I watch too many true crime shows. My TV is usually tuned in to the Investigation Discovery channel, but I’ll also watch Forensic Files, Snapped, I Almost Got Away With It, The First 48, 48 Hours…all of them…any of them.
I guess I like these shows for the same reason that most people like dark stuff like this.
I also like to see the timeline of the degradation of the subject’s morals. These shows have a pretty common sequence, or format. The characterizations at the beginning of show portray the day to day routines of the people involved. They seem like regular people at first. The show portrays them at their job, in their home. The dark side of the perpetrator has not yet been revealed. The show will present the subject’s unraveling. The nefarious aspects of the perpetrator’s character begin to surface.
It’s almost as though you can see where the perpetrator went wrong…where they got too greedy…where they got to lusty…where their anger overcame them and drove them to take that next horrible step.
And then you look around at the people who live near you or work near you. You wonder: Are any of the people near me entering a critical phase like this? Do any of the people near me exhibit any of the characteristics of the perpetrators?
If we got better at recognizing this pattern, could we intervene?
who cares 