triptrapper

u/triptrapper@lemmy.world
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There's an excellent documentary from last year called Predators. The director is a survivor of CSA, and he was very pointed in confronting Hansen about the show creating more problems than it solved.

The show didn't need to exist in the first place. If the police wanted to run a sting and arrest people, they could do it without a primetime show. They had young adult actors playing the "bait" kids, and the actors were traumatized from witnessing people's lives being ruined. Many of the "predators" were borderline vulnerable adults, and the producers relished in filming people having nervous breakdowns, realizing their lives were ruined. Many of the "predators" admitted they had a problem and asked the producers for help finding treatment, but there was no support. IIRC the vast majority of cases resulted in no jail time, and sometimes no punishment at all.

The show was cancelled when they surrounded a guy's house and he shot himself. Since the cancellation, Chris Hansen has created several iterations on increasingly obscure channels, and the show sparked tons of vigilante copycats who just create nightmares for local police.

After one of the murders in Minneapolis, Jacob Frey was asked if MPD could arrest ICE goons. His response: "Legally speaking, yes. Practically speaking... it gets a little hairy when they outnumber us and have bigger guns. We don't want to create warfare in the streets." God I fucking hate that man.

Right. From one angle, it seems that Good's and Pretti's murders got more attention because they're white. From another angle, they got attention because they were white AND attempting to disrupt the ICE occupation* in the way that keyboard warriors always suggest. It's not conjecture to say that if we resist, we may be murdered.

*attempting to disrupt by filming the Nazis and standing in their way. I don't mean to suggest they posed any threat or even physical resistance. They did not.

All of these things are true:

  1. This murder of Salgado is equally evil, and equally important, as the murders of Good and Pretti. His death deserves the same amount of outrage and community response.

  2. My nervous system still feels fried from being constantly activated for several months at the beginning of the year.

  3. I see the incongruence and it's very disturbing to me.

Wow, that's quite a statement. There's definitely a higher-than-average group of meat heads and assholes (both the fighters and the fans) but they're also athletes like any other. Many of them have trained their entire lives to compete. McGregor is the most visible, and unfortunately he's an absolute piece of shit, but it's ignorant to project that onto every martial artist.

My wife has big boobs. Sometimes she shows them off on purpose, but even when she doesn't, they're big and round and nice to look at. She says if people are going to look, at least be inconspicuous about it and not stare.

That said, I know other women who have felt cursed by their big boobs because everywhere they go, they're ogled without their consent. Which is also fair. Just because some women are okay with it, doesn't mean I'm entitled to check everyone out.

Doug Rushkoff's Survival of the Richest paints a really fascinating picture of the tech billionaire mindset. Rushkoff has been writing about tech for like 50 years so he's able to explain the evolution from creative tech anarchist to fascist sociopath. "They seem to think they can design a car fast enough to outrun its own exhaust."

I'm a social worker. I had a tough time in grad school at the peak of the Me Too movement and Trump's first term. My cohort was maybe 5% men. I sometimes felt like the target of the anger and resentment my classmates felt towards men in general. I worked hard to listen and not be defensive, but it was difficult.

I've experienced a little bit of that since graduating, but it was specific to a toxic workplace. These days I'm just so grateful to be surrounded by brilliant women. I learn so much and I never feel out of place.