Tag Archives: Manovich

Upon our discussion in class today, as well as many of the readings we have stumbled upon in class, I automatically thought of the recent suicide of Rutgers freshman, Tyler Clementi.

For those who do not know the story, Tyler Clementi was a gay 18year old who had not announced his sexual orientation to his family.  Clementi invited another male over to his room where Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, set up a webcam and skype to watch and humiliate Climenti during the sexual acts he was engaging in.  He streamed the video to others through ichat and it is “unclear how many people saw the video.”  Ravi bragged on twitter about what he had done and on September 22, Climenti posted on facebook that he was jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

Lev Manovich’s article discusses the notion that you can never truly know how many people are accessing something on the internet at one time.  As our professor said, “it can be everyone, or no one.”

The internet is unfortunately used by many people to act deviantly due to the anonymity of it all.  Even though Ravi was clearly not anonymous, the consequences do not seem as great while on the internet.  Unfortunately, though social media was created with seemingly good intentions, it causes a great amount of distraught, with many teenagers being bullied and committing suicide because of it.  The question becomes, what can be done, if anything, to prevent this type of misuse?