I remember my friend telling me in 2000 that he saw a video at college of a guy having a knife shoved into his neck. I obviously didn't believe him, and anyway it sounded kinda tame and I wasn't sure why he was so disturbed by it. So we spent about 2 hours downloading RealPlayer at my house and then the video clip. Genuine trauma ensued. It's a now-famous video of a Russian soldier being stabbed in the neck and beheaded by Chechen rebels. Turned out to be one of the lesser atrocities from that war caught on film, but it was my first internet-based trauma. The same friend and I goaded each other into clicking on links on Rotten dot com while chatting on MSN Messenger, to let the other person know how fucked up it was and if it was safe to click on the other person's end.

Then Ogrish dot com came along and all manner of horrors became available. Many more Chechen war atrocities, random murders, executions, the latest beheadings from Iraq, you name it they had it. It was during this period in the early to mid 2000s that I developed a thick callous around my brain which let me view those materials without getting PTSD like I did with that first video.

Occasionally, even that decades-old callous can be penetrated. The creative folks working as chief torturers for the Central and South American drug cartels have really given me a run for my money, in terms of what I can stomach seeing. Every time I thought "well, this has to be the worst thing you can do to a human" they released another video making the previous one look like a merciful death.

The idea of this sort of stuff being one or two clicks away from children is terrifying. Imagine a 6-year-old watching Funkytown. What manner of therapy would you even deploy in such a scenario? "Yes sweetie, sometimes bad men and women like to peel people like meat-bananas, but don't worry, that won't happen to you. Anyway, off to bed with ya!" 😬