Just The Wei I Am

Time magazine's Person of the Year is "You". You - as in everyone of you, us, that is a participant of the information revolution taking place. Examples abound of how the amateur, the person-next-door, is leveraging this millenium's infocomm technologies - Web2.0, video phones, YouTube, MySpace, etc - to change the way information is created, shared and received.

After that promising sounding paragraph, you'd probably have sense that I intended some irony. Well, amidst all the euphoria over how technology is reshaping the social landscape, some things don't change. Like human nature. Terrible human nature.

It's not news now that Saddam's execution was secretly filmed on a mobile phone and is all over the place - a quick search on YouTube turns up many copies. I could only watch up to the point where the people in the chamber started jeering. Then I felt sick. What was sickening was not the execution (which I skipped) but rather how people celebrated. I certainly know that he has commited many heinous crimes and stands guilty. I oppose capital punishment, but that's not the point here either. The disturbing thing is how people would celebrate over the death of another human being, hated as he might be. I guess what disturbed me more was how the responses of some christians are not unlike those of non-believers. Dismissive, or even gleeful.

There is something wrong with our generation when our entertainment is to be happy at someone dying. On a lesser magnitude, but bad also, is the example of American Idol (and other offshoots). I was watching an episode on TV Mobile just now. I certainly enjoy the entertainment of the actual competition - great singing and all. What put me off is the audition part.

Specifically it's the part where they show the contestants who didn't make it. The angle is just terrible. For the entertainment of the TV audience, those brave souls are mocked and parodied in front of millions worldwide. Their crimes: not having a pretty face, a fab body, slick moves and a voice Simon approves of. Some of those contestants actually looked depressed, or they looked like they have some unmet needs in life. They looked like they might not necessarily have thought they might make it, but they certainly wanted to try, with the hope that perhaps this might change their life. Not making the cut, fine. But not only do they not at least receive some sort of encouragement or celebration for having tried, instead they get mocked and ridiculed on global TV. The 3 judges were perhaps polite enough to apologise after not being able to contain their laughter upon seeing some of the more awkward contestants. But really, what was the point of editing those clips into the show, even making a mini-feature of all the bad performances? To entertain? At whose expense? For every successful Idol story, there are countless untold sad stories.