Big Red Warning

How do you know you’ve found a good YouTube video? You know it may be good if it has this big red warning at the beginning.

Of course, the warning that it may be disturbing to some viewers doesn’t guarantee you a good video. Disturbing, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

There are many videos showing cops fatally shooting people. These videos are fairly routine. There’s a lot of shouting (“Stop!”, “Get on the ground!”, “Drop the gun!”, “Drop the knife!”, “Drop the screwdriver!”), then there’s a volley of gunshots and the perp falls down, then it’s over. It’s instructive to see just how quickly you can die by refusing to cooperate with the law but, on the excitement scale, these rank slightly above cat videos.

Next up are plane crash videos. I don’t root for anyone to die, but it happens. Regardless of that, the videos are fairly entertaining. But maybe that’s because I like airplanes. In fact, I like airplanes so much that I once took flying lessons. So I’m biased about airplane videos. Still, I rate plane crash videos above shootouts.

Next up are car crash videos. There are an endless number of them on YouTube. However, after a while you’ve seen all the significant ways that people wreck their cars. Many times you can predict what will happen because, you know—someone is making a right turn from the left lane, or a left turn from the right lane, or a U-turn on a busy highway, or driving too fast on an icy road, or trying to overtake five cars and a semi all at one time—these are the videos where you know something bad is about to happen. Then it happens. Sometimes a driver or passenger comes spinning out of the wreckage like a human Frisbee. You don’t want to know that person is dead. “He could be okay,” you tell yourself.

Then there are train videos in which a locomotive smashes into something. Sometimes it’s a fully loaded semi truck stalled on the tracks. An explosion of debris blasts out of the trailer. These videos can be interesting to watch—for a while—but there is a sameness to them that gets old quickly. I advise avoiding these videos, because sooner or later you’ll see something you can’t un-see. You’ll see a locomotive hit an automobile full of people. Despite red crossing lights flashing and locomotive horns bellowing, a car drives directly into the path of a train. In an instant, a family is killed. These videos are not fun to watch—they’re sobering. They show how ephemeral is life. Do one stupid thing at the wrong time—texting while driving, racing a train to the crossing—and the lives of you and your loved ones are snuffed out. Now that is the kind of video that deserves the big red warning.