There is a moment in every episode of the Y2K television phenomenon To Catch a Predator where something almost transcendent takes place. After an exchange of a sexual nature is made online between an adult and a decoy adult posing as a child, the adult arrives at the home of the “child”, which has been wired with cameras. There, the adult is greeted by a young-looking actor, who could easily pass for an underage child, and given the chance to incriminate themselves further. Before anything further occurs, a television host named Chris Hansen steps out from a hiding place, camera crew in tow. There is often a pause, and we watch – gripped, horrified, excited – as the ensnared adult’s life collapses in on itself in real time.
“In that moment, time stops,” says Mark de Rond, a Cambridge University ethnographer, in David Osit’s new Oscar-tipped documentary Predators. “What you’re seeing is, effectively, someone else’s life end.”
