“All forms of violence are equal

Some are more equal than others.”

‘It's 3 AM in the mornin'

Put my key in the door and

Bodies layin' all over the floor and

I don't remember how they got there

But I guess I must've killed 'em, killed 'em’

I have been observing an interesting phenomenon emerging in the digital landscape: the variety of things/visuals/media people find disturbing. There are visual horrors that someone can compartmentalize with much frivolity, but might disturb another to the point of mental debilitation. Why is it that we have the capacity to be desensitized to some horror content but a different genre of violence can shock us to the core, embedding themselves as themes and visual references in our nightmares for years?

Blood is blood, right? Violence is violence. Logically, a small video of a woman getting lynched should be equivalent to a video of two men beating each other until both of them turn into a bloody pulpy mush. However, different kinds of violence affect us psychologically and viscerally. The effect depends not on the level of gore, the magnitude of the violence or even the visual component of the violence, but on the premise of the violence (in simpler terms, the underlying reason for the violence). It seems we filter the acts of violence through our moral, personal and emotional lens.

I grew up during the internet digital-age where you could access the most gruesome content on the internet with just a click. There were no regulations/moderations on the websites that would pop up daily that contained media so spine-chillingly macabre and repugnant that it could paralyse your psyche beyond redemption. At least, that's what my presumption of the effect on the masses was before I found myself partaking in the morbid curiosity of that world. During a recent conversation with a friend, I realized that we both were emotionally affected by very different kinds of visual horrors we had both accessed during our gory internet days. Additionally, we could both listen to descriptions of certain kinds of videos (I understand that narrating a violence video doesn't have the same effect as watching it) without wincing at the description.

It struck me with a sudden jolt that videos of mob violence elicit a response in me that no other kind of violence/gore does. During my r/watchpeopledie and rotten.com days, I went through scores of videos and images of beheading, automobile accidents, industrial mishaps, animal maulings, fistfights leading to deadly knockouts, direct to DVDs gore franchises like Hostel, Wrong Turn, Final Destination, Martyr and countless more. And while some of it did manage to affect me psychologically, none of them ever evoked the sense of horror that a mob lynching video would elicit. The repository of the former category did seep deeply into my subconscious and translated into terrifying nightmares, but it never had the immediate effect of terror that the latter category of videos would produce. So I guess, some violence (due to the virtue of being universally horrifying and disturbing) affects you in a primal way (scaring you due to evolutionary imperatives) and some violence affects you in a sociological way.

What struck me most in the conversation was how I had watched countless videos that came out of the ISIS digital ecosystem during its peak, and spoke about them with much frivolity. Most of these were beheadings, cold-blooded murders of foreign journalists by immolating them in cages and gruesome shootings. How is it that a 20-year-old can watch these horrifying videos without experiencing a sense of visceral disgust and horror (at least WHILE watching the video)? My theory is: These videos were shot like a high-end production movie. There was clean camera-work involved. The resolution was high-quality. Some of them had background music. They mimicked all the formal traits of a movie, a manufactured set of circumstances and visual elements that made it feel like it was theatre. The theatricality of it, the Baudrillardian hyperrealism of it. It was a sanitized form of violence that my brain could easily fool itself into believing that I was watching a movie. No horror is ever recorded without the panic of a shaky-cam, grainy footage, with such methodical, precise, surgical accuracy and neatness. I could distance myself from the reality of it. Violence usually comes our way in a disordered, disembodied, chaotic, unhygienic, visually repellent way. That's the thing though: there are forms of violence that are so thoroughly calculating, methodical, preemptive that merely reading about them induces a profound sense of disbelief and confusion. That's why we have words that distinguish a pogrom from a genocide. A systematic way of carrying out violence is always met with collective incredulity. We are fooled into associating violence with arbitrary and random explosions reminiscent of our primal ways. Paradoxically though, the violence that emerges out of our primal brain isn't as horrific as the violence that emerges when we override the primal with the rational.

I was around 8-9 years old when my dad would take me to markets on his scooter. I would stand in front of the driver's seat (it was possible if you were short enough to not disrupt the view of the driver). We had just reached the local market when I saw a large group of people rounding up a frail old man and aggressively pushing him. In a matter of seconds, the entire crowd that had surrounded the old man started to rain blows on him indiscriminately. It was brutal. They punched him, slapped him, threw him on the ground, kicked him. He disappeared in the frenzy of the violence in front of my eyes. Others joined in to beat him. I could see they were part of a larger crowd who had no idea why this old man was being beaten.

This scene encapsulates what scares me the most about mob violence. Like a sudden storm, it erupts from seemingly calm waters, transforming ordinary people into a relentless force of nature. The speed at which it escalates, the contagious nature of the frenzy, and the complete loss of individual accountability create a terrifying spectacle. Once ignited, mob violence burns with its own fury, following no rules but its own, extinguishing only when its hunger is satiated - not a moment sooner, not a moment later.

I remember vividly enquiring of my dad: Why are they beating him? He asked the bystanders and they told him that it was a rickshawala who had stolen a pre-packaged sack of atta (flour). And the people who were beating him were the shopkeepers who wanted to send a message. My dad told me, 'They beat him because he is poor. In this country, the rich beat the poor with impunity. Nothing you can do about it.'

In that moment, my father was imparting a lesson in morality. His explanation placated my mental confusion, but he had no idea of the visceral horror I had just experienced. A child's mind struggles to comprehend why a large crowd would hurt another human being. To this day, whenever I witness a public altercation where a mob beats someone, it evokes the same horror within me.

It's worth noting that I come from a place where these bouts of violence were a daily occurrence. Curiously, none of my friends who experienced these fights shared the same moral and physical disdain as me. Some even reveled in the excitement of it, and others, I remember, themselves partook in the same kind of violence.