Why I Don’t Believe in Anything Anymore

September 30th, 2006General5 comments

Examples of man’s inhumanity to man:

Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator — I saw a promo for this last week and recorded it this week. In it, a Dateline crew runs a sting operation using the internet to lure would-be pedos to a house where they believe they will have sex with a 13 year old girl; instead they come face-to-face with a Dateline reporter. They look like a deer in the headlights, and there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then they are led away by local law enforcement, to be booked and jailed.

Why I can’t stop watching: Because it’s real, or at least the sudden emotional torment these wanna-be pedos show is real. Some guys try to play it off cool but start blubbering as soon as they’re in cuffs. Other guys completely break down as soon as the Dateline guy shows up. “Please shoot me now,” says one.

What I wonder is: How come they don’t blur out the guys’ faces? On COPS they blurred out the perps’ faces all the time. Did these guys sign releases afterwards? How could that be possible?

Also: Though there is ample evidence to prosecute these guys (the Dateline people in conjunction with a watchdog group submit the sexy chat logs to the cops as evidence), does airing their indentities on national television constitute cruel and unusual extra punishment? I’m sure these sting operations are going on all the time, but the added bonus of being on prime time TV for the few and unlucky is an extra kick in the teeth. I’m thinking especially of the “well-respected San Francisco physician” to be featured on next week’s program. Being pinched for child molestation is devastating to a person and their family, but being on TV is a nuclear blast.

Finally: I keep watching and I keep feeling dirtier and dirtier, yet I can’t stop. Am I reveling in schadenfreude? I’m like the guy laughing at a poor sucker locked in a pillory. Dateline NBC is like the guy selling rotten tomatoes to throw at him.

Last night at a party Hieu says, “You gotta check out this thing called Felony Fights on YouTube. It’s sick. These guys, they fight and they’re like, WHAM WHAM WHAM! Elbow to the head! And they’re all bleeding and — face COVERED IN BLOOD… It’s sick!”

I checked it out, and that is a perfectly accurate description of what it is.

It’s a gonzo video series that they sell on tape (and use YouTube for marketing) where rough neck types bare-knuckle fight each other on camera.

Here’s one with a one-sided pummeling that’s so bad (elbows and a flying knee to the head) that the dude lies on the ground groaning for three minutes. He has trouble breathing. He doesn’t know where he is, and when he finally gets up he looks lost and broken. Seriously fucked up.

Our basic human nature will never change. We love sex and violence, and we love seeing people punished for wanting both. We love winners and losers.

Maybe I shouldn’t say “we”, because I’m sure there are soccer moms and born-agains who would disagree and say that they don’t belong to the collective. But somewhere deep down inside each of us is that animal that still sees every struggle as life-or-death, and still thinks it has to fight tooth and nail. It comes out when you get cut off in traffic or when you are frustrated by the mini-boss of a video game.

And finally, that animal has learned to edit video and make it look pretty tight.

To bring us back to baseline, here is a puppy: