Does anyone else feel a little bit bad for the predators that Chris Hansen catches? I mean, sure, they're trying to have sex with a minor and if someone weren't there to stop them and they were actually successful then that'd be horrible. But these guys look so harmless. They spend hours driving across the country to a house because they are hoping to have a positive experience. For minutes, we can see them feeling like they've fulfilled their dream and are probably happier than they've ever been before as they talk to the decoy. And then, Chris shows up and gives them the worst scolding and interrogation in their life. Not only that, they are humiliated publicly on TV.

I'm just wondering to myself, what if we didn't treat mentally ill people like trash? What if we offered them some compassion? What if we just let them spend more time with the decoys and treated them with more respect?

When I see an episode, I think to myself, how close am I to becoming someone like that? We like to think that morality drives our decisions, but really we justify our decisions by making up moral arguments afterwards, and as humans we just happen to tend to behave well. I feel an amount of empathy for the people on the show, and in a way, the fact that I do terrifies me.

I cannot imagine myself acting like the people on that show, but it's still hard not to think that they are mostly good people with just a minor flaw which ruins their lives.