My friend sent me a link to the "two girls one cup" viral video a while back, I lasted literally 2 seconds before closing my browser window in a panic and firing off an angry - "Why in gods name did you want me to watch that?!" email.

We've been reading Heidegger this week, and while I do have problems with his writing style, he does offer some really cogent critiques of a mind-set towards technology which is not just dehumanizing, but takes what Heidegger refers to as "the essence" out of life.

It didn't occur to me, to take what Heidegger writes about technology and apply it to viral videos until I read this op-ed by Lynn Crosbie in the Globe and Mail Unleashing our inner demons, site by sickening site. Now I am not against freedom of speech (a huge quid pro quo that) but I do think Lynn's measured response to the surfeit of nasty on the internet is pointing to a larger problem with what we perceive to be a freedom to express and to distribute. As Heidegger might suggest, this 'freedom' is actually a trap, forcing us all to limit our sphere of appreciation to the merely facile or the gross. Neither tragic nor sublime, it's just two girls eating shit from a cup.