The horror of the past week has been so visceral and omnipresent that it seeps into your bones. The latest war between Israel and Gaza shows the possibilities of vendetta and propaganda in the digital age. It burns images into the human psyche that are impossible to forget.
I implore you, however: Put down the phone and stop watching. There’s an argument, I suppose, that we must not look away from evil, but often this is peddled by people who want to garner revenue per click.
I tried to make some journalistic sense over the weekend of what was happening to separate facts from rumors. I saw videos I hope no one else will ever witness. There is a moment when wanting to be informed becomes consuming gore.
When I was 18, I lived in Israel during the second intifada. It was harrowing. I went to see the remnants of a bus in Jerusalem that a suicide bomber had blown up earlier in the day. The bloodstained carcass of the bus remained. Fortunately, we didn’t have smartphones to broadcast the scene to the world. Instead, it existed in a moment, seared into the memories and nostrils of the witnesses.
Digital war is now our reality. This is real-time combat footage, unlike anything we’ve witnessed before. To be fair, it didn’t start in Gaza and Southern Israel. Former fans of the now-defunct LiveLeak website watched horror videos from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for years. The past two years of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine have provided seemingly infinite videos of drone warfare and hand-to-hand combat. It seems like a GoPro is standard gear for soldiers worldwide. Why are we drawn to these awful glimpses into bloodshed? Are our modern lives so dull that we’re pulled to the grisly like moths to the flame?
In the digital world, safe and secure in Western opulence, we can watch macabre videos as we eat our breakfast. This is bad for our souls. Watching this violence affects us on the spiritual level. I know discussing spirituality is verboten in tech journalism, but it's as real as algorithms and AI. Guarding yourself from evil is imperative for humans — and this is pure, raw evil.
Now, we have ubiquitous footage of the spectacle. At this point, watching more of it is counterproductive. You aren't absorbing news; you’re watching snuff films. You're either on the side of the Israelis or Gaza or maybe just horrified at images of lifeless bodies. There is nothing else to suss out. You can follow the news without watching videos of dead children.
I have friends who live in Israel, and I’m frightened for them. Anecdotally, they tell me many Israelis are refusing to watch any more videos. Instead, they are praying and spending time with their families. I also understand I’m an American and I am disquieted about my country getting dragged into another Middle Eastern war that has nothing to do with our citizens. After 9/11, our leaders used righteous anger to push for a war that left us with death, debt, and degeneration. I’m not falling for it again.
Be prepared. We’re in uncharted waters, and the digital weapons built by tech monsters are unleashed. You’ll see algorithmic manipulation, bot armies, AI photos, signal jamming, propaganda, and counterpropaganda. The first casualty of war is always the truth. You should be very cautious about sharing or believing much of the information coming out of the war zone in the coming weeks.
Better yet, power down your phone, hang out with your kids and spouse, go outside, go play with your dog, literally anything besides being a powerless spectator to the apocalypse.
