I watched a film I shouldn't have watched

Maria and I had one of those rare nights when it was just the two of us at home.

Our youngest went with his two older brothers (back home for an autumn break) to some friend's house. Wanting to watch a film, we finally settled on Unknown Number: The High School Catfish on Netflix. I started to type that I will give no spoilers, but I’m almost tempted to do so just so you will be dissuaded from watching it. I wish I hadn’t.

The documentary tells the story of a high school girl who starts getting bombarded with a countless barrage of harassing and threatening texts (and I mean truly vile and cruel texts) every day. The search for the cyber-stalker leads through the local sheriff’s office right up to the FBI. The reveal is a major twist that leaves the viewer yelling at the screen, "What!"

But after it was over, Maria and I looked at each other and said, "Gross." I don’t just mean that the situation was gross, although it certainly was. I kept wondering over and over, why would these people agree to cooperate with this documentary? Why would these adolescents be allowed to make the decision to go on camera and potentially further traumatise their lives by making a permanent artifact of it with their images and voices?

More than that, it was not so much that the movie was gross but that I felt gross for having watched it. It seemed voyeuristic on someone else’s pain in a really noticeable way. I realised that I had moved into seeing this as a kind-of murder mystery, with characters and a plot, and had to remind myself that these "characters" were real people.

It reminded me why so much early Christian discipleship in the first-century Roman Empire had to emphasise that followers of Jesus don’t go to gladiator "games." Before a Christian knew it, he or she could be swept up with the mob screaming for bloodshed, all for entertainment.

We can do the same with this sort of thing really easily.