11 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

I also find it interesting that people consider the footage gruesome when there's nothing but metal on screen.

I didn't see it as people dying (I still don't) but as great footage.

It is interesting footage, I won't argue this point at all. But I think the reason people are giving push-back on this is that there was no context for the results prior to someone in pointing out that people were dying. In the Challenger, luge, and many other threads that have been allowed exist, the fact that people were harmed was an up-front thing; people went in knowing what they were going to see and could make an informed decision prior to clicking the link.

The fact that the video doesn't actually show any gore doesn't really matter as they now know that when that car crumples, they are seeing a fatality that they wouldn't have watched had they known.

I strongly suspect that had this been framed differently, with a focus on the distinct views aspect of the documentation of the tragic event, and what led up to it, it would have had a much better chance of surviving.
posted by quin at 9:18 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

> However, you're not giving me the benefit of the doubt--you're suggesting I viewed the footage as carnage central and thought, "Meh, so what. Look at that crash!" instead of the truth, which is I didn't see it as people dying (I still don't) but as great footage. I understand that you seem to see it as people dying and your thoughts on the footage are then not relevant. Obviously, we think differently.

No, no. This is BS. If what interests you is the cinematography, then WHY is the content of the shots so sensational? What would be compelling about three simulataneous angles shot from the sides of a bus? I don't really have a strong reaction to the "carnage," as you say, it's offscreen. There have been comparable FPPs. I don't really care one way or the other. I've been rolled twice off the freeway nd down a ravine by a drunk 21 year old, and I'm not flinching at the sight of a bus crash, here.

However, the impiled drama connected to the human concern of the film IS what gives it its only interestingness, in my opinion, which is slim for "best of the web," and not in good taste. My motivation here is that I just don't like seeing rubbernecking passed off as "interest in the mechanisms of cinema" or what have you. It's voyeurism masquerading as cinephilia. I mean --- editing? Get real, where's the editing here? It's not a relevant formal concern to this clip. If you can convince me otherwise, please do.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 9:19 AM on February 18, 2010 [6 favorites]

That kind of detachment and lack of empathy is horrible, much scarier than the footage itself. The talk about the need for master shots etc reads like a parody of rank psychopathy.

Okay, I want to address this, because I am the kind of person who cannot stand to see real suffering, who could never do any of those dissection exercises in school because deargodthatwasalivethingjustfiveminutesago, who gives money and volunteers time to further relief efforts in Haiti, who rescues cats from the shelter, who covers her eyes when there is blood in movies, etc., and yet I think you are really laying it on a bit thick when you say this about the particular clip in question.

The footage does NOT show the people involved, which makes it much easier for even an empath like me to see it and consider the camera angles, etc. There are people whose JOB requires them to measure skid marks at an accident to figure out the physics involved--surely you don't think these people are all psychopaths?! No, they are able to compartmentalize and just look at the objective evidence, taking the people out of the equation.

That does not mean that, when faced with suffering people directly, they would not be among the first to step up and say, "What can I do to help?"
posted by misha at 9:22 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

misha, you're quite right, I'll elaborate on an idea you've brought up.

This is a forensic video. It isn't art. People who plan for surveillance coverage aren't using the same rules that govern commercial or art cinema. Revering surveillance for what it captured is mawkish, voyeuristic, as I said, and just not very creative. "Caught on tape" is just not that shocking anymore in an age where, well, buses have three cameras on. Is that state of affairs and the documents it produces fascinating? Maybe. I'm bored by it a little, and disturbed by it a little, to think that there are so many surveillance cameras on us these days, some people whose only interest in their spread is how much coverage they offer for entertainment value.

To bring the notions of cinema into the discussion, to ponder how coverage could be improved by a master or a fourth angle is to take as mere material the content of the shots, which as we here testify, is coded as 100% realism-based, is to degrade something we are consentually taking as real by playing with it as if it were only fun. The thought of sexing up, fictionalizing, manipulating or making otherwise more visually appealing the forensic evidence is in bad taste in this case. Wasn't that convenience store footage of the very drunk man deleted also? Taste isn't a matter of death tolls, it's a matter of stakes.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 9:41 AM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

The footage does NOT show the people involved, which makes it much easier for even an empath like me to see it and consider the camera angles, etc. There are people whose JOB requires them to measure skid marks at an accident to figure out the physics involved--surely you don't think these people are all psychopaths?! No, they are able to compartmentalize and just look at the objective evidence, taking the people out of the equation.

Sure, but both of those considerations don't really apply in this case. The first, I'll grant you, makes the footage easier to watch, and goes a long way to explaining things, but in this case You Should See the Other Guy has explicitly said (and implied, as well) that even though he knows there are people there dying he just doesn't care. In the second case, people who have to compartmentalize in order to do their job are in an entirely different category. That's a coping strategy/ego defense developed to allow them to help in the situation.

The issue here is the willful disregard of the human element for no real purpose. (I happen to agree with Ambrosia Voyeur that without the death, this footage is pretty prosaic.)
posted by OmieWise at 9:55 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Anyway, I'm out for the day and probably won't pop back in to repeat myself again.

Frankly, this should have been your starting point after the deletion, not the ending point
posted by edgeways at 10:01 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

You Should See the Other Guy - I'm fascinated with film, filmmaking, angles, editing...

iamkimiam - Then why didn't you highlight that in some way?

You Should See the Other Guy - I don't think that's my job--to contextualize or editorialize. I realize this isn't the standard (these days), but the video is exactly what I said it was.

This was the content of your thread: "Footage (YT) from multiple security cameras of a Taiwanese bus as it crashes on the freeway." That was it. You don't have to "sell" your post, but it's best to frame it in some way to imply that it's not simply gore-porn. For all we know, this could be a clip from Faces of Death. When most people hear "vehicle crashing on the freeway," most don't think "hmm, this might be an interesting display of real-life physics instead of movie magic."

