Callousness & cruelty go viral

Say cheese.

The hottest video to hit the Internet in the past week doesn’t feature a starlet, Justin Bieber, or anything Kardashian. It doesn’t even feature sex.

Thousands of viewers logged on to WorldStarHipHop.com to be entertained by the sight of three thugs beating the tar out of a passenger aboard the L train in Brooklyn. The beatdown recipient, Daniel Endara, 25, endured the extreme punishment as payback for daring to ask the young hoodlums to stop spitting on the floor and harassing a female subway rider.

In the video, captured by several of Endara’s camera-wielding fellow straphangers, he was punched and kicked in the head, his face left bloodied and bruised.

Stunned, he fell on a seat and tried to crawl to his feet before, vainly, attempting to beat off the attackers, who smacked him some more.

Now, here’s the part that’s more shocking even than men maiming a fellow man: Not one of the dozens of passengers on the train came to Endara’s aid. Or sought help. Or prayed.

But the final outrage makes me sick. Every human who watched the vicious assault did not even summon the decency to cry or hide.

No. They had a great time.

All the men and women who watched Endara’s brutal beating laughed. They heckled him and egged on the attackers. Everyone.

It should make one ashamed to be of the same species. But guess what. This kind of behavior is not rare. And it grows by the day.

Shrinks and cultural mavens used to call this kind of willful blindness “Genovese syndrome,” after Kitty Genovese. In 1964, she was stalked, raped and stabbed to death over a half-hour in front of 38 of her Queens neighbors. None of them lifted a finger to help her. This gave rise to the notion that New Yorkers — who behaved so valiantly on 9/11 — are an apathetic bunch.

But the Genovese sickness has lately been replaced by one that’s more twisted. I’ll call it “YouTube Insanity.” And it’s going viral.

There is a disconnect, people. Folks desensitized by video and computer games are displaying a stunning lack of empathy.

For their own enjoyment, armchair enthusiasts encourage the most savage bullying. But watching blows inflicted on strangers isn’t painful. It’s hilarious.

Experts are stunned.

“They’re mugging for the cameras now,” said a law-enforcement source. “In a sense, getting caught on candid camera becomes its own kind of reward.”

We’re witnessing an entirely new kind of fame-seeking. Sex tapes are so 2005. But now that everyone with opposable thumbs has access to a cellphone video camera, entire Web sites have sprung up devoted to real-life acts of ultraviolence and human suffering. It’s beyond sick.