All the Rage: Digital Bodies and Deadly Play in the Age of the Suicide Bomber

Abstract

Violence is Viral "Violence is viral..." Jean Baudrillard says in The Spirit of Terrorism, "it operates by contagion, by chain reaction, and it gradually destroys all our immunities and our powers to resist" (94). Seung-Hui Cho succumbed to those powers at Virginia Tech, as did Kimveer Gill at Dawson College in Montreal, and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine, and too, too many others to mention. Meanwhile, half the world away, young men and women in the grip of a spiritual agenda enact similar acts of suicidal revenge to answer their own need for salvation, a sense of entitlement, and a retaliatory yearning to set right real or imagined wrongs. As much as these killers' acts are incomprehensible, they are simultaneously sanctioned by our own news media and entertainment industry. If these lost souls do not know where to draw the line, it is surely because our culture makes no distinction. In fact, the infamous psychedelia professor Timothy Leary, who performed his own death as a fashion statement and online signature media event in "designed dying," said "The most important thing you can do in your life is to die." We are immersed in visual violence of all kinds on a daily basis as entertainment. Suicide, especially murder-suicide, has become commonplace, yes, but more to the point it is now both fashionable and newsworthy. We are bombarded by popular culture forms that require ever worse-bigger and more dramatic events-to feed its massive hunger. These symbolic acts (and to say they are symbolic is not to suggest that they do not cause very real carnage) of blowing up bridges and markets in Baghdad, twin towers in Manhattan, or performing enactments of resentment against those Cho claimed had trust funds and drank cognac are happenings made real and more powerful because of their dramatization as carefully staged events for the media.

Shooting for Fame: Spectacular Youth, Web 2.0 Dystopia, and the Celebrity Anarchy of Generation Mash-Up

“…He demonstrates a disturbing devolution of the mash-up ethos; his cyber-evidence bespeaks the dark potential of Web 2.0. Writing of digital bodies and youth violence, Carolyn Guertin (2008) cautions:…”