A Public Posting of the Rules for NSFW/NSFL Searches

Thank you for writing this, Carbon. I'm kind of surprised this hasn't come up sooner because it's been a long time coming, and I'm rather disappointed and disheartened that we've had to have this discussion via the Christine Chubbuck thread.

As someone who is into this kind of thing, I figured that it should have gone without saying that we need to approach this in a different, sensitive manner compared to other media - and that doesn't include death media either; like Uffe Was a Nazi for example comes to mind due to the subject matter itself. However, with the new boom in true crime and extreme cinema (like the iceberg tiers that are just riffable now), it's a serious shame that some people don't have the maturity they think they do when discussing or approaching these things. I know with the other communities I'm in where we discuss macabre and NSFW/NSFL things, we've had to report people to various site admins on more than one occasion for soliciting illegal material - including one person who placed a bounty on hurtcore on different subreddits. That's crossing so many lines and behavior like this and that of certain "controversial channels" that shall not be named shouldn't be what represents us as both a community (and a community within a community).

I mentioned this before, but I have no qualms with reporting or documenting on anything under this sort of umbrella. Just like with everything else we archive or report on, it's part of history, our history, and as such, it isn't always pretty or comical. Life is like that sometimes and we shouldn't shy away from it because it's seen as taboo or forbidden. However, that doesn't mean I'm for how certain people approach it; like contacting (or to a lesser degree, full-on harassing) those who are involved or doing borderline illegal activity to fish for anything, and supplying the sauce. This is especially frustrating when some people are insistent on digging in holes that have already been buried over and are shut cases, where their status is well documented and they're just doing more harm than good. Just like with Christine Chubbuck's family, these people have been through enough and don't need more e-mails from people looking for the video. If you don't have or can't bear empathy in this category, then this isn't the one for you. That being said, this should also be a given for reporting and logging material that is actually illegal to own. We should be able to make note of these things because they, unfortunately, exist (with some exceptions, like creepypastas masquerading as genuine hurtcore), and make it explicitly clear that we do not condone these activities and why you shouldn't look for them. To put it more bluntly, if someone needs to have their hand held to be told why they shouldn't look for hurtcore, then that's their problem and for them to bear the consequences of if they get caught with their pants down.

We are not the arbiters of the law. We can't monitor everyone who contributes to the community or is just a lurker, therefore, we shouldn't be responsible for them doing something illegal and morally repugnant. This is why, especially with this kind of media (and real-life recordings), it's so important to have our facts straight to avoid causing harm ourselves with trying to do honest journalistic logging. We don't want to contribute to more issues with misattribution problems or, at worse, citing something as illegal when it actually isn't or visa versa. This has become more crucial than ever with the popularity of mixtapes and tape trading in the mondo community since, while some stuff is very explicit, it technically isn't illegal to own and getting intel from trustworthy sources is important. We don't need to have unnecessary scares brewing about, not with newbies or seasoned researchers.