Online: A Never-Ending Supply of Gruesome Street-Fighting

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Russel, 17, still doesn't know what the fight was really about. It was just one of those instant high school hatreds that culminates in a promise to throw down. In front of twenty-five other kids from the largely middle-class Emerald Ridge High School in Puyallup, Washington, the two teens beat on each other for what seemed an eternity until Russel broke his right hand. Still, his foe looked like the loser. "His friends thought he was going to win," Russel says, "so they videotaped it. And a couple of other kids filmed it too." But no one stepped in to stop it, and the video was up on MySpace hours later. In Round Two, later that night, Russel got a beat-down from two of his opponent's friends, an attack that was captured with a night-vision lens and also posted online. The clip ends with one of Russel's assailants getting a shotgun, pumping a round into the chamber, looking straight into the camera and declaring, "Any of you-all want to play with me, we'll play."

From jihadi snuff videos to Iraq combat footage, the Internet has become the greatest library of human aggression in history. Enter the word "fight" in the search engine of youtube.com (78,397 hits) or Yahoo Video and thousands of street fights, brawls and a surprising number of girls ripping out each other's earrings are just a click away. In England, there are the disturbingly named (and illegal) "Happy Slapping" videos—kids knocking the crap out of unsuspecting victims and sending clips of the attacks in real time to their friends. "Happy Slapping" has been connected to at least one fatality.