Marines Recruiting on MySpace

I doubt this is what Rupert Murdoch had in mind for his internet creation, but I bet he’s not exactly displeased to see it used this way:

So far, over 12,000 Web surfers have signed on as friends of the Corps in response to the latest military recruiting tactic. Other military branches may follow.

…The Marine Corps MySpace profile — featuring streaming video of barking drill sergeants, fresh recruits enduring boot camp and Marines storming beaches — underscores the growing importance of the Internet to advertisers as a medium for reaching America's youth.

Perhaps I’m a total hypocrite, because I don’t believe this would bother me so much if we weren’t currently at war. But we are, and soldiers have a real chance of dying, getting catastrophically injured, or coming home physically safe but seriously fucked up—and the recruiters don’t really use those possibilities as a selling point, if you know what I mean—so, at the moment, this does bother me, especially as recruiting tactics have been getting increasingly predatory (and unethical).

(Hat tip to BlondeSense.)