"In Jemima's first year of high school in New Zealand, her social life was flourishing. She had just started going out with a boy in her class, joined the hockey team, was training to be in the New Zealand Cadet Force, and had started competitive swimming. After dates, school, and swim practice, she chose to spend her free time indulging in her favorite online activity: watching gore videos."
"Jemima's fascination with gore started when she was 11, when she stumbled across an A.I.-edited video of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooting on TikTok. "There were Minions in the place of people," she told me. "The gun was a Minion, the people were Minions, but you could still see the mosque." Jemima, who is 15 now and whose name has been changed to protect her identity, lived close to Christchurch and remembered the devastation of the shooting, but watching this edit-a subgenre of A.I. slop known as "Minion gore"-she felt differently about the tragedy. This time, she found it funny."
"Watching these A.I. edits became a pastime for her friend group; they'd share the videos at school and at sleepovers. One day, after watching a video on TikTok recommending the website called "Watch People Die," they typed it into their search engine and browsed: murders, suicides, self-immolation, crushing, and disembowelments. The website went beyond people dying; it was an endless archive of human suffering. "It's some of the most disgusting and violent videos I've ever seen," Jemima said."
"Her experience isn't necessarily new. Gore videos have been stitched into the fabric of the internet since the web's inception, and even shared to the point of virality through shock sites and snuff films. However, what Jemima and far too many children like her experience today goes far beyond morbid curiosity. Children are being fed cont"
A teenager in New Zealand described a rapid shift from normal social activities to spending free time watching gore videos online. Her interest began at age 11 after encountering an AI-edited TikTok video of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooting, where the tragedy was presented with cartoon characters. She later joined a friend group that shared these videos at school and sleepovers. After following a recommendation for a site called “Watch People Die,” they browsed categories including murders, suicides, and graphic bodily harm. The site functioned as an ongoing archive of human suffering, and the videos were described as among the most disgusting and violent content she had seen. Exposure to gore is not new, but current access and AI editing increase harm for children.
Read at Slate Magazine
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