bad behaviour

Km: 13.624, for the week: 26

You know we’re in trouble when Today Tonight is driving the country’s news agenda, but that’s what seems to have happened this week. The big story, in case you haven’t heard, is around a bunch of morons from Werribee, or thereabouts, who filmed themselves doing a whole series of violent, stupid things including sexually assaulting a 17 year-old girl. They then made it into a DVD and sold it at various schools across the western suburbs.

Violence, pornography, entrepenaurialism and obsessive self-promotion all seem to be encouraged lately, but in this case they’ve come in for bit of fire. (and seem to be in some trouble with the rozzers).

Most of the comment I’ve seen seems along the lines of “how could anyone do this to a girl? It doesn’t make sense”.

Well, yes and no.

By any civilised standards, what the boys in the videos did was wrong, appalling. I can’t condemn it enough. Also, filming yourself and then selling the DVD in schools makes it even worse. But from their point of view it probably does make sense.

What everyone has been overlooking is, what you might call, the Jackass factor. The DVD looks like Jackass DVD, the boys act like Jackass guys and do stuff that they probably think Jackass would do.

“But wait” I hear you say, “Jackass is just for fun. They don’t rape anyone on the show.”

Well that’s true, but from a 16 year-old male perspective it’s not really the point. The reason Jackass is so successful is that it deliberately steps outside normal boundaries; they’re intentionally painful, stupid and offensive.

To me, that sounds exactly like the morons from Werribee.