On viewing "Untraceable"

I just saw the movie "Untraceable" tonight. Essentially, the plot revolves around an FBI agent who is hunting a killer who uses his website called killwithme.com to kill his victims. The idea behind his website is that the more people who log on to his website, the faster the victim dies. He uses tactics such as slowly leaking a poison into their systems. So, the more people who log on for this sick voyeurism, the faster the poison will seep into the victim's bloodstream and they will die. As the movie progresses (and the victims begin piling up), more and more people log on for each "show". People begin dying faster and faster and the FBI can do nothing to shut down his site.

Barring obvious Hollywoodizations, the message underlying the movie is worth contemplating. Essentially, it's a commentary on our virtual reality we've created on the internet, where people can go on the web and view and engage in behaviors that are reprehensible without any "real" repercussions. But there are repercussions -- a desensitized populace, the proliferation of sexual and commercial exploitation, the tearing at boundaries of good taste and reason that evolve from a person's diminished capacities to truly feel that there are standards of decency worth upholding. How many people have gone to those sites that show footage of violent acts or have engaged in online chats that they would never dare engage in face to face? Isn't it likely that all this exposure to virtual immorality somehow trickles into our very real day-to-day lives? We begin seeing each other differently, begin losing touch with the very real consequences of our bad behaviors in the actual world.

A startling commentary on this phenomenon was made thoroughly clear to me when I came home and, out of curiosity, went to the url killwithme.com. Often, production companies will put up websites that promote their movies and Sony pictures did, in fact, put up a killwithme.com website.

When I went to the website it looked just like the site in the movie. It asks you if you want to enter the site, just like in the movie. If you click 'enter' a popup window comes up that says: "Visting this site could cause harm to innocent people. Do you still want to enter?" You can either click 'yes' or 'no' at that point. Now, keep in mind that, in the movie, if people clicked 'yes', they would help speed up the death of the victim. Being affected by the underlying morality tale of the movie, I actually clicked 'no'. Naturally, I was still let in to the movie's promotional site. But, a statistic comes up that then tells you what percentage of people clicked 'yes' or 'no'. Can you believe that only 9% of people clicked 'no'? Doesn't that say something? People go see a movie, and they are entertained, and, for many of them, the experience has no bearing on their actual thinking. Did they not independently analyze the significance of this story? Were they either unwilling or unable to process that this movie asked them to do more than just be entertained? It was asking them to consider how their internet voyeurism affects their decision-making.

Now I know what you'll say: "Just relax. It was only a movie." But that's exactly the message we must be forced to consider. Is everything out there "just entertainment"? Is that all we're after in life? To be entertained? I hope not. It made me somewhat concerned and confused to begin considering how so much of what we do on the internet is purely out of a need to be distracted, disconnected from our very real everyday lives.

I wonder what you all think. Let's discuss this in class next week. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say. Remember: nothing we are exposed to is harmless and should be taken at face value. Everything should be exposed to critical thinking and questioning. What we choose to let in to our minds affects who we are as people in the end. And, if we choose to become mindless, entertainment-munching automatons, perhaps we deserve whatever Matrix/Brave New World future lies in store for us...