Honestly?

It takes a lot to make me cringe these days.

Not that I have some sort of insane tolerance for things, but let's face it: in the world we live in with media coverage of pretty much everything, the Internet providing access to whatever sick, twisted and depraved material people are searching for, I'm just generally never surprised at the things that people are into any more.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, I got an email today and it made me cringe. Please note: I didn't even open the message.

I have a friend who sends out roughly 963 emails a week, generally from one of two categories: twisted shit (accidents, violence, etc.) or porn. And ladies, you're in luck, he's single!

Anyway, most of the time I simply delete anything he sends me because I'm not a nearly 40-year-old guy who doesn't realize that the people I email can just as easily access porn as I do without flooding their inbox with boobs on a daily basis.

Clicking around, I heard that familiar ping signaling a new message and went to check it out. It was from this friend. Let's call him Bas.

Anyway, Bas' latest forward to me - The Police Scanner audio from the Greyhound Bus decapitation.

Who in the fuck wants to listen to that? I sure don't.

The thing that gets me about messages like this is what goes through someone's head before they (a) listen to the thing themselves and (b) decide it's something they need to send to everyone they know.

Personally, hearing people undoubtedly screaming in horror during an incredibly horrific event isn't my cup of tea. If it's yours, I don't know if we can be friends.

It's like the premise of the movie Untraceable, where the more people that log onto a website the faster the victim dies. Me, I'm never logging onto that website because I'm not one for watching someone die. In this case, the same goes for hearing it.

Somebody has violently lost their life.

A family has lost one of it's members.

Lives have been eternally changed.

And I've got some douchebag friend that is flipping the audio of the whole thing to everyone he knows.

Maybe you think about that before you hit that "Send" button next time...