Analysis of a Local Public Disturbance

What makes a viral video?

Here are some qualities I've noticed.

1) They show a human or animal engaged in some unique or extreme activity
2) They exhibit noteworthy artistic skill or cleverness
3) They greatly reinforce prior beliefs
4) They greatly challenge prior beliefs
5) Newsworthy: they show something that connects with our sense of the local and the current, the here and now. We can relate the narrative of our lives to what happens in the video.

These videos also generate mountains of racially-based commentaries wherever they're posted. Actually, it's often more a spittle-flecked monologue than it is a dialogue.

I'll talk about two other viral videos before I show the Soulja Girl one.

I remember a video from last year that showed a high school fight. Two young men take off their shirts and square off. It's a white kid and a smaller, shorter Asian kid. The crowd is yelling their support of the white kid; they're on his side. It begins. Whoever uploaded it has added a soundtrack: Rick Ross' "Everday I'm Hustlin" booms over the fight. The Asian kid moves like greased lightning and after a few punches, the white kid is down. He gets up and walks off. The Asian kid drops him again; this time he can barely stagger away, blood and bits of teeth spraying from his mouth. The video ends.

This video was popular among Asian-Americans, for obvious reasons. A narrative built up around it. The white kid was the bully. The Asian kid was the hero. The narrative had dubious authenticity, but it felt right, it fit with the video and it fit with many of our experiences. I've certainly had the experience, multiple times at school, of being surrounded by a circle of hostile white kids screaming at me. I watched the video several times. It created a strong surge of mixed emotion. I couldn't think straight while watching it. I loved it and hated it at the same time for making me romanticize the violence.

Another example is a popular video I saw last year that's much less violent but seemed to arouse equally strong emotions. A young, pretty, blond white girl sits in front of the camera and talks about her infatuation with Arab men. Nothing is pornographic or poetic; her tone is quite flat and even bland. Arab men are handsome. They're sexy. They're romantic. They know how to treat women well. They're fun to hang out with. She only goes out with Arab men now. Her current boyfriend is Arab. She's learning Arabic. She's converting to Islam. That's it, really.

You can imagine how the typical anti-Arab commenter reacts to this. Her positive stereotyping sends them into a frenzy. What she believes is the exact opposite of what any white, presumably Christian woman is supposed to believe about Arab men. It's a huge challenge to their own beliefs, and they have to deal with it by turning her into a non-representative freak, someone who's not deserving of the title of woman, even.

If it was a more common fetish – for example, a white man giving similarly bland reasons for liking Asian women --- there is no way the video would have gotten the same attention and reaction.

I first saw the Soulja Girl video at the Creative Loafing blog. It's a local Atlanta blog. There are other local sources for the video. It's viral because it's current, it involves something that almost all Atlantans are familiar with (the MARTA train), it shows an extreme of human behavior and it reinforces some prior beliefs for a lot of people. I have to warn viewers, the video is quite depressing and is going to arouse a lot of negative emotions. I'm going to talk much more about those reactions than about the video itself.



Here are some comments from the initial Creative Loafing post. There's a good dialogue in that the stupid comments do not go unchallenged.

Reason #3,129 guns should be kept off MARTA

# Jill Chambers Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
It's just one more reason why MARTA needs to have their police actually riding on the trains. How sad that someone would so rudely disrespect the elderly woman and that all those other riders did not even try to come to her defense.

# Cricket Says:
May 8th, 2008 at 6:46 am
This is a perfect reason that people with concealed carry permits SHOULD be allowed on MARTA. If I had seen this, and it had escalated to actual physical violence, I would have no problem giving that ghetto wh*re two in the hat.

# Ken Edelstein Says:
May 8th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Cricket, you make the point of gun control advocates everywhere.

# DaleC Says:
May 8th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Cricket it DID escalate to physical violence when the guy finally stood up and stopped the aggressor. No weapons needed.
That poor old woman. I can't believe it took that long for SOMEBODY to stand up to her being assaulted.
Notice how rapidly Soulja Girl's attitude changed when she was confronted by someone who showed force in an appropriate manner.
Bullies fold when someone calls them on their crap. It's a shame it took someone that long to stand up to her.
As an aside, don't you just LOVE the beautiful world of Hard Core Hip Hop culture.

# Roxie Says:
May 9th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Dude, Dale, did you just call "superman" Hard Core HipHop?
Please, appropriately hang your head in shame.
The woman in the video was not a life threatening individual. Although, she is severely testing sanity and patience, being horrendously disrespectful, aggressive, and antagonizing..It was NOT dealt with appropriately by the young man, as you can see, it only escalated the situation. There are better ways to deal with something like this that do not involve HITTING.
Of course, armchair quarterbacking is so easy. It took so long for ppl to respond b/c they couldn't believe what was happening and certainly didn't expect it to last as long as it did.

Hilarious.
# nast Says:
May 9th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Seeing as how this incident was defused by a simple act of wig pulling, perhaps Gov. Perdue should sign a bill that protects individual rights to pull others' wigs in restaurants, parks, churches and other public places.
"A wig-pulling society is a polite society."

In the next update to the story, the spittle-flecked monologue begins.

MARTA statement regarding videotaped lunacy


# troy c Says:
May 9th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Is she an Obama superdelegate?

# LMM66 Says:
May 9th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Not one of those losers tried to help an elderly woman. Everyone there was dumb*** you-know-what. As people have mentioned here already, THIS is how stereotypes are formed. And whether folks like it or not, THIS is the norm for "them".

# Weary One Says:
May 10th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
M.A.R.T.A.
Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta

# Roxie Says:
May 11th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Wow. I didn't know so many racists liked CL.

MARTA actually stands for Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (although everyone knows the other five words). It's a contentious intersection of race and politics in Atlanta.

