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  3. What were they thinking, the crowd at the Telford shopping centre where Ian Lam stood swaying on a high ledge? What made them lo

What were they thinking, the crowd at the Telford shopping centre where Ian Lam stood swaying on a high ledge? What made them lo

admin2017-12-31  30
问题    What were they thinking, the crowd at the Telford shopping centre where Ian Lam stood swaying on a high ledge? What made them look up at a man weighing the worth of his own life and cry "Get on with it!" or "Go on, jump!" Those selfies they took, the videos they made, of him falling 60ft to his death, would they watch them later sniggering and OMGing with friends, share them on Facebook, hope to make a few quid from the next big, sick, must-click Internet meme? I’ve been haunted by the thought of Mr Lam hearing those jeering voices, seeing the upstretched arms record his trembling indecision. He was on the roof for more than two hours, so perhaps his mind was not set. Police were talking with him: maybe he could have been coaxed down. But then the catcalls, the mob scoffing that he didn’t even have the balls to die . . . Only one person seemed horrified at the time. Chloe Jones, a young mother clutching her baby, reported that the crowd was annoyed: the police cordon had stopped them getting to the shops. They thought for their inconvenience they deserved a show, racing around the building for a better view. Teenagers mainly, but grown men too. When she asked one why he was filming —reminded him that up there was someone’s son—he "looked at me like I was mad. "
   When a "body on the line" leaves my Tube train stuck in a tunnel, when last summer a man climbed on Ipswich station roof, causing trains to be cancelled for hours, I’ve had those dark, selfish thoughts. Couldn’t they commit suicide somewhere else? It is hard, wrapped up in the urgent bustle of me-ness, to empathise with strangers. But a suicidal man, standing above you, scouring the out stretched world for a reason to live, surely he is real enough? The social media paradox is that the more "connected" we become, the more we are alone. We flick between multiple platforms, "liking" photos, replying to jokes, while the membership of the PTA, social clubs and political parties declines. Even among loved ones, our faces are jammed in our own private screens. Online communication is fast, gratifying, filtered carefully to be only about us: unlike the wearisome flesh-people banging on, in 140 characters, about their own boring needs.
   A friend described visiting her local corner shop where the owner looked up from watching an Isis beheading video on his phone. He didn’t look shifty or ashamed. And why should he when Facebook still carries such footage if "newsworthy", when every western hostage is featured orange-suited and kneeling on the front page. To excite our jaded, desensitised eyes, Isis have had to raise their game. Another beheading? We’ve seen dozens. So let’s throw gay men off a building, burn a Jordanian pilot alive in a cage. They know, like the TV producer in Nightcrawler that "if it bleeds, it leads".
   There is a lurid human desire to see what death can wreak. Our ancestors thrilled to the drama of the gallows. Now seeing is insufficient: we can record the horror, own it and examine it later. And through the filter of our phones tragedy becomes a media artefact, a human life reduced to a body tumbling through space on a two minute YouTube clip. Such is the potency of this urge, police have had to buy special screens to conceal road accidents from drivers filming from moving cars. And this week, at the inquest of Paul Millgate, just 20, who jumped from the window of his residence, police were said to be appalled to find fellow students craning to take photos of his body. They feared his shattered corpse would be all over social media even before his family had been told.
   In countless studies, psychologists have found that as a person’s screen time increases, narcissism rises and empathy falls. The distinction between the real and online worlds blurs: a bombardment of stimuli deadens an ability to feel, any true emotion is diverted by the next BuzzFeed list, a new incoming tweet. Besides, a selfie is above all a trophy, bagged at any expense. Who cares that the celebrity is taking a leak, you’ve barged in front of every other museum visitor, or you are in physical danger. People take wacky selfies at Auschwitz or the Sydney terrorist siege: President Obama, David Cameron and the Danish PM happy snapped at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service.
   Poor Ian Lam was not the first suicide to be urged over the edge by gleeful, empty-souled ghouls more worried about their iPhone’s battery life than his. A 17-year-old in Derby, a 26-year-old man in Portsmouth... Hearing, they say. is the last sense to go, so imagine your last physical sensation bring cries of "Jump!" We know how the anonymity of the Internet has given voice to rape threatening, evil trolls. But what Ian Lam endured was something more hateful and sinister still: trolling in real life.
Explain and comment on the expression "if it bleeds, it leads. "(para. 3)
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答案the author tells us that / with the efficiency + instant speed of social media / people are becoming easier to "see" the scenes of tragedies + disasters / more people arc becoming unsympathetic + no longer sympathetic to tragic scenes/ to them, it only becomes a kind of show + display/ the result is: the bloodier the tragic scene is, the more attractive it becomes on the arena of social media / the bleeding sight becomes the most attractive message to the media and the audience/ only to excite one’s "desensitised eyes" / tragedy has become "a media artefact" / seeing is "insufficient"
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