Viral vids merit a closer look

“It’s fun to do bad things.”

Truer words have never been uttered.

These words sprang from the font of wisdom that is the small and unrepentant mouth of Latarian Milton.

For those of you who have not yet seen the light, Latarian Milton, a 7-year-old resident of Coral Gardens, Fla., became an Internet celebrity recently when a local newscast surfaced on the Internet recounting the story of how he stole his grandmother’s SUV, drove it for several blocks, and crashed it with no harm to himself.

Needless to say, this led to myriad quotables from the young reb:

“I wanted to do hoodrat stuff with my friends.”

On his expected punishment: “I don’t know, no video games for a whole weekend.”

“My friend came over; he smokes with the cigarettes.”

And just when we thought Hurricane Latarian had petered out over dry land, he struck again. This time, he beat his grandmother when she refused to buy him chicken wings at a local Wal-Mart. This warranted another news broadcast.

In similar Internet fad-video news, a young woman on an Atlanta metro train was caught on tape having some sort of unbelievable, dance-filled freak-out on some old woman. Heretofore referred to as “Soulja Girl,” this video also serves as a living museum of weirdness.

In addition, what is fast becoming one of my favorite videos of all time also features some spectacularly bizarre behavior: the infamous Iron Mic rap battle between MCs Envy and Eli Porter. The video is clearly some sort of high school video class production, full of bad cuts and fades. Our boy Marv-O introduces our contestants: the relatively on-point Envy and the half-tucked space cadet Eli Porter.

In the battle, Eli raps for roughly three bars before his face goes blank, and he drifts off into the ether. He proceeds to stare at the camera for a good 10 seconds before he comes back to spit some of the illest lines to ever hit the Internet.

Now, let there be no question that these videos have made me laugh and cringe countless times. However, I have beef with this series of videos: particularly with Milton’s story. At the riveting conclusion of Milton’s debut, it features a policeman politely scolding him for his transgression, which is understandable. The kid needs a time-out, at least.

But it’s the end that gives me pause. Our benevolent reporter tells us that although Milton is too young for incarceration, the police plan to get him into “the system” where he can “get some help.” Obviously, the kid has problems if he’s stealing cars at 7. He might even be a mild sociopath, judging by his unintentionally hilarious responses to the reporter’s questions.

But the condescending and cavalier way with which the news broadcast handles the denouement is off-putting. The idea that shoving a kid with a legal guardian into “the system” will help him is counterproductive. He would just be another kid in juvenile hall.

And anyone who thinks juvenile hall is a place for a young person to get “help” needs to take the red pill.

Secondly, the common thread in these enormously popular videos is that all of the central characters are black and behaving badly or making fools of themselves. When I started thinking about this, I couldn’t help but have a pang of guilt.

These three people: Soulja Girl, Milton and Porter undoubtedly made their own beds. The news story wouldn’t have existed without Milton stealing the car. The camera phone wouldn’t have been whipped out on the Atlanta train without Soulja Girl’s tirade. And Iron Mic wouldn’t have been uploaded on the Internet if Eli hadn’t lost his train of thought for so long.

These people all made their own decisions. However, if our favorite and most popular videos all include black people acting foolishly, isn’t that racist? Or doesn’t that propagate negative stereotypes?

If not the former, it is certainly the latter. If that is true, then whose fault is it that these stories are so popular? For the Internet videos, it can’t be blamed on one person, only natural dissemination. But for the news broadcast, we can blame, in part, the original news outlet. However, I can’t blame my fellow journalists too much, because even the most hard news-minded editor wouldn’t ignore the story of a 7-year-old stealing a car, especially with those quotes.

Still, the news station should be aware of their depiction of minorities, especially in the egregious case of Milton.

Even though there’s no media outlet to blame for the propagation, no underlying scheme to discredit black people on the Internet, we have to keep in mind that these videos do not represent an entire race and culture as a whole.

If we did, Chris Crocker would be representing white people.

If you want to do hoodrat stuff with your friends too, e-mail Ayres at jayres@media.ucla.edu.

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