Arguably, collective consciousness creates an element of comfort in numbers, thus creating an avenue for individuals to easily forget the trauma they have gone through since such trauma is portrayed as something normal to the masses. In this case, while an individual can find certain elements in digital media such as barbarity, torture and violence traumatising, a group of people will find such elements entertaining. For example, Nelson’s article point out that a group of people in society were not only willing to watch reality television participants administer electric shock to their peers, but they also encouraged such behaviour through cheering and urging them to go on despite that such shock could have resulted in death. “A smiling host and vociferous studio audience…urged the behaviour on…results were remarkably similar: sixty-four of the eighty contestants were willing to deliver shocks that could have killed their recipients, had there been any actual receivers” (Nelson 302). On the other hand, an analysis of Stout’s work reveals that individuals are highly sensitive to elements such as violence and trauma and as such, if they cannot avoid it, they will often seek to dissociate their minds and thoughts from such vices. In this case, she acknowledges that, “All human beings have the capacity to dissociate psychologically, though most of us are unaware of this, and consider “out-of-body” episodes to be far beyond the boundaries of our normal experience” (Stout 426). Notably, whereas one may not even notice it, he or she is likely to dissociate him/herself from traumatic events that have a negative impact on his or her life. This difference between collective and individual consciousness as far as trauma is concerned stimulated by the fact that from an individual perspective, trauma is perceived as a painful experience, thus triggering one to implement measures to avoid such pain. However, from a collective perspective, trauma is perceived as something that occurs outside the life of an individual rather than within the lives of individuals in the group. With this in mind, the responses of the two vary. Whereas this is the case, there is a need to observe that in both collective and individual consciousness scenarios, there is an element of distraction. From Nelson’s perspective, a group of people who are exposed to violence and torture are likely to create a barrier between them and the images they see, and as such, creating a virtual world that is perceived as not human at all.
可以说，集体意识在数量上创造了一种舒适的元素，从而为个人创造了一条容易忘记他们所经历的创伤的途径，因为这种创伤被描述为大众的正常现象。在这种情况下，虽然个人可以在数字媒体中找到某些元素，如野蛮、酷刑和暴力创伤，但一群人会发现这些元素具有娱乐性。例如，Nelson的文章指出，社会上的一群人不仅愿意观看真人秀节目参与者对同龄人实施电击，而且还通过欢呼鼓励他们继续这样做，尽管电击可能导致死亡。“一位面带微笑的主持人和喧闹的演播室观众……催促他们的行为……结果非常相似：80名参赛者中有64人愿意进行电击，如果真有接受者的话，这些电击可能会杀死接受者”（Nelson 302）。另一方面，对斯托特工作的分析表明，个人对暴力和创伤等因素高度敏感，因此，如果无法避免，他们往往会试图将自己的思想和想法与这些恶习分离。在这种情况下，她承认，“所有的人都有解离心理的能力，虽然我们大多数人都不知道这一点，并认为“身体外”的情节远远超出了我们正常经验的界限”（粗壮426）。值得注意的是，一个人甚至可能没有注意到，他或她很可能将自己与对其生活产生负面影响的创伤事件分离。就创伤而言，集体意识和个人意识之间的这种差异是由以下事实所激发的：从个人的角度来看，创伤被视为一种痛苦的经历，从而促使人们采取措施避免这种痛苦。然而，从集体的角度来看，创伤被认为是发生在个人生活之外的事情，而不是发生在群体中的个人生活中。考虑到这一点，两人的反应各不相同。尽管如此，但需要注意的是，在集体和个人意识场景中，都存在分散注意力的因素。从Nelson的角度来看，一群遭受暴力和酷刑的人可能会在他们和他们看到的图像之间制造障碍，从而创造一个被认为根本不是人类的虚拟世界。