The Murderporn Feedback loop
I visit the corner store below my apartment almost daily. In doing so, I’ve gotten to know the staff rather well. Some are more friendly than others, but they’re all so accustomed to seeing my face that they recognize me and have small talk with me on almost every visit. This corner store also loves to play a wide range of TV shows and movies at full volume on a TV above the aisles at all times. It’s become somewhat of a trademark for them.
The other day, I joked with a cashier that I could probably tell which employee was working by just seeing what was on the TV. One cashier has a pretty varied set of tastes, but it’s all mired in a sort of cult-status appeal. From Monty Python, to Aladdin, to Mystery Science Theater 3000, while there’s a story difference in his interests, he’s definitely wearing his “indie badge” proudly.
The other cashier - we’ll call him Ben - has one preference and one preference only: murder porn(http://www.hulu.com/watch/542494). From CSI, to NCIS, to Locked up, to The First 48, Law and Order, to CNN coverage of a shooting, to an MSNBC news panel argument about said mass-shooting, to any other true/false crime played on network/cable TV, an individual to several people are gonna die/get locked up during his shift. Now almost every time I come in, I definitely take a second to recognize what’s on the TV and watch a few tidbits with them and remark on what they’re watching. When Ben’s working, I usually end up watching a little longer because I’ll admit, it’s compelling as fuck tv. It usually boils down to 1 thing: Someone did a murder thing, and [people] are going to solve it.
Now Ben is an incredibly charming and lovable fixture in my community, and incapable of causing harm to another human being, but his downright obsession with murder has me thinking about a theory I’ve had clanking around in my head: the murder porn feedback loop. Now this plays into a very interesting study done by PLOS ONE that says school/mass killings have a somewhat “contagious” affect on outside observers (http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/02/health/contagious-mass-killings-study/). Now the study uses much more sophisticated means of correlating the data, than I will and I highly suggest you read the actual study (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0117259), but it’s a common-sense headline.
Here’s why I say “common sense”. Never as much as before do we have so much high-quality access to real-life murder than we do right now. Here’s what I mean, during the San Bernadino shootings, I watched - in semi-real-time - the shootout between police and the shooters, from my desk at work, in high def. Tying back to true-crime drama at the corner store, I say again: compelling as fuck television. Everything runs through your mind, from what weapons the shooters are using, what artillery the local police office uses, to what the shooters look like, to what explosions you get to see, etc. It’s a real life, real time, action movie. Except real lives are at stake, and their actions have real consequences.
CNN would never release the full data that shows it, but every time a shooting happens, I’m absolutely certain they have a ratings bonanza. So how do they react? In the name of providing top-notch coverage, they improve their product. They show more graphics, more roundtables, more camera angles, more pixels, more animations, more charismatic personalities, more grieving witnesses, more stunned reactions. More, more, more, more.
My question is: how much more do we need? How much more informed do we need to be? Am I more educated, more informed, more prepared, more aware of the next mass shooting because I watched it? I find that doubtful. I also find it doubtful that their coverage outside of where to run if you’re involved, or who to contact if someone you know was involved benefits the general public (read: viewers) whatsoever.
Conversely, how much harm does it do? Well, I won’t begin to understand the mind of a mass-murderer, but all logic and common sense points to the notion that a person with anger, radicalized views, and schizophrenic voices in their head is watching, obsessing, and absorbing the same coverage that I am. And in doing so, are feeling the slightest bit more motivated to go through with something they potentially had been plotting all along. Whether or not seeing the police put 500 bullets into the shooter’s car may or may not compel the aforementioned potential mass-murderer’s to think twice is up for debate, but of the few mass shooters to survive their horrific actions, I have yet to hear one say “I thought I could get away with it”.
So that begs the question, are we in a feedback loop? For each shooting, are we ratcheting up the likelihood of another shooting by that tiny nth of a percentage, motivating that next mass shooting, ratcheting the likelihood up once more, and so on? If that is the case and we are motivating potential mass-murderers to become actual mass murderers as the PLOSONE study suggests, should something be done about it? If cable news actually cared about the well-being of the very citizens it broadcasts its 24 hours coverage to, why aren’t they simply showing a headline in the ticker that says “MASS SHOOTING IN [LOCATION], call [PHONE NUMBER] or visit [WEB ADDRESS] if you feel you, or someone you know is affected”.
Certainly someone else has made this point somewhere else, but has any political initiative been made to alleviate it? In my opinion, our obsession with death is slowly and unnecessarily killing us.
