Special Episode: 10:10 Campaign - No Pressure

I will not be embedding any version of this video, because first off I find it gross and I don't you to see it, and second I can't find a version of it on the Internet that isn't being pushed by some wrong-headed lunatics who are throwing around words like eco-terrorists and fascists, or on the other side someone completely denying that there is anything wrong in order to get jabs at the lunatics. Nobody is neutral about this, so I won't support either of them.

So here's what's in this four-minute video that was available for about six hours in late 2010: We start with a teacher of a fifth-grade class being all British and telling her class about this 10:10 campaign, in which it's suggested to reduce 10% of your personal carbon emissions...somehow. Then she asks who would be willing to participate; majority of the class raises their hands. Two of the kids don't, and the teacher is all, "Yeah, sure, whatever, no pressure." Then she pushes a button on her desk and those two children EXPLODE IN GORE. Everyone nearby is splattered with blood, and the teacher pretends that it's totally cool.

AND THEN THE VIDEO KEEPS GOING! Showing us the exact same scene with a bunch of business folk, and then some jackoffs in a field somewhere, and eventually they blow up the celebrity voiceover lady for being mildly dismissive. It was frankly horrifying and disgusting, and I grew more and more upset as it just kept going, as I thought, "How could they work on this, get upward of a hundred actors, editors, gaffers, etc., to work on this and not once someone thought, 'this is gross and we shouldn't do it.'"

Because it is! It's needlessly gorey for shock value. I could go into the content, how the targets are largely people who are uninterested in hearing another goddamn spiel and that it shockingly eliminationist in its approach, with its unsubtle suggestion that we should blow up people who disagree with us, but there are a dozen other blogging nutjobs to tell you that. Oh sure, they will tell you that's how all us liberals think, and we know they're wrong. This was just a terrible attempt to be funny, and it went too far. You do not explode children for not going along with a plan that they have no power carrying out in the first place.

This...might have worked. Maybe one scene, in which you properly establish that the one stupid jerk who won't play along has a dumb reason not to participate. But not random people. Not children. Not celebrities. And you don't go to Saw levels of blood splatter. This is just in terrible goddamn taste, and it shouldn't have been made. All it did was kick the hive and give the dickheads who are completely unwilling to consider the possibility of global warming more reasons to deny. It's too dry and too serious.

So, don't do this. It was a bad idea. Do not try to be "funny" when trying to sway people to your side of a controversial issue. It will only make those who disagree with you hate you more, and those who do agree with you mad for making it worse.