Domestic Violence? More like Domestic Vi-LOL-ence!

Recently, 92.3 FM in New York changed it’s format from an all-rock station (K-ROCK, as it was formerly known) to Top 40 (Now FM). I have to say that if there’s one thing New York needed more of it was Top 40 radio, because it’s already impossible to turn on your FM receiver and not hear Flo Rida’s “Right Round” playing on four different stations at the same time. Why not have a fifth, right? I digress; this post isn’t written to be a rant about the saturation of the airwaves with terrible music.

This Thursday evening, I was sitting in my car and eating a burger while flipping through my car radio presets. Since 92.3 is still one of them, I happened to land on it for the last few moments of a song I actually liked and, since I didn’t immediately change the station, caught the two DJs having a conversation. It was the usual inane radio DJ fare, except this time it caught my attention because they were encouraging women to text message them with hilarious stories to see whose boyfriend had the worst temper.

The DJ’s were already very amused by the responses they had gotten, and one of them read the following text message they had received (this isn’t word for word, but I’m paraphrasing here):

“My boyfriend has the worst temper. One time, he threw a coffee table at me! Crazy European temper!”

Now, without getting into a big thing on the relationship that this girl (or the next girl I’m going to mention) has with her boyfriend: what the fuck? I’m pretty sure having a “European temper” doesn’t normally excuse throwing coffee tables at women, and I’m pretty sure that this makes your boyfriend a colossal fuck-up at life. It’s really not funny or cute that you date someone that does this (unless the person lied to get themselves on the radio, in which case they’re in dire need of attention). Of course, what I’m saying here would be the rational response to someone telling you that they’re dating someone that throws coffee tables at them, but the DJs didn’t seem to think so, no; they thought it was fucking hilarious. Yes, a woman practically told them that her boyfriend commits acts of domestic battery, and they encouraged other women to do the same for their amusement.

Amazing.

They weren’t done, though. As I mentioned earlier, there was another girl who texted in and got her text message read on the air as well. This one went something like this:

“My boyfriend has a really bad temper; he throws all sorts of things at me. One time, he threw his cellphone and broke it!”

Another brilliant example of a winner (sarcasm, for the dense) and another story the DJs found uproarious. These weren’t shock jocks; they were just two no names on a Thursday evening in New York taking examples of spectacularly fucked up relationships and having a chuckle about it. It was mind boggling/

I’m aware there’s a market for these things, of course. There’s shock jocks, and we’ve all watched Jerry Springer before; there’s a certain train-wreck fascination people seem to have with the bottom of the barrell of society. I’m not always above that (who hasn’t watched an episode of Jerry?), and of course we all have tempers and all do stupid things; I’m not under the impression throwing things at your significant other is a normal thing, however, or something that should be made light of. There’s plenty of fail to go around here, from the relationships themselves to the no-name DJ’s that probably used it as an idea to get people to go “OMG!” (and the fools like me that probably took the bait), but I couldn’t help but have this feeling afterwards:

“What the fuck is wrong with you people? Throwing coffee tables? Funny? Acceptable? Fucking hell.”

Through my own experiences I’m starting to find that trying to explain or rationalize a lot of human behavior is a pretty fucking frustrating task, but it’s always great to get little reminders of just how screwed up we are. Sometimes, I think there really isn’t much hope. Sometimes, I just think things are kinda fucked. Thanks, NOW FM, for that sobering reminder of human failure. But hey, just put on some more Flo Rida, and let’s all keep pretending that it’s all good.