Compared to better-known train systems, such as New York City, the trains are very limited in the ground they cover. The crime rate is low and the trains and stations are extraordinarily clean. Everyday users of the MARTA trains are predominantly working-class/middle-class African-Americans. All other Atlantans take the trains periodically, usually to go the airport or to attend special events held downtown.

Central Atlanta is a diverse mix, with the largest bloc being native (Atlanta-born) African-American. White people who live inside Atlanta are comparatively progressive in their politics, especially because of the huge GLBT community. They're not a choir of enlightened angels, by any means, but one thing is sure: if they were scared of seeing and talking to black people every day, they wouldn't be living where they do.

The suburbs to the east are where many richer, non-Atlanta-born African-Americans have settled. And to the far north, the suburbs trace the arc of white flight. The iron claws of the northern suburbs have had a pretty bad effect on the development of public transportation in Atlanta. Their politics, plus the road-construction lobby's dirty money, ensures that Atlanta's traffic congestion and air quality get worse and worse every year. MARTA's system is funded only by the two counties of metropolitan Atlanta, although people from the surrounding counties frequently use it for park-and-ride. The counties of the northern suburbs refuse to link their own systems to it, for fear of getting too many undesirable people in their neighborhoods. A well known fact: "MARTA is unique in that it is the largest United States transit agency not to receive state operational funding."

The comments to the video illustrate an intense fear and loathing of public transportation. This fear and loathing feeds from racism, then back into racism, in a vicious feedback loop. "If only I could never leave my car," they pray. But parking is limited at their sporting events and their centers of bureaucracy. Every once in a while, they have to bravely step onto a MARTA train. And they're not even allowed to carry their guns on board! They resent that.

Anyone who is passionate about Atlanta and knowledgeable about Atlanta and lives inside it, no matter what their race, knows about this dynamic. We're all hostages to it.

Getting back to a more personal level, what do viewers feel about the woman?

I didn't think that drugs were involved. It definitely wasn't crack. People on crack aren't that fluid and expressive and coordinated in their movements. I think a lot of people on the train had the same visceral reaction I did… the fear and awe of the mad. If you don't look at them, maybe they won't notice you.

In fact, that's what happened. I read it first at local videojournalist A.Man.I's blog: Soulja Girl Turns Herself In. The fuller story was reported here and on local radio stations.

MARTA's 'Soulja Girl' Getting the Help She Needs

She's only 25 years old, but the dark bags under Nafiza Z.'s eyes tell the story of a young life blighted by psychosis, delusions, hallucinations and mania that are the hallmarks of her mental disorder.

Yesterday afternoon, Nafiza, was in the DeKalb County jail receiving the psychiatric treatment she desperately needed. But on April 7th, Nafiza was spiraling out of control on a MARTA train traveling through Atlanta's east side.

The scenes captured on another passenger's cell phone of Nafiza aka "Soulja Girl" terrorizing an elderly passenger - caused a sensation on the Internet and embarrassed MARTA officials who quickly issued a warrant for her arrest.

People with bipolar disorder aren't usually that violent or aggressive even in their manic phase. They are usually more of a danger to themselves than they are to others.

Nafiza's boyfriend Dee, with whom she has a baby son, said it more eloquently when he called into the Ryan Cameron Show on Friday, "If she wasn't bipolar she would be the good a person on earth," said Dee.


"That girl got a good heart. The city don't help her, man! They just kick her back out on the streets. The city don't help [black mentally ill] folks like that. Once you get in that [manic] stage you can't help yourself. It mess with your mind, man. Once your mind gone it's a wrap!"

I don't know exactly what it's like to be in the grip of clinical mania, adrenaline coursing through your body, other strange chemicals surging through your brain. But I know what it feels like to be a witness to something like that. Perhaps the awe and fear of the bystander is partly because of our empathy with mania... as if we're seeing the dial turned up to 10 on an experience we've felt at level 3 or 4.

It reminds me of a bizarre experience I had when I was in college in Miami. I was at a donut shop late at night, studying with some friends. An older white man walked in and set down at the booth next to us. He started talking very loudly to the air in a sharp, agonized tone. It was a monologue about being a Vietnam vet and how he was betrayed and how it was all the fault of the gooks. That sentiment, those words, over and over again.

My friends were shrinking into their seats. They were all foreign students and terrified of getting into trouble and getting deported, especially the one from Iraq. I had the opposite reaction. My skin was on fire, there was a buzzing noise in my ears, my body started shivering and trembling as if someone had plugged me into an electric current, and everytime he said the word "gook" the current spiked. After a couple minutes of this, I couldn't take it anymore. I got up and faced him and started yelling back.

There was chaos after that point. Another older white man came over, said he was also a Vietnam vet and then took my side of the loud, disjointed argument. The staff of the donut shop got involved. There were numerous threats of ass-kicking. The police came. They tried to talk him down but eventually arrested him after he got into his car, because he was obviously in no condition to drive.

My friends, who hadn't moved during the whole time, told me I was crazy. Yes, my actions were pretty irrational, but I didn't feel like I had a choice. I'd waded up to my knees in something that the mentally ill man was drowning in. I suppose I won, but my victory was pretty hollow.

This was the first narrative that I connected to the video I watched today. But after that man went out into the parking lot, I have no idea how his story began or ended.

After I read a bit more of Nafiza Z.'s story, I feel almost guilty for writing this analysis. I still empathize with the bystanders and the poor elderly lady, but I also empathize with her terrible struggle. I hope these words will go to show how the hatred expressed toward her has more to do with a complicated web of politics, race and resentment than it does with her actual actions. I hope she can transcend the person shown in that video and become the person she wants to be.