Posted on 10/01/2010 5:46:35 PM PDT by Kaslin
Human Nature: A talented student jumping to his death after being victimized by a voyeuristic Web cam should be no shock. Our psyches demand that intimacy be private; the Internet, insanely, is destroying that norm.
We all have a good laugh when we hear — almost weekly, it seems — of the latest celebrity whose bedroom antics are posted in cyberspace. But it's no laughing matter.
Humanity — not just Americans, not just Westerners; the Internet knows no boundaries — is experiencing a mass psychosis without really knowing it. With a click of a mouse we can see the grainy hard-core pornography of a famously airheaded heiress; when we then flip on the TV we find that a popular fast-food restaurant chain has employed the very same person for its commercials.
Shame? Obscenity? In the new age of the twittering twit, such old-fashioned notions were jettisoned long ago.
When lawyer Charles Rembar wrote how he got the federal courts to do what they had never done in the century and a half of the First Amendment's existence — protect sexually explicit writings, such as those of novelist Henry Miller — he called his book, published in 1968, "The End of Obscenity."
Norman Mailer wrote its swaggering introduction and mockingly cited "the last defense of the censor, that sophisticated argument which might urge that sex is a mystery and men explore it and detail it and define it and examine it and eventually disembowel it of privacy at their peril."
Well, the perils of sex disemboweled of privacy have arrived and in greater quantity than could have been imagined in the Swinging Sixties. Obscenity, for all practical purposes, does not exist
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Well, they were supposed to be private but I think they are available for downloading at a remarkably low price on the internet.
None of it was heterosexual BTW.
This is nothing new.
I agree.
It certainly is. Even if it is not new it is very different.
Curtis left his blinds open. He knew or should have known that voyeurs would or could watch and/or film his private affairs.
This young man requested privacy from his roommate and got a verbal agreement that he would not be disturbed.
Not only was his trust violated by his roommate secretly recording his most private moments without his knowledge but his private affairs were published for all the world to see with out his approval.
The college roommate thing is rarely with out some kind of friction. But with out some agreement to honor privacy it has no chance of working.
One thing that is new is the ease with which something like this can be done. An camera can be very small and easily concealed. The camera can stream video to a nearby computer by Bluetooth wireless or broadband wireless router.
Then within minutes the video can be uploaded to the internet on Youtube or any number of other video file sharing networks for all the world to see. Although everyone expects and takes their privacy for granted in all reality privacy is an archaic notion today. Technology has made it so.
I suspect the killer is among the people who had EARLIER visited with the kid in his room ~ after all, the kid didn't tell them what was going on ~ although he knew.
There's a murder here and people want to run off squealing into the woods about "privacy". I think we should turn our attention to who had a motive and forget this suicide stuff ~ he left his wallet and keys behind on the bridge. He was killed.
BTW, having visited in one of those “facing apartments” I recall that Tony didn’t have “blinds” ~ that place was OPEN ALL THE TIME as far as I could tell.
There's a murder here and people want to run off squealing into the woods about "privacy". I think we should turn our attention to who had a motive and forget this suicide stuff ~ he left his wallet and keys behind on the bridge. He was killed.
So can I file a wrongful death suit against Courtney Love for murdering Kurt Cobain?
Sounds like you have led an “interesting” life, mu.
I doubt I had missed the fact that their are gay people who like to show their hindquarters by the time I found my friend (sister of a guy I ran around with in Boy Scouts, etc.) lived across the way from Tony Curtis!
So far the great national debate on this case has skipped right past the dead kid ~ like he was some wilting flower. He was having a hit parade of guys come by his dormitory room for sex ~ and I've seen that before. Some people elsewhere were having hissy fits over possessing him ~ that's always the case ~ and he ended up dead.
To me it's clear as day that he was murdered.
I am having a hard time understanding why you consider the wallet and keys left on the bridge evidence of murder or details suggesting murder.
To me this is showing that he was trying to make it easier to identify his body and make it easier for his parents to collect his car.
If you have any links to news articles explaining murder theories please post them.
Imagine there are OTHERS who wanted to kill him for his allowing films to be made of their sessions, or that there are OTHERS who wanted to kill him because he was not as "exclusive" as he was leading them to believe.
They come and escort him to the river ~ and one of them grabs his keys and wallet off his student desk!
They simply tossed him in the drink before they put his wallet and keys into his pocket, so they left them behind before they got caught with them.
The cops are no doubt evaluating all the evidence in that light.
Even if he knew or should have known, he probably didn't care.
True dat. I truly hope the roommate who did the videotaping and his accomplice are suffering from mountains of shame now, or they truly are sociopaths. I'm of course sorry this thread is turning into a place for the dead kid's homosexuality to be discussed, but what can you do...there are some here with no conscience either.
Along the lack of shame and conscience road, though -- I just heard from a law professor friend who was visited by one of his students recently. The student was complaining that the short lead time which he was given to write an essay made it impossible for his father to proofread it before he handed it in, and his father had always proofread all his papers. LAW SCHOOL. THIS KID IS IN GRADUATE EDUCATION. (1) He should have been ashamed to admit his Dad still proofread his homework and (2) He should have been wwaaaaayyy to ashamed to say anything about it to a professor.
Ok, from a murder’s perspective a bridge is a rather public place to commit a murder.
If you are going to toss an unwilling person off a bridge you might need some help and that means a witness/ accomplice.
If you drug the subject you will have to be a fairly large person to pull it off and you still need an accomplice for transportation because you have to leave the subjects car at the scene. If you walk you are going to be close to the scene of the crime too long.
If the video is the motive the police are going to come looking for you because they have video evidence that you knew the subject. Not too smart to kill him.
Murder is never a bright idea and is really stupid if you were intimate with the murdered.
Sure crimes of passion are not usually well thought out but tossing him off a bridge does not seem like a likely way to kill a lover. Bridges are more commonly ways to dispose of a body. Maybe a coroner’s report will come back with a murder finding.
bookmark
That would be way “TOO” ashamed...
“Sexual suicide” and “suicide by sex.”
Two different deaths. Both happening pervasively in society today.
That's an interesting take on the issue. You have a point. Also most gay men aren't like virginal 16 years olds in 1960... they might not want to be taped, but it wouldn't be the end of the world... Maybe someone 'more in the closet'?
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