TechMiso

Apparently the idea of being able to sit on ones fat ass and ostensibly get paid to “surf porn” for YouTube is not the dream job that it’s all cracked up to be:

“You have 20-year-old kids who get hired to do content review, and who get excited because they think they are going to see adult porn,” said Hemanshu Nigam, the former chief security officer at MySpace. “They have no idea that some of the despicable and illegal images they will see can haunt them for the rest of their lives.”

What is it that is so despicable about the imagery submitted to YouTube? Our always-connected culture has turned to uploading photographs of graphic gang killings, animal abuse, twisted forms of pornography (although “twisted” is quite subjective) and intense bullying. Videos containing this content are flagged, which is where the reviewers come in to play. They attempt to determine whether the material is safe for public consumption on Google’s flagship video sharing site.

Being constantly bombarded with such horrific imagery is taking its toll on the content screening team members, who are increasingly turning to professional psychological assistance to help them deal with problems associated with the evil content they are subjected to daily.

One major outsourcing firm with staff in the Philippines was aware of the risks of this type of work and hired a local psychologist to assess how it was affecting its 500 content moderators. The psychologist, Patricia M. Laperal of Behavioral Dynamics, said she had developed a screening test so the company could evaluate potential employees, and helped its supervisors identify signals that the work was taking a toll on employees.

Ms. Laperal also reached some unsettling conclusions in her interviews with content moderators. She said they were likely to become depressed or angry, have trouble forming relationships and suffer from decreased sexual appetites. Small percentages said they had reacted to unpleasant images by vomiting or crying.

It sure sounds like working as a content reviewer is not the glamorous job you might think it to be. While some folks are sure to be more sensitive to the imagery, as a whole it appears to be pretty tough to be constantly subjected to malicious content.

With video sharing being so pervasive young folks have this idea that all they need to do to become famous on the internets is create the next greatest viral video. A small percentage of folks appear to be taking that to the extreme, using the opportunity to take advantage of people.

If you believe that your ticket to stardom is hurting someone on a video submitted to YouTube then you are sadly mistaken – do something more constructive with your time and – here’s a novel idea – work for the fame.

In what has got to be one of the wackiest technology related stories I have read in quite some time, Wired’s Threat Level is reporting that kids across the United States are getting high on the internet thanks to so-called ecstasy-inducing MP3 files:

Kids around the country are getting high on the internet, thanks to MP3s that induce a state of ecstasy. And it could be a gateway drug leading teens to real-world narcotics.

At least, that’s what Oklahoma News 9 is reporting about a phenomenon called “i-dosing,” which involves finding an online dealer who can hook you up with “digital drugs” that get you high through your headphones.

Oddly enough, an Oklahoma school is taking this whack-ass threat seriously. They ended up sending out letters to parents to warn of this supposed new “drug” making its rounds on the internets. A side effect of this is the school has now banned iPods on school grounds to hopefully prevent students from becoming “cyber-drug” fiends. Seriously.

For the life of me I can not believe this is serious. No matter how much these digital drug dealers try, I can not fathom how this would even work to create some crack-like state of ecstasy. This whole idea is ridiculous.

Now I’ve listened to some MP3 music which made me want throw my laptop out of a fourth story window because the music was absolutely horrifyingly bad. I’ve listened to other highly intense music which made me feel all tingly inside.

But never have I listened to an MP3 which made me high, as if I had just gotten baked off some of the good stuff. Never. Ever.

The article is worth a read, if for no other reason than the amusement factor. Maybe it was meant to be taken in stride, maybe it is completely serious. Whatever the case, it sounds like there are some morons out there “educating” our students about things that do not yet exist.

The lesson in all this: keep your kids away from the Oklahoma Mustang Public School district because they will surely not be receiving a quality education from idiotic teachers like those who believe one can get high off an MP3 file.