Eight Florida teenagers are in custody for beating up a defenseless girl. Not news, no, but the reason behind it is: The kids who did the deed planned to put the video on YouTube in the hopes of becoming Internet celebrities once the video was widely seen online.Six girls did the beating (which ended with a concussion) while two boys stood lookout. In a statement after the eight were all rounded up and arrested, one of the girls' mothers said that the victim of the attacks had "provoked" it by "threatening and insulting the girls on their MySpace pages."
The video did indeed make it to YouTube but it's since been removed. You can see snippets of it here or find it by searching YouTube, but it's largely what you're expecting.
Reaction has been pretty swift, with many naturally turning their ire not just on the teens but also on YouTube and MySpace for not policing content better. Does censorship work? Is it even possible for YouTube to vet every video that's uploaded to its site? YouTube serves some 100 million videos every day. What kind of manpower would it take to monitor all of it? And how would one distinguish between a real fight and a staged melee that's part of a (fictional) short film. (Heck, even Lonelygirl15, the YouTube darling, died in her eponymous show's last episode.) Censoring one type of content (which YouTube actually does plenty of, actually) is a slippery slope.
And really, what would be the point? If not YouTube, would the teens have posted pictures or video clips on their blogs? Or simply used another hosting service? Kids have been beating each other up for centuries, since well before YouTube came along, and they'll be doing it after it's gone, too.
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