In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same loathsome pieces of s--- who watched Zarutska and Kirk’s violent ends were the same ones who watched WDBJ news reporter Alison Parker, 24, and photojournalist Adam Ward, 27, being shot and killed during a live television interview along with Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce in Moneta, Virginia, who was wounded in the attack ten years ago.
Seeing the video at the time in which the killer - a fired WDBJ reporter and disgruntled employee filmed on his cellphone and immediately posted it on his Facebook and Twitter accounts solidified the negative opinion I already had about social media before the shooting happened. I just couldn’t find the right words to describe my intense hatred.
That is until Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called social media last week what it is today – a “cancer on our society” in the wake of Kirk’s assassination.
At the time of my publishing the Parker column on Sept. 2, 2015, the viewing numbers of that clip on YouTube upon my search for “Alison Parker” or “reporters shot” ranged in the six and seven digits on several user accounts that replayed the barely two-minute interview and aftermath in its entirety.
At the time I wrote the column, not only was I “outgunned” (no pun intended) so to speak but the editorial staff at the campus newspaper I published the column at wrote an editorial defending that the video be viewed in its entirety.
“It will sound horribly callous, but I think that video needs to be out there so that people understand just how awful and real this was. And maybe – just maybe – that would help usher in meaningful discussions and laws on gun control,” said a friend of mine who replied underneath my Facebook post of the picture. “Unless people are confronted with the horrible reality, it allows them to avoid the real issues at play here. I don’t like suggesting it because I know for the families it would be absolute torture but perhaps if we all put ourselves in the victims’ shoes for a moment, it tilts the conversation.”
If any “meaningful discussions” took place at the time of that incident I didn’t hear any. Much the way I have yet to hear any “meaningful discussions” about what Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk experienced. But I’ve read some of the commentaries and took note of one in particular from media personality Khloé Kardashian on Instagram who shared posts from a Dr. Raymond Nichols, a Greenville, South Carolina-based chiropractor.
“A woman is stabbed to death on a bus. A man is killed in front of a crowd. And people record it…like it’s just another trending video. Those videos go viral. And we just keep scrolling like it’s normal. Like this is life now,” Nichols said in his post.
“We don’t have a violence problem. We have a numbness problem. Evil became content. Death became a trend. Humanity became scrollable,” Nichols wrote. “People don’t flinch anymore. They don’t cry anymore. They just comment. We’re losing the one thing that makes us human: the ability to feel. This isn’t politics. This isn’t left or right. This is about your soul. Because if you can watch life slip away in front of you and feel nothing…you’ve already lost yours.”I haven’t viewed the Parker/Ward killing video clips since it aired that day ten years ago. I have not searched for it, nor do I know if it is still on YouTube. A part of me likes to think in the years since that maybe some higher up at the video platform developed a conscience and put themselves in the same horrific situation as Parker and Ward and choose to pull them out of respect to the victims and their families. I already know the answer and it’s not the one I want.
If such grisly incidents in which you watch “life slip away in front of you and feel nothing” whether it’s George Floyd, pictures of dead kids gunned down outside a McDonald’s by a mass murderer or watch souls jump to their deaths from the World Trade Center that for a brief moment fail to leave a sickening feeling in your stomach then you really have lost the one thing that makes you human. A soul.Want to debate me? Bring it! In the words of Charlie Kirk - "PROVE ME WRONG!"
Last week's killings make me shudder to think how many videos I'd find on the internet and YouTube upon my typing in such searches as "Iryna stabbing" or "Kirk shooting" let alone the hit numbers they've since generated on repeated viewing.
“The (Kirk) video is all over social media. It’s kind of hard to avoid. And you can just kind of stumble right into it,” Democratic Senator Mark Kelly told Politico. “You usually don’t see these mass shootings as graphically as this one. I hope some of these social media companies can scrub this off the internet because it’s not good for kids to see this.”
To quote one character in the deplorable sadomasochistic trash pic, “8MM” (1999) “There are some things that you see, and you can’t unsee them.”
It’s true. I can’t “unsee” the atrocities I’ve already seen but I can choose to not only avoid uploading them but also dump social media all together.
I’ve debated since 2015 whether to take a long break from social media and go silent or delete my accounts from several platforms all together and go off the grid. You want to find me, here’s something new to try – pick up your f------ god---- cellphone and call me! And no, I don’t respond to texts!
I’m all out of love for these “cancer on our society” platforms like Facebook and X.
Last week’s latest uncensored “snuff” films and social media’s never-ending bloodthirsty quench to watch them over and over proved it was only a matter of time before I quit social media all together.
The question now is no longer “when” but “how soon.”
©9/15/25
