You’re free to scroll to the next blog if you wish. But there’s something you should know. I’m Chris Hansen played by Robert Pattinson in Primetime and we’re doing a story on adults who haven’t purchased Stories No One Should Read online.
How old are you?
Would you like to try that again?
I know you’re 56 years old. You work at Taco Bell, thrice divorced, and are suffering from crippling diabetes. You have no retirement savings and no future worth mentioning. This is a book written specifically for people like you. So why haven’t you bought Stories No One Should Read on Kindle for $2.99?
There’s buying it and not buying it and you haven’t bought it. For that, you only have yourself to blame.
No decisions have been made yet. We don’t know which segments will air. But I’m gonna have to ask you to leave and go to Amazon or Dead Star Press to buy your copy today.
Neither A24 nor anyone associated with Lance Oppenheimer’s Primetime is connected to the release of this book. The author, identified as “Beau Montana”, is mentally unwell, has a small penis, and functionally illiterate. His legal team pleads with A24 to keep that in mind before pursuing legal action.
After watching all 24,000 hours of Chris Hansen’s investigations into online predatory behavior (in one night) I’ve arrived at a radical conclusion: Chris Hansen is not a journalist. That’s a view for the simpletons. He’s something a little bit more.
He’s a provocateur. A performance artist.
I’m not throwing shade at Hansen necessarily. Indeed, if my interpretation of him is correct, he’s the greatest to ever do it. Unlike all the other firebrands, Hansen didn’t rise up through stand up comedy or cheap political punditry. He captured the public trust by doing legitimate investigative journalism. But as usual, the times make the man. And Hansen stumbled upon a subject matter that was alarming, darkly provocative, and timely. After the Satanic Panic and Stranger Danger era of the 80s and 90s, followed by the intense paranoia and entrenchment of the surveillance state during the early 2000s, Hansen invited us to take a seat and peek into the world of online predatory behavior towards children.
As mentioned in the video above, To Catch a Predator always had its controversies, specifically regarding the media’s relationship with law enforcement, entrapment, etc. Initially, the program dedicated time towards educating parents on how to protect their children online. So there was, in a sense, an educational component. But then the show kinda morphed into something else. Something a bit unsettling and much more difficult to put your finger on.
We all know the setup. After baiting a predator, a “decoy” (usually a paid actor playing an underage girl or boy) waits at a sting house for the individual to show up. The predator comes into the house, the decoy disappears, and out comes Chris Hansen asking the man to “take a seat”. What follows is an uncomfortable conversation where Hansen attempts to understand the predator’s motivations and intentions. The first few interviews, you’re like “hahaha fuck that guy.” But the more you watch, the sadder it becomes. Eventually you have to ask yourself: “what are we accomplishing with this?”. Even in the rare moments where the predator is calm and honest, we really don’t learn anything that we couldn’t have deduced ourselves. So the interviews are like watching a trapped animal. The predator spins their tires until the interviewer gets bored and says “I’m Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC”. The man panics and tries to leave until they are busted by a whole squad of cops. It’s the strangest and most unsettling bit of television you will ever see.
Sure they catch a predator. But Chris Hansen presents himself as a predator of a different beast. With his access to primetime television and absence of a court of law, Hansen becomes the judge, jury, and executioner. You and I, as viewers, are his co-conspirators.
But as with any good art, there’s an undercurrent of themes presented but left to the viewer to ponder on. Male loneliness. Declining social mobility. Mental health. Rarely, if ever, were these subjects outright discussed but were nonetheless screaming at us through the television. Moreover, the pretense of journalistic intent was addressed only in the most halfassed way. If Hansen was truly concerned with online sexual predators, more attention would have been paid to victims of it.
Instead, Chris Hansen chose to turn a disturbing subject into spectacle. That’s why it’s not fair to call his work in the subject “journalism”. Not to knock To Catch a Predator and its successors though. It not only provided spectacle but it also gave us insight into ourselves and our times.
