Deviation Actions
Fair warning, this has nothing to do with art, DeviantArt, prop building, or anything you'd really find on this website. I just have to pour my heart out for a moment. Bear with me.
Today my heart hurts for the world. There is so much senseless killing in the world on a daily basis that we as a society have grown numb to it. We hear of it after the fact and through the filter of the news, and that always seems to soften the blow to those of us not involved or not directly affected. It’s when we see it from a new, different perspective that we regain our emotional connection to the travesty of murder, and that’s what the killing of two Virginia-based WDBJ employees live on TV did to me. Not living in that broadcast area, I’m still one step removed from it since I didn’t actually watch it live (I saw it shortly after the fact on the internet). But literally watching two human beings’ last moments alive – them not knowing their fate was two steps away, and exhibiting such unknowable, yet eerily palpable fear in the face of it – I’m really taken aback in awe.
My wife works in broadcast TV, though as a behind-the-scenes production team member and not as a journalist or a member of a field team. Her affiliation to the whole production has given me real insight into the day-to-day operation of a TV station, which makes this senseless murder all the more real for me. These were two people just doing their job, gunned down in the act – just as I myself may be gunned down at my desk, or a dentist shot while cleaning someone’s teeth, or any of us killed while doing any other humdrum daily activity. It’s truly a haunting, surreal thought.
My heart hurts for them. My heart hurts for the people they interact with on a daily basis, their friends and family. But my heart also hurts for the sick souls who are actually criticizing them, saying wretched, evil things about those two people just because they were killed. Among some of the comments I read in regard to the shooting, I found this comment (copied verbatim):
“wtf great reporting skills "NOT" she screams LIKE THE LITTLE GIRL SHE IS that tells a a story NOT ummm nothing more that a fluff reporter here if you did not see the text telling you this you would not know”
Fortunately, people like this are few and far between the innumerable people showing an enormous amount of love and compassion, but they are out there. For someone to see two innocent people, two human beings with real lives, real hopes and dreams, real emotions and relationships, killed on live TV, and to expel such foul filth in light of it, is a harsh reminder that there really is true evil in the world. The above comment really cut me to the core – it was so carefree, so compassionless, it’s as if this person was watching a football game and made some passing joke about an injured playing being a sissy. I spouted off some response to them at the time, but after having let it sink in, I really am finding it difficult to put into words how this affects me. The most succinct thing I could say is that it makes my heart hurt for the world. It makes my heart hurt because there are people out there ready and willing to say the same thing about my friends and family (and even myself!) if they were senselessly gunned down. Given a lot of the comments I’ve read on others’ deviations here on DeviantArt, there are even people on this very website that would likely do the same thing, and it makes my heart ache in a way I don’t know how to deal with.
I’m saddened by the deaths of these two people, and so many more before them. But knowing there are some truly vicious sociopaths out there that somehow derive entertainment and personal affirmation from expressing their cynicism as a response, I’m so much more than saddened.
