I was blog hopping this morning and came across a post that
was berating a phenomenon that had caught on in Canada and the US that was
basically about men behaving badly and bombing live newscasts. Various video clips had gone viral.
You’ll probably be able to work out what I’m talking about
with a bit of googling but I’m trying hard not to give the whole thing any more
airtime than possible and you’ll see why below.
That might sound strange given that the targets of the bad
behaviour were women (and I’m all for defending women’s rights) but, as I hadn’t
heard of this issue (and it was using an acronym that I wasn’t familiar with)
and it was quoted as being something that also happened here in the UK I
decided to do a bit of digging.
What I found was that it appears to have been started
deliberately by someone who wanted to just get attention and create a video
posting that would go viral. So it was
reported that the first incident of this behaviour had happened when really it
had all been a set up. And the set up
had included a woman.
The point I’m trying to make here (albeit a bit haphazardly)
is that we can’t always trust the media.
It can tell us things that are not true and it can influence our
actions. In this case in a very negative
way. Of course I’m appalled at the way
the men were behaving. Being derogatory
towards women, or anyone for that matter is not acceptable. But I’m also appalled that when I tracked
back this all started because of a stunt to get attention and the unsuspecting
public took it on board and ran with it.
Clicking on video links is so easy and most of us (myself included) will do this and comment on it and then it perpetuates. But sometimes it’s worth looking beyond what’s placed in front of us and finding the truth. We shouldn’t always be sheep.