If the text doesn't pitch the links in a way that sheds some light into why it was interesting for you when there's some chance of the content being less than pleasant, you're bound to get flak.

Point of reference, the other SLYTs on the front page:
* A little triumph of the human spirit (old people dancing to Billie Jean)
* Sonic Boom in a Sun Dog (SLYT) (more inside: "Solar Dynamics Observatory Launch, Feb 11, 2010 ...")
* LARP (Live Avatar Role Playing) (SLYT) (people painted blue in the woods of Wisconsin)

All-in-all, chipper stuff. The potentially scary stuff has more back-story.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:14 AM on February 18, 2010

"I posted here to take issue with the deletion itself, especially after Matt had commented in the thread."

Matt commented in the rape haiku thread too, before he SO UNJUSTLY DELETED IT AND FOR WHICH I AM STILL HOLDING A GRUDGE.

_{Note: It was actually a reasonable deletion for which I do not hold a grudge}
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 10:15 AM on February 18, 2010

Thank you for deleting the post Matt.
posted by serazin at 10:18 AM on February 18, 2010

I agree with the deletion. Gore for the sake of gore, which is all the post was, is not difficult to find elsewhere.
posted by peppito at 10:28 AM on February 18, 2010

Metafilter hasn't been best of the web in years.

If that is your personal opinion, why don't you go where you think it is the best of the web.
posted by Ironmouth at 10:31 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

I have a pea under my deleted mattress.
posted by y2karl at 10:38 AM on February 18, 2010 [8 favorites]

(The above to be uttered aloud in a whining tone in the voice of Marilyn Monroe immediately after inhaling helium.)
Just sayin'...
posted by y2karl at 10:47 AM on February 18, 2010

I have a pea under my deleted mattress.

Yes, but does it have clean sheets?
posted by fixedgear at 10:49 AM on February 18, 2010

I claim this thread in the name of J.G. Ballard and all of his heirs ...

"I think the 20th century reaches its highest expression on the highway. Everything is there: the speed and violence of our age; the strange love affair with the machine, with its own death."

My thoughts exactly. If you-should-see-the-other-guy had taken the time to organize a thread around Mr. Ballard's obsessive investigations of the CAR CRASH using the bus crash (and our morbid multi-angled fascination with it; my fascination anyway, I can't speak for everyone) I believe he could have delivered a brilliant post. I intimated this earlier with my laziness comments.

I happen to have deep respect for art and analysis that is not afraid to reach inside my gut and try to turn me inside out and, in certain contexts, could even see an argument for presenting such STUFF without fair warning. But sorry, not here.
posted by philip-random at 10:51 AM on February 18, 2010

Er, what's GYOB mean? In retrospect, I was way too condescending. I was trying to be a bit tongue and cheek while saying, "Hey, everyone gets a few deletions. At least it doesn't get you kicked out."

Sorry if I upset you. I'm not trying to start a fight.
posted by mccarty.tim at 10:58 AM on February 18, 2010

Anyway, I'm out for the day and probably won't pop back in to repeat myself again.

I'll miss that guy. He had spine. Spine to spare. He was mostly spine. Just a teeny tiny eyeball, propped at the top of a 15-foot, snakelike spine, and that eyeball did nothing but look at videos of car crashes all say, while the lizardlike intelligence inside the spine said to itself, over and over again, "The angles ... the angles."
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:01 AM on February 18, 2010 [15 favorites]

GYOB = Get Your Own Blog
posted by Babblesort at 11:05 AM on February 18, 2010

Thank you for nixing that post
Those lulzy snuff vids are really gross
Your cause was just
You're a pal and an awesome mod

And as for he who posted
Then bitched about our lack of spine
Can't you see
The lack of spine belongs to thee?
And to all the mods we say:
Thank you for nixing that post
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:11 AM on February 18, 2010 [7 favorites]

Astro Zombie, there goes a tall drink of coccyx.
posted by boo_radley at 11:15 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

To bring the notions of cinema into the discussion, to ponder how coverage could be improved by a master or a fourth angle is to take as mere material the content of the shots, which as we here testify, is coded as 100% realism-based, is to degrade something we are consentually taking as real by playing with it as if it were only fun. The thought of sexing up, fictionalizing, manipulating or making otherwise more visually appealing the forensic evidence is in bad taste in this case.

Not that I specifically disagree, but there is something to be said for the possibilities of a merger between cinema and found art.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:28 AM on February 18, 2010

rather watch great footage than talk about pisswater--and places to do it are getting harder to find.

There's this site called YouTube. It has a lot of great footage on it. Hundreds of thousands of hours of it, in fact, along with even more not so great footage. Maybe you've seen it? You did link to it after all.

Being disingenuous and offended at the same time is a sure way to make an idiot of yourself.
posted by fourcheesemac at 11:34 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Metafilter, please grow a spine.

Grow a hide.

Grow a prehensile tail, while you're at it. Just cause it'd be cool.

Grow, grow, grow your post, gently don the meme, flag it and, flag it and, flag it and, flag it and move on from the scene.
posted by davejay at 11:36 AM on February 18, 2010 [19 favorites]

Various angles that are fascinating to compare.
posted by chinston at 11:40 AM on February 18, 2010

Well-justified deletion.
posted by chinston at 11:40 AM on February 18, 2010

Did you know that "Spiro Agnew" is an anagram of "grow a penis?"
posted by fourcheesemac at 11:42 AM on February 18, 2010 [5 favorites]

You Should See the Other Guy: “Not everyone has the same thought-processes you do, koeselitz.”

Did you read what I said? I meant after you found that out. So it's a fair thing to say - you didn't realize people were dying when you saw it. I didn't either. Are you really so dissociated that finding out that little fact didn't change the whole experience of watching it from then on? If so... I mean, is there no film you know for which discovering the backstory changed it for you? Doesn't finding out that six people died while this was being made sort of change the experience of watching it for you? I couldn't watch it again. I love film. I love watching camera angles. (And frankly I'd like to know what your friend who thought that there are lots of demonstrations of when master shots aren't necessary was on about. If anything, there are hardly enough movies that master shot at all - this is more and more true, unfortunately, with the apparent ascendancy of the 'first-person' or 'POV' style. Although I guess that might have been what she or he meant.)

I mean - seriously, the fact that six people died doesn't change the experience of watching that in the slightest? If so, you're like a strange sort of foodie who loves every sort of veal and foie gras and never, ever wants to think for a moment about where it came from.
posted by koeselitz at 11:46 AM on February 18, 2010

> there is something to be said for the possibilities of a merger between cinema and found art.

Oh, absolutely. My specialty? Appropriation theory. Found footage is what I DO know more about than the average bear. But just because the blurry area between canonical forms of cinema and incidental forms of cinema which are now part of our social architecture is alluring doesn't mean it's not also full of ethical landmines. It's the interesting borderlands which we do need to explore, and that will be done clumsily as well as smartly, and I personally reserve the right to comment on how successful each venture into that murky realm is. Human Remains, Night and Fog, The Maelstrom... avant-garde found-footage filmmaking is positively preoccupied with scenes of catastrophe or memories lost to murder.

The long and the short of that is, in my opnion, that what we collectively take as visual cultural record is not to be recontextualized into an artistic realm lightly or unadvisedly. There are many examples of kerfuffles from this very kind of maneuver, done in high art and faily garbage alike (not that I'll defend the distinction between the two). The Zapruder tapes get used in a lot of artworks, for example. Naturally, that tape carries an impossible-to-unpack baggage of cultural significances, and that makes it a rich source for play with the underlying notions of cultural memory, time, and what can and cannot be captured on film. The tragedy? It's never really on the film, is it? It's just something to mourn by. Anyway, I'm rambling.

Yes, there are possibilities on the margins of defined schools of cinema. Cinema is many things to many people. It's time-based visual media, all-inclusive, a communication system, a culture, an industry, blah blah blah, lots of conflicting forces at work.

But WHY is it interesting that it captures events taking place? That's tautological! Is footage of a bus crash captivating the same was the early actualities were, and for no other reason? What other reason is there? If not the human interest angle, the voyeurism on real tragedy, what? I really would love to know, because as far as I can tell, many people are just really interested in watching things collide and blow up on screen, and I don't really see the fascination to the same degree, and I want to disavow that as "fascination with cinema," because, brother, there's a lot more to be fascinated with cinema for than that.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:52 AM on February 18, 2010 [28 favorites]

Ambrosia Voyeur, you are a god.
posted by serazin at 11:55 AM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Did you know that Ambrosia Voyeur is an anagram of Bear Amorous Ivy.
posted by Babblesort at 12:04 PM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

We're not supposed to post people's actual names.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:17 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Zat so, mob ire?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:20 PM on February 18, 2010 [11 favorites]

Oh, Bear Ivy, you always know just what to say.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:23 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

I personally reserve the right to comment on how successful each venture into that murky realm is.

I agree with all of the above. I just wanted to push back against what could be inferred from your earlier assertion that in this case fictionalizing forensic evidence is in bad taste, because I thought 'in this case' should be the emphasis.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:23 PM on February 18, 2010

Apropos of nothing, I look at the title of this post, and all I can think of is:

Gimme a fuckin' break
Gimme a fuckin' break
Break me off a piece of that fuckin' kit kat bar

I'm sorry.
posted by SteveInMaine at 12:40 PM on February 18, 2010 [8 favorites]

Grow, grow, grow your post, gently don the meme, flag it and, flag it and, flag it and, flag it and move on from the scene.

Ok, between this and the flapjax song, I am totally screwed, earworm wise. Thanks a lot!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:45 PM on February 18, 2010

Zat so, mob ire?

Another one for the list!
posted by zamboni at 12:47 PM on February 18, 2010

"If I wanted to look at videos like that I would go to Liveleak, not MetaFilter."

I'd go to DocumentingReality.com. I don't advise anyone else to visit. There are many people here on MeFi who are far more empathetic than me, and I'm glad that stuff like this bus crash post gets deleted, if only for their sake.
posted by HopperFan at 12:53 PM on February 18, 2010

Other sites posted the same video in the same stupid way: "look at this wow" without bothering to add context. It is in intriguing video for many reasons and someone could have turned it into a FPP worthy of it, but this attempt missed by a long shot. Glad it was deleted.
posted by whiskeyspider at 1:12 PM on February 18, 2010

Basically, yeah, just a misguided case at rationalizing anger over post deletion that got more and more absurd and unreal
posted by setanor at 1:19 PM on February 18, 2010

Ambrosia Voyeur, I say this advisedly and with all due caution:

TAKE ME NOW, YOU MAGNIFICENT BITCH.

is it hot in here or is it just me

probably just me but god DAMN so hot rawr
posted by scrump at 1:48 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

posted by scrump Ambrosia Voyeur, I say this advisedly and with all due caution: TAKE ME NOW, YOU MAGNIFICENT BITCH.

Step the fuck back. I saw her first.
posted by George Clooney at 2:19 PM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Thanks for deleting the post.

Now, if we have a choice, may we see the other guy?
posted by Verdant at 3:22 PM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Addicted to Videodrome != "interested in film"

ALSO...
posted by Sys Rq at 3:26 PM on February 18, 2010

I don't think that's my job--to contextualize or editorialize.

contextualize and editorialize or not the same thing, and that's where you went wrong. context is everything. if you kill one guy, it's murder. if you kill a million guys, it's foreign policy. similarly, if you post one snuff link without explaining why you like it, it's voyeuristic garbage. if you post five snuff links with a thesis that connects them to each other and to some kind of real idea, that's a good FPP.

sure there are plenty of valid SLYT FPPs. notice they are normally about smurfs, not about things that are emotionally or culturally loaded.

FWIW, I found the video itself amazing, and I was also really interested in the other one you posted, with the WTF guy and the horse-cab that goes through the intersection about 15 sec. before the wreck. It looks like you have a huge pile of these clips. why not put some of them together with some linking material so we can see what you see?

ps it says here you need a hug. c'mere, ya big lug! (((YSSTOG)))
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:33 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ouch!
Footage of planes flying into buildings in New York.

What's the story behind this?

I dunno, I just thought it was incredible.
posted by Elmore at 4:11 PM on February 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

What? You want context? Gimme a fuckin' break.
posted by Elmore at 4:13 PM on February 18, 2010

Can we please get this thread back onto the username anagrams? OK? Alright then...

flapjax at midnite = a pilaf Matt jinxed
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:16 PM on February 18, 2010 [5 favorites]

The Whelk = Whelk, The.

Huh.
posted by The Whelk at 4:24 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

used ho rot.
posted by herodotus at 4:25 PM on February 18, 2010

Metafilter

Ate. Me. Flirt.
posted by The Whelk at 4:29 PM on February 18, 2010

Awwww, I read all the way down, and first AV said what I wanted to say, and then she went in some whole other direction I wasn't even thinking about and was awesome. However! I would still like to go back to one of her earlier points (pre-expansion on appropriation):

This is a forensic video. It isn't art. People who plan for surveillance coverage aren't using the same rules that govern commercial or art cinema. Revering surveillance for what it captured is mawkish, voyeuristic, as I said, and just not very creative.

And that's really it. CCTV footage is to filmmaking as the police blotter is to literature. The police blotter can provide some fascinating reading material (when it's not horrifying it's often hilarious), and (on the subject of appropriation) it can definitely provide material to literature, but it's not literature all by itself. This is a rough analogy, because the police blotter (unlike CCTV footage) is at least crafted by a conscious human being, but its intent is in the same way inherently not literary: It's an artless record. Frankly, its best effects stem from its artlessness -- the cold objectivity of the blotter can speak with a voice of awful detachment when it lays out some grisly crime, like the disaffected tones of a killer; that same delivery, when applied to something basically humorous, comes across as the best deadpan ever -- but those effects are not there intentionally (well, sometimes I'm pretty sure they are, particularly with the funny stuff, but never mind). It's writing, and CCTV is film, but they're not writing and film.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:31 PM on February 18, 2010 [4 favorites]

Cooch Act.
posted by chococat at 4:32 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Appropriately, my name turns into "Net of Irk."
posted by Forktine at 4:34 PM on February 18, 2010

mimeo porn
posted by MrMoonPie at 4:38 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Forktine, sometimes I swear you absolutely must be my Ex. And then I think that can't possibly be true. /completely irrelevant.
posted by crush-onastick at 4:41 PM on February 18, 2010

Ouch!
Footage of planes flying into buildings in New York.

What's the story behind this?

I dunno, I just thought it was incredible.

I did actually consider an FPP on these then thought better of it.
posted by Artw at 4:42 PM on February 18, 2010

Ninjas Reek
Sea Jerk Inn
Inane Jerks
posted by jenkinsEar at 4:42 PM on February 18, 2010

ahem. forgot the anagram. "rustic stack, hon."
posted by crush-onastick at 4:43 PM on February 18, 2010

qrssy
posted by Sys Rq at 4:52 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

He Irk. A villain whose power is annoyance.
posted by Hiker at 4:54 PM on February 18, 2010

iamkimiam
posted by iamkimiam at 4:55 PM on February 18, 2010

Yens Jams; the only anagram of my name and I don't even understand it.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:55 PM on February 18, 2010

Overall Hiss
Lavish Loser
Saviors Hell

Need I say more?
posted by orville sash at 4:56 PM on February 18, 2010

Cup By Nun.

(That's one nun, one cup, tyvm.)
posted by bunnycup at 4:57 PM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Yens Jams; the only anagram of my name and I don't even understand it.

Oh, that? That refers to those times when your Japanese coins get stuck in a vending machine.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:58 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

rox, etc
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:59 PM on February 18, 2010

SIEZE LOT K
posted by koeselitz at 5:03 PM on February 18, 2010

CCTV footage is to filmmaking as the police blotter is to literature.


Ahem.


-- Detain... Tinkling Ho
posted by Nothing... and like it at 5:08 PM on February 18, 2010

Doh! Horny Pic!
posted by hydrophonic at 5:10 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Fax Edgier
Axed Grief
posted by fixedgear at 5:11 PM on February 18, 2010

jessamyn: “Yens Jams; the only anagram of my name and I don't even understand it.”

Nonsense. You and cortex have nicely analogous ones:

cortex = rox, etc

jessamyn = yes, 'n' jams
posted by koeselitz at 5:12 PM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Nothing... and like it: “-- Detain... Tinkling Ho”

(Speaking of police blotters. Heh.)
posted by koeselitz at 5:16 PM on February 18, 2010

I ran over tipi.

Jerk am I.
posted by invitapriore at 5:17 PM on February 18, 2010

"Yens Jams; the only anagram of my name and I don't even understand it."

"Messy Jan"
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 5:21 PM on February 18, 2010

Maniac Mites
Satanic Mime
Mama Incest I

Nice!
posted by amicamentis at 5:21 PM on February 18, 2010

Yea Hell I
posted by HeyAllie at 5:22 PM on February 18, 2010

Jen's yams?
posted by Sys Rq at 5:23 PM on February 18, 2010

jessamyn = my jeans's

(if you don't mind improper English)
posted by amicamentis at 5:25 PM on February 18, 2010

Also I fear I have broken the internet anagram server by making it try to anagram mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey, so I did this by hand:

Area card rams shiv, skims dizzy joy
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 5:26 PM on February 18, 2010

fine seat
naif tees
stain fee

Makes me think of an American Apparel staff meeting.
posted by stefanie at 5:26 PM on February 18, 2010

duck nandu
posted by dunkadunc at 5:27 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh, okay then. Even if a pile of people flag a post about bunnies, it will probably not get deleted. The more you know.
posted by that girl at 5:27 PM on February 18, 2010

Men's jays.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:28 PM on February 18, 2010

smyma
posted by amyms at 5:31 PM on February 18, 2010

Bite critics: Ouch!
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:38 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

en anus

just sayin'
posted by unSane at 5:52 PM on February 18, 2010

to record asshats
posted by at the crossroads at 5:56 PM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Can't say I've not earned my MeFi posting stripes, i.e. zebra.
posted by Abiezer at 5:58 PM on February 18, 2010

Monk E. Taters
posted by katemonster at 6:01 PM on February 18, 2010 [11 favorites]

The punishment for seriously arguing the aesthetics of crashes should be 30 readings of Sontag on photography. Only confronting her dumbness can allow you to see your own dumbness and overcome it.
posted by klangklangston at 6:05 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

So says the Stank Knoll Gang.
posted by klangklangston at 6:09 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Immoral So
A Slim Room
posted by Sailormom at 6:13 PM on February 18, 2010

Vice Imbued by Crud

That's unfortunate -- I may never be able to look me in the face again.
posted by divide_by_cucumber at 6:14 PM on February 18, 2010

Totally lame deletion. - I agree.
posted by blaneyphoto at 6:20 PM on February 18, 2010

Am Ribbed Toy
posted by Metroid Baby at 6:24 PM on February 18, 2010

Chin snot
Inch tons
posted by chinston at 6:25 PM on February 18, 2010

Copula her more.

Don't mind if I do.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:27 PM on February 18, 2010

Amoral Exciter.

works for me.
posted by lex mercatoria at 6:27 PM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Embank Toy
Maybe Knot
Meaty Knob
Yak Entomb
A Byte Monk

I only knew of these on my own, but the anagram machine somehow found 107 (most of which are admittedly useless).
posted by batmonkey at 6:28 PM on February 18, 2010

Cry Down Link

Weirdly appropriate.
posted by drinkyclown at 6:29 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

I generally think anagrams are dumb (one stole my lunch money, once) but Dateless Morns describes me depressingly well these days.

...Also Snarled Me Sots
posted by restless_nomad at 6:34 PM on February 18, 2010

I am with the mods on deleting both the deadly bus crash and the pointless bus fight.

I'm pro-bus-crash-deletion but anti-bus-fight-deletion (I assume that was the "Epic Beard Guy" video). Not that EBG isn't all over the Internet anyway, but I was kind of curious to see if MeFites would be pro or anti EBG. It's kind of interesting as Internet memes go for a couple of reasons (the "YouTube video ignites race row" aspect and the fact that Google are apparently taking steps to discourage its spread). Not a big deal though.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 6:37 PM on February 18, 2010

Oh dear...

Ass Mint.
posted by Ms. Saint at 6:40 PM on February 18, 2010 [6 favorites]

Help, cat fart!
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 6:47 PM on February 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

jessamyn: “Yens Jams; the only anagram of my name and I don't even understand it.”

Jens Yams could be a tribute to the great hard man Jens Voight, the baddest man in the pro peloton who no doubt eats yams raw.

Also, busses? Bus Plunge is the only bus that matters.
posted by fixedgear at 6:48 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

I HAVE NOT MERELY GROWN A SPINE, I HAVE GROWN A SERIES OF SPINES IN PARALLEL LINES DOWN THE LONG AXIS OF MY BODY, DIRECTLY PARALLEL AND LATERAL TO TWIN ROWS OF CHITINOUS SCUTES THAT I HAVE ALSO GROWN.
posted by Mister_A at 6:53 PM on February 18, 2010 [4 favorites]

And Jens Voight is a terrifying engine. Merely watching him can sear your lungs.
posted by Mister_A at 6:54 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Since this thread has gone all random and shmoopy, can I just say that my favorite thing about the deleted bus-crash thread was flapjax's James Blood Ulmer story.

Which was an OK story, but one which inspired me to take a look again at this video in my YouTube favorites.

Damn, it's so friggin' amazing. (If you live in NY, Charlie Burnham, the violinist, is playing this Sunday at Jalopy.)
posted by neroli at 7:06 PM on February 18, 2010

at this point i think it's fair to assume that by "shmoopy" you mean "homo spy"
posted by herodotus at 7:08 PM on February 18, 2010

A boob when pink!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:09 PM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Hedonist Now Pro
Hoedown In Sport

King's lead hat was the poker in the fire
posted by porn in the woods at 7:09 PM on February 18, 2010

Ooh! Anagrams! Master_I.

I Am Rest.
posted by Mister_A at 7:12 PM on February 18, 2010

"homo spy"


WHAT DO YOU KNOW?!?!
posted by The Whelk at 7:13 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

at this point i think it's fair to assume that by "shmoopy" you mean "homo spy"

No, "my hoops."
posted by neroli at 7:15 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

I broke the anagram machine:
No anagrams found.

Sorry about that.

Die Jo!
posted by Dojie at 7:18 PM on February 18, 2010

All I want to know is how those people got a Relic Cat in their scanner, and why.
posted by tracicle at 7:24 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

a lamp, or...
oral amp!

wow, those sort of suck.

(but my actual name gets me "ransacked while wintry", "kitchenwares inwardly", "arcane whirlwind tykes", and my favorite, "hacksaw tendril winery", which is so totally what i'm going to name my future winery.)
posted by palomar at 7:31 PM on February 18, 2010

CHITINOUS SCUTES
posted by mendel at 7:31 PM on February 18, 2010

Quainter Antonym
Mannequin Tart, Yo
No Natty Ramequin
Yon Quaint Marten
Mantra: Quit No Yen
Quaint Moan Entry
Quaint Notarymen
Ninety-Quart Moan
Annoy Quitter Man

I prefer just about any of these to my actual username. Oh well.


Heed a generous envy. Undoes revenge, yeah?
posted by notquitemaryann at 7:37 PM on February 18, 2010

and lo a thousand sock puppets did bloom that day.
posted by The Whelk at 7:40 PM on February 18, 2010

I'm scared. What comes out from my username will also work with my real name. (runs anagram solver)

My Mr. Cat Tic

Oh my.
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:53 PM on February 18, 2010

The anagram maker couldn't find any for my username. What am I going to name my sock puppet now?
posted by pecknpah at 7:57 PM on February 18, 2010

Oh, and SpineFilter becomes Feline Strip.
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:57 PM on February 18, 2010

Real name?

12149 found. Displaying first 1000

My real name name is crazy.
posted by fixedgear at 8:00 PM on February 18, 2010

Ace Misspells Porgy
Graceless Limp Posy
Careless Gimp Ploys
A Creepy Smog Spills
A Clergy Loses Pimps
A Slice Propels Gyms
A Corpse Gels Simply


....My actual real-life name has the delightful anagram "Wrinkly And her Wombats". Which I still absolutely would use as a name if I ever went into some kind of business for myself (publishing house, production company, etc.) (I even have a logo in mind and everything.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:04 PM on February 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

Crab Pant Sneer.
Narc's pert bane.
and appropriately: Resent crap? Ban.
posted by Bernt Pancreas at 8:08 PM on February 18, 2010

role
posted by lore at 8:12 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

I don't like this game.
posted by fuq at 8:15 PM on February 18, 2010 [7 favorites]

Dead Minors should be the name of a Rites of Spring-style emotional hardcore band.

Actually:
Randomised should be a british Nü Metal band.
Admired Son = really sappy Christian Rock power ballads
Amid Drones = a Boards of Canada spinoff
posted by dunkadunc at 8:28 PM on February 18, 2010

Sizable Dirt
Zebra Distil
Tribal Sized
Lardiest Biz

oh anagrams, I love you. let's make out.
posted by elizardbits at 8:31 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

My anagram is Jennifer. Weird.
posted by freejinn at 8:32 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

a red rye
posted by readery at 8:34 PM on February 18, 2010

Etudes Due
posted by desuetude at 8:42 PM on February 18, 2010

porny caldera jam.

But where do I put the underscore?
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 8:51 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Jam you Caldera Pony, Jam!
posted by The Whelk at 8:53 PM on February 18, 2010

Totoro b?
Toot rob?

My real name gets oh no dominoes, & moooonshine.
posted by robotot at 8:56 PM on February 18, 2010

"led nerve jimmy"

(if I cheat and spell out "eleven")
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:10 PM on February 18, 2010

this thread won't end mel.
posted by mendel at 9:17 PM on February 18, 2010 [4 favorites]

My anagram is Jennifer. Weird.
posted by freejinn at 10:32 PM on February 18

My anagram is Jonathan, which is my real-life first name. And my real-life wife's name is Jennifer. As such, I hereby claim you as my internet-wife.
posted by nanojath at 9:21 PM on February 18, 2010

Sue hobo? OK!
posted by Bookhouse at 9:22 PM on February 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

O hell, jed.
posted by hellojed at 9:39 PM on February 18, 2010

Knob tie.

Right on the front page, wahay!
posted by Kinbote at 10:03 PM on February 18, 2010

Tamale Pep
Palpate Me
Ample Peat
Papa Let Me
posted by applemeat at 10:06 PM on February 18, 2010

I am sorry, getting posts deleted sucks.

Of all the things in the world that really do suck, having a post deleted from Metafilter is pretty fucking low on the scale.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 10:15 PM on February 18, 2010

Cenobitic Ruptures Yurts

Now I hope I get a chance to use "cenobitic" before I forget what it means.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 10:33 PM on February 18, 2010

Cenobitic seems like a nice word.
posted by fixedgear at 10:36 PM on February 18, 2010

Okay, so I just saw an animated GIF in which the footage of the fatal luge crash was mixed with footage from 9/11/01 so that the luger flew over the wall and then crashed through the World Trade Center South Tower in a ball of flame.

I'm kind of at a loss at this point, actually.
posted by nanojath at 10:49 PM on February 18, 2010

I Cool Us Qua
posted by loquacious at 11:20 PM on February 18, 2010

Basically, you are bad person and you should feel extremely bad, nanojath. Any other questions?
posted by herodotus at 12:00 AM on February 19, 2010

Like.
posted by keli at 12:01 AM on February 19, 2010

fixedgear: “Cenobitic seems like a nice word.”

It does, doesn't it? You'd never tell just by looking at it that it has a metal band, and that it often says very rude things to strangers.
posted by koeselitz at 12:20 AM on February 19, 2010

nanojath: “I'm kind of at a loss at this point, actually.”

Let's see... n... a... j... no, that's not an anagram of your username, nanojath. Try again.
posted by koeselitz at 12:22 AM on February 19, 2010

This username anagram thing will not end well. And I aught to know.

-Lone Wolf Pose
Open E's Follow
Slew Fool? Nope.
Oleo News Flop
Loose Flow Pen
Spoof One Well
We Loop Felons
Wolf's Peon, Ole!
Pee Follows No
Sleep, Fool, Now!
Flees Own Loop
Feels Own Pool
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:42 AM on February 19, 2010

When I first saw the video (elsewhere) my first thought was: "God, I hope no one died."

I was surprised to see it in the Blue, and when I did I thought: "Maybe it was just one of those 'Wow, can't believe no one was killed' videos."

After learning that it ended horribly I wasn't surprised to see it pulled.
posted by bwg at 1:38 AM on February 19, 2010

Calm dye porn raja.

It has a certain ring.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 1:59 AM on February 19, 2010

As Redactors Shot,
Assort Chordates.
posted by at the crossroads at 2:05 AM on February 19, 2010

These seem suitable...

A Bleated Ether Rumor
Hurl A Remote Debater
and
A Bad Teeth Mule Error
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 3:02 AM on February 19, 2010

Balder Loomed

...bugger

(I prefer Bra Model Lode)
posted by badrolemodel at 3:10 AM on February 19, 2010

Safe Chemo Cure.

Wordsmith Anagram Maker -- go to town!
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:11 AM on February 19, 2010

From which I came up with:

Metafilter: Fart -- Lite Em!
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:12 AM on February 19, 2010

Also, there are over 40000 anagrams for "you should see the other guy."
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:14 AM on February 19, 2010

Mine is "you sexy motherfucker."
posted by Mid at 5:17 AM on February 19, 2010

Wait, are we not doing high school nicknames?
posted by Mid at 5:18 AM on February 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Neon Wok On You
posted by nooneyouknow at 5:30 AM on February 19, 2010

Epic ski tryout! It's Coke purity!

and my favorite: "Sicko? Trite? Yup."
posted by kittyprecious at 5:56 AM on February 19, 2010

Lab Of Shy.

Finally, I have a name for my tweepop indie band.
posted by flashboy at 6:25 AM on February 19, 2010

Her Anemic Gnu.

Coincidentally, my girlfriend's pet name for me.
posted by generichuman at 6:41 AM on February 19, 2010

crap post and this thread isn't much better...

close 'er down, boss!
posted by HuronBob at 6:42 AM on February 19, 2010

Slap My Veranda
Very Damp Anals
Spray Me Vandal
Envy Drama Pals
Damn Spy Larvae
Very Sad Napalm
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:51 AM on February 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

crap post and this thread isn't much better...

Au contraire, Rub No Hob.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:54 AM on February 19, 2010

Mine suck too, though SpiffyOrb would be a decent sockpuppet.

Or, if Fry from Futurama answered an Ask by lying, I've got:

OP: Fry Fibs.
posted by SpiffyRob at 6:55 AM on February 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

crap post and this thread isn't much better...

close 'er down, boss! Hobo Burn

FTFY.
posted by MrMoonPie at 7:07 AM on February 19, 2010

A Hurler, Me (good)
Hear Lemur (a propos)
Her Mauler (...less good)
Harem Lure
Harem Rule
Mule, Err? Ah!
Re: Ham Rule (best email convo ever)
posted by Lemurrhea at 7:15 AM on February 19, 2010

CCTV footage is to filmmaking as the police blotter is to literature.

From my college's newspaper:
"On Wednesday, around 3 p.m., a student accepted 17 hot dogs from a Kingston Pizza employee. Police said the hot dogs were previously paid for by another student, and were valued at $20."

There have been much better ones throughout the years, but that was just in the one I had nearby.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 7:31 AM on February 19, 2010

A Overreacted Shit
A Chartered Soviet
Or A Scattered Hive
Torts Are Achieved
posted by evisceratordeath at 7:37 AM on February 19, 2010

I don't like this game either, fuq.
posted by zarq at 9:03 AM on February 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Wet D
Dew T
T Wed
Dtew?
posted by TedW at 9:22 AM on February 19, 2010

A Printer
A Reprint
I, Partner
Near Trip
Errant Pi
Tin Raper
Ear Print
Rear Pint
Inapt Err
Ripe Rant
Inert Rap
Rat Ripen
posted by terrapin at 9:25 AM on February 19, 2010

jjijjjjjjjjjjjj
posted by jjjjjjjijjjjjjj at 9:36 AM on February 19, 2010 [5 favorites]

A thug.
posted by aught at 9:39 AM on February 19, 2010

tzikeh
posted by tzikeh at 10:00 AM on February 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Is an anagram more than a femtogram?
posted by Mister_A at 10:17 AM on February 19, 2010

Usual Anal Oboists
Anus Tub Solo Alias
Allusion About Ass

Forgive me.
posted by Balonious Assault at 10:20 AM on February 19, 2010

File Thy Thigh Lift
Get Filth Filthy (Hi!)
Hefty, If Tight, Hill
High Filthy Elf Tit
I, The Fifth Lightly
If Hit Lightly, Heft
The Iffy Light Hilt
The Hilly Fit Fight
Thy Eighth Fill Fit
Hey Flit, Lift Thigh!

I'll stop now.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:43 AM on February 19, 2010

Toothbrush peer

...
posted by The Pusher Robot at 11:41 AM on February 19, 2010

Usual Anal Oboists
Anus Tub Solo Alias
Allusion About Ass

Forgive me.

No worries. I am also Erotic Cubic Shit.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:50 AM on February 19, 2010

Lid Slum

Hm...
posted by Dumsnill at 12:01 PM on February 19, 2010

Mosii Ewe

Woe iis me
posted by OmieWise at 12:29 PM on February 19, 2010

Lo, Eddy Yodel Too
posted by toodleydoodley at 1:02 PM on February 19, 2010

Doodle Yodel Toy

way better - can't believe I didn't see that the first time
posted by toodleydoodley at 1:08 PM on February 19, 2010

Spotting a pink hellcat!
posted by Help, I can't stop talking! at 2:03 PM on February 19, 2010

Nutty Slanderer Gets Set
Deletes Angst, Rents Yurt
Tyrant Resented Gutless
Nerdy Rant Settles Guest
Sad Regents Try Teen Slut
Taters Lust Dents Energy
posted by strangely stunted trees at 2:11 PM on February 19, 2010

Tan Khan? Sold, son!
posted by Solon and Thanks at 2:19 PM on February 19, 2010

Toads Orchestras
posted by at the crossroads at 2:26 PM on February 19, 2010

Onion Maw
posted by nowonmai at 2:43 PM on February 19, 2010

uniq

Which is pronounced like "unique" not "eunuch", because I've still got all my bits and I won't tolerate rumors to the contrary!

*grabs groin while talking to make certain everyone knows the bits of which I speak*

*points at crotch with other hand while raising one eyebrow menacingly*

Why is everyone staring at me?
posted by quin at 2:48 PM on February 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Massive difference between cheerily gawking at an accident where real living people died just because of the kewl angles, and not being able to go on living because people die in the world.
posted by Ashley801 at 3:08 PM on February 19, 2010

Cake Typist!

Wait, I've been typing all day. Where's my cake?
posted by Space Kitty at 7:47 PM on February 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Duh. The cake is a lie.
posted by Babblesort at 8:40 PM on February 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

No anagrams generated.
posted by jgirl at 9:19 PM on February 19, 2010

JG IRL, if you're willing to go Ballardesque and don't mind going with the rarer-than-rare Identity Function Anagram.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:23 PM on February 19, 2010

Previously. Previously.

Your pelvis? Our evil spy.
posted by hydrophonic at 11:12 PM on February 19, 2010

Be Buss

:(
posted by subbes at 5:54 AM on February 20, 2010

Deviances Tutor. Sign up now! Discounted lessons this week only!
posted by EvaDestruction at 8:24 AM on February 20, 2010

I think if metafilter were about "the best of the web" this would stay; you don't often get footage of wrecks from 3 angles. I agree with the OP. Then again I prefer honesty to politeness and if its one thing the moderation of this site makes clear is that my sentiment is not shared. So this deletion fits with the feel of the site politeness over honesty, good posts for metafilter over best of the web. I certainly will not dispute that the mods are within their rights I just disagree.
posted by Rubbstone at 8:59 AM on February 20, 2010

VINO CHEER!
posted by everichon at 9:39 AM on February 20, 2010

I was not in attendance at this, despite the anagram.
posted by gimonca at 11:46 AM on February 20, 2010

I think if metafilter were about "the best of the web" this would stay; you don't often get footage of wrecks from 3 angles. I agree with the OP. Then again I prefer honesty to politeness and if its one thing the moderation of this site makes clear is that my sentiment is not shared. So this deletion fits with the feel of the site politeness over honesty, good posts for metafilter over best of the web. I certainly will not dispute that the mods are within their rights I just disagree.
posted by Rubbstone at 11:59 AM on February 20 [+] [!]

did you read any of the arguments in the thread? nobody here is against honesty. it's like this:

"people die" is a bad FPP, because, duh, people die.

"Here's three examples of people dying, and why their deaths, and the manner thereof, matters" is a good FPP.

in other words, being honest isn't enough. you have to be clear. there are a billion videos on youtube. for the most part, they don't just up and speak for themselves* - you have to speak for them. if you don't have anything to say, how is that "the best of the web?"

*caveat - SLYTs about LOLcats totally speak for themselves. but do you want to say that footage of a bus crash that kills a bunch of precious, unique, never-to-exist-again individuals is like LOLcats?
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:55 AM on February 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

@OmieWise

I liked your post except for this part: They read, too, as the defenses of someone kind of young.

Come on people, less fancy rhetoric, more clear thinking. :)
posted by polymodus at 12:13 PM on February 20, 2010

S! Mo' S!
posted by moss at 6:54 PM on February 20, 2010

You're being a big baby and you should be embarrassed because you look like a total asshole.
Every response makes you look like a bigger dick than before.
posted by ishotjr at 7:19 PM on February 20, 2010

There is no retort like an anagram.
posted by koeselitz at 12:40 AM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

There is no retort - like an anagram.

Neither resort to - animal rake nag.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:07 AM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

did you read any of the arguments in the thread? nobody here is against honesty. it's like this:

"people die" is a bad FPP, because, duh, people die.

"Here's three examples of people dying, and why their deaths, and the manner thereof, matters" is a good FPP.

in other words, being honest isn't enough. you have to be clear. there are a billion videos on youtube. for the most part, they don't just up and speak for themselves* - you have to speak for them. if you don't have anything to say, how is that "the best of the web?"

Your talking like this is obvious, if it was obvious to me there would be no place for disagreement. Honestly, the most notable thing about this video is not the fact that people die.
posted by Rubbstone at 11:26 AM on February 21, 2010

Honestly, the most notable thing about this video is not the fact that people die.

Then -- what we are trying to say is, whatever that other thing was that is "most notable" about this video, the OP is failing to make that other thing clear, or has failed to justify it to the point that it is overshadowing the fact that people are dying in it. As it stands, the fact that people are dying in this video is itself overshadowing whatever this "most notable thing" is, and thus, we aren't struck by it.

THAT'S what people are saying -- "want us to look at something other than 'people are dying'? Call our attention to it, and make sure the video can keep our attention in that context instead." The OP didn't do that, and the video didn't do that, so -- yoink.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:30 AM on February 21, 2010 [2 favorites]