I caught this the other day and wondered if anyone else had seen it and their thoughts.

IMDb link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34963732
YouTube Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmo3_MnBhZw

The general gist is it's a documentary that mainly focuses on the series To Catch A Predator and the subsequent fall out of all that, the damage it has caused through people killing themselves, vigilante copycats etc. and why people seem to get off on watching what is essentially someone's life ending right in front of their eyes.

They interview some police folk and others who are all "YEEHAW STRING 'EM UP!" then they show them the stuff that didn't make the episode and they seem to actually realise "Okay, they did something bad but they're still human...".

They also showcase some YouTube TCAP rip-off guy who openly admits to staging parts of some of his videos for clicks! Lawyers in any case he's been involved in must be licking their lips at that as surely that just brings everything he's reported to the police under scrutiny?

They even interview Chris over one of the cases where the accused was 18 and the decoy was I believe 15 which (morally aside) would've been legal where he was, he didn't get in any legal trouble but naturally the social media and public fall out was enough to turn him into a pariah. Chris Hansen didn't really seem that phased by it "It won't be on Google forever" was his words.

Anyway, yeah. Thought it was quite good overall but felt they could've maybe pushed Hansen a little bit more for his part in all this but worth a watch.

Chris Hansen really opened up a pandora's box with To Catch a Predator. It was the original inspiration for the UK's "paedophile hunters" many of whom are thuggish vigilante gangs that seem proud of ensnaring often vulnerable people with learning difficulties in their "sting operations". In the US these gangs often go a step further by simply beating up the people they entrap using decoy minors.

I finally got around to watching it and there is a lot to unpack in there.

It seems to me as if the show would still be on air, if they hadn't killed somebody and that was why it was cancelled. The odd thing is that these men did not seem to understand the true consequences of their actions and I don't mean the men who were caught. I am talking about the programme makers and the police who took part.

They started by saying they wanted to bring these "predators" to justice and protect children, but then they get upset because one of the suspects was driven to suicide. What did they expect was going to happen, when you destroy somebody's life? If the guy had gone to jail for 50 years, which is entirely possible, given the US sentencing guidelines, then that would have been ok presumably? That would have been justice.

But because he killed himself instead, that is going too far? I dont see why they have any regrets, because this was the outcome they wanted all along. That's the contradiction, in the way that society portrays SO, versus the reality that they are human beings, just like everybody else.

The prosecutor who said "these men are hardened criminals", after he had just said that none of them have criminal records, is a great example. Well, either they are monsters, or they arent. They cant' be both.

When it comes to getting help, it was revealing that the interview with the man who requested help was never broadcast. When the prosecutor was forced to watch an interview with one of the suspects, he said "this is not typical of a criminal investigation". But he is wrong. The police conduct these kind of interviews all the time. Our view of what criminals are is largely shaped by tabloid coverage of the absolute worst cases.

Having said that though, there are some dangerous people out there. The problem is that we have a system, both here and in the USA, that was designed to deal with the worst of the worst and thanks mainly to the internet, the vast majority of those being arrested now, both here and in the USA, are not the worst of the worst.