Fighting is a bad thing, right? Two people who are clearly at odds over one thing or another engaging in physical activity with the main objective of causing the opponent harm or pain. I mean aside from the obvious illegality of fighting—I’m talking street fighting or fighting in public places here, not boxing or UFC sort of stuff—it’s also not something I would imagine is pleasant to watch. Granted, if I, a 5’4” 100 lb girl, were to pass by a fight taking place, I probably wouldn’t be jumping at the opportunity to break it up, but I certainly wouldn’t pull out my phone and start recording either. But somehow, our generation has managed to twist all of what I’ve just suggested around and see it as a source of entertainment and in some cases even profit off of it.
Nowadays when a fight breaks out at a school or a park or at the mall, the first thing that comes to many teenagers minds is not to call security, or even to try and stop it from escalating, but instead take out their iPhones and press record. These videos, though usually seen by the masses on news channels reporting the fights, were intended for another type of media, social media to be exact. A famous website that since its founding has spiraled into a Twitter and Instagram account known as “Worldstar,” is a prime source for videos of juvenile, or even in some cases, full grown men and women partaking in serious fights.
Though they brand themselves on the internet as more of a hip-hop music and entertainment site, they cover much more than just new and upcoming album releases. Just a minute or two into their Twitter page and you’ll come across footage of vicious brawls or intense screaming matches that later turning into fists flying and hair being pulled, the whole works. The craziest part of all of this? People are eating that stuff up. Any given fight video they post will have hundreds of replies and retweets within minutes. Suddenly one person gets it in their head that they too can become “Twitter famous” by submitting a video of a fight that you would normally shield your eyes from, and the next thing you know the moment fists start flying in the cafeteria or on the street corner, you have eighteen different people reaching for their phones shouting “Worldstar! Worldstar!”
With media having fewer and fewer boundaries anymore, it makes me reminiscent of “simpler” times, when parents were afraid to let their 12 year old children watch PG-13 movies for fear of instilling in them a notion of violence, much less an appreciation for it. Worldstar has certainly made a name for itself in the media industry, regardless if it was how they had anticipated it. Famous rapper Childish Gambino (Donald Golver) even has a song entirely about the “profession” that is recording fights with sights set on internet fame:
"Take your phone out
To record this
Ain't nobody can ignore this
I'm more or less, a moral-less individual
Making movies with criminals
Tryin' to get them residuals
When it all go crazy
When I hear that action, I'ma be Scorcese"
