‘Primetime’ Exposes the Ego-Driven Core of Vigilante Pedophile Hunting

《黄金时段》揭露了私刑猎捕恋童癖者背后的自我驱动本质

Child predators are arguably the most reviled demographic in society. So when someone like Chris Hansen, the former NBC Dateline journalist and host of the To Catch a Predator series, decides to take up the mantle of exposing them to the public, he is naturally praised as a hero. 恋童癖者可以说是社会中最令人厌恶的群体。因此，当像克里斯·汉森（Chris Hansen）——前 NBC《日界线》（Dateline）记者兼《抓住恋童癖》（To Catch a Predator）系列节目的主持人——决定承担起向公众揭露他们的重任时，他自然会被誉为英雄。

But, as is revealed in Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime—a dramatized snapshot of Hansen’s life at the show’s peak—it’s not as simple as that. Exposing allegedly bad people for public entertainment brings up a lot of ethical concerns and unintended consequences. And while many of the vigilantes carrying out these sting operations claim they are doing a public service, their motivations become a lot more suspect when fame and money are involved. 然而，正如兰斯·奥本海姆（Lance Oppenheim）的电影《黄金时段》（Primetime）所揭示的那样——这部电影戏剧化地展现了汉森在节目巅峰时期的生活——事情并没有那么简单。为了大众娱乐而曝光所谓的“坏人”，引发了许多伦理问题和意想不到的后果。虽然许多执行这些诱捕行动的私刑者声称他们是在为公众服务，但当名利掺杂其中时，他们的动机就变得更加可疑了。

To Catch a Predator launched in 2004. In the show, Hansen’s team would pair up with civilian watchdog group Perverted Justice, using adult “decoys” to pose as minors online and exchange messages with men in chatrooms and private DMs. After the conversations became sexual, the crew would set up a sting, inviting these men to a home to meet the decoy, only to have Hansen confront them, uttering his catchphrase, “Have a seat.” The men were technically free to leave instead of sitting for an on-camera interview, but often police were waiting outside to arrest them. 《抓住恋童癖》于 2004 年开播。在节目中，汉森的团队与民间监督组织“变态正义”（Perverted Justice）合作，利用成年“诱饵”在网上冒充未成年人，与聊天室和私信中的男性交流。在对话变得色情化后，摄制组会设下圈套，邀请这些男性到家中与“诱饵”见面，随后汉森便会现身与他们对质，并说出他的口头禅：“请坐。”从技术上讲，这些人本可以拒绝接受镜头采访并离开，但警察往往已经在门外等候将他们逮捕。

The show developed an intense fandom that remains active to this day in subreddits like r/tcap, which has 52,000 weekly visitors, despite the fact that NBC stopped airing the original series in 2007. 该节目培养了一批狂热的粉丝群体，即便 NBC 早在 2007 年就停止了该系列节目的播出，这些粉丝至今仍活跃在 r/tcap 等 Reddit 子版块中，该版块每周有 5.2 万名访问者。

In A24’s Primetime, a darkly told character study in theaters September 25, Hansen (Robert Pattinson) clearly enjoys the praise and seems desperate for more accolades. He brags to his two young sons that he’s about to be on prime-time television, despite them not understanding the importance of that, and complains that the show has “never won an Emmy or any of the significance it deserves.” When a fan recognizes Hansen on a flight and becomes bloodthirsty, asking the TV host if he ever wants to “bleed” the predators he’s outing, Hansen smiles and admits that what he does by disgracing them on national television is “a little worse.” 在 A24 出品的《黄金时段》中（9 月 25 日上映，这是一部基调阴暗的人物研究电影），汉森（罗伯特·帕丁森饰）显然很享受这种赞誉，并渴望获得更多荣誉。他向两个年幼的儿子吹嘘自己即将登上黄金时段电视节目，尽管孩子们并不理解这有多重要；他还抱怨节目“从未获得过艾美奖，也没有得到它应有的重视”。当一名粉丝在飞机上认出汉森并表现出嗜血的一面，问这位主持人是否想让那些被他曝光的猎物“流血”时，汉森微笑着承认，他在全国电视节目中羞辱他们，其实“还要更糟糕一点”。

In real life, Hansen cofounded the streaming service Trublu in November 2022, where he continues his investigations into alleged child predators. But these days, he’s far from alone. His work has inspired copycats, who thrive on social media and streaming platforms like YouTube, Kick, and Facebook. These groups and individuals are largely disorganized, and as such, hard to track, but a 2022 Washington Post investigation identified at least 160 in the US. Arguably, the people running these operations are more reckless, in part because they’re driven by virality. 在现实生活中，汉森于 2022 年 11 月联合创办了流媒体服务平台 Trublu，继续调查所谓的恋童癖者。但如今，他已不再是孤军奋战。他的工作启发了许多模仿者，他们在 YouTube、Kick 和 Facebook 等社交媒体和流媒体平台上大行其道。这些团体和个人大多缺乏组织，因此难以追踪，但《华盛顿邮报》2022 年的一项调查显示，美国至少有 160 个此类团体。可以说，运营这些行动的人更加鲁莽，部分原因是他们受到病毒式传播的驱动。

One of them, who goes by Skeet Hansen, was featured in the 2025 MTV documentary Predators, about the Dateline show. In the film, directed by David Osit, Skeet Hansen responds to the criticism of the movement by saying, “There’s never been a detective that solved a murder that didn’t get paid for it. So why shouldn’t I be able to monetize off of catching these guