Mexico's descent into real-life Gothic horror now has a digital component. From that Vuilliamary article:
Mexico’s war is a war of the digital age, fought as much on YouTube and mobile phones as it is in city streets and backroom torture chambers. Cartels use YouTube to exhibit their interrogations and executions, and to threaten rivals and public officials. They set up rogue “hot spot” digital sites to display their handiwork.
The article then adds the social media angle:
One such site, hosted from El Paso, received more than 320,000 hits and posted more than 1,000 comments.
The article makes the classic fearsome media link between representations of sex and violence:
You can view all this as a form of cyber-sado-pornography, which it is.
Then it heads off in a very different direction:
But unlike the cyber-strutting of al-Qaeda, from whom it is sometimes argued they got the idea, the narcos use digital communications with a particular attitude. If you asked them, they might even call it a sense of humor.
On the one hand, we should probably expect more such arguments about how scary and dangerous digitial media are. viz., YouTube summons forth gang torture. And maybe some with follow up on that al-Qaeda link.
On the other hand, don't expect to hear much about it as a form of comedy.
(link thanks to Charles Cameron; photo from Julian Cardona's excellent series)
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