Farah Harith
ONE thing we don't seem to be running out of these days is the amount of viral videos flooding social media.
It has come to a point where it appears like we are all just on the prowl for a viral-worthy situation to break out in front of us, so we can whip out our smartphones and hit the record button.
Perhaps while doing that, we are already crafting the potential caption to go with this video, which, if we had taken the time to evaluate the situation properly, does not call for it to be immortalised in an .mp4 file.
Yet another video surfaced earlier today of a man scolding a woman at a Caltex petrol station. There is no indication where the petrol station was located, but based on the Malaysian license plate on the car spotted in the video, it could have been shot in Malaysia.
There is also no information on when this incident took place.
What could be ascertained from the verbal exchange in the video was that the person behind the camera was in her car at the petrol station and found her path blocked by an uncle refuelling his car.
It appeared like the uncle did not park his vehicle squarely in the allocated box and this could have been the reason why the woman could not go through.
The uncle was angry and asked the woman why was she honking at him. She retorted saying he did not park properly.
It was also clear to viewers that the uncle was driving a normal car and not an 18-wheeler truck, which means he would not take that long to fill up his tank. The woman could have just honked and waited. Instead, she brought her window down and started recording her exchange with the uncle.
The uncle's temper escalated and he started spewing out curse words but they did not get into a physical altercation. He did however move towards her window and looked like he tried to swat her phone like it was a fly, while asking why she was recording.
To cut a long story short, the video ended without any blood being spilled or anyone ending up at the hospital. Of course we still don't know what happened after the phone stopped recording.
Netizens, upon seeing the video, appeared to be torn. Usually in cases like an argument caught on video, people are quick to take sides and defend one party over the other.
In this case though, both the uncle and the woman were criticised.
On one Facebook page where the video was uploaded, a commenter asked if the woman had bought her license because she could have saved herself the argument and just reversed her car.
Another person remarked, "Little bit also record, little bit also record."
The uncle was berated for not being able to contain his anger but the woman received minimal love for capturing a situation that could have been avoided or to use an old Manglish favourite, "just close one eye lah."
This begs the question: must we document everything in our camera roll for the sake of making someone "go viral" for petty things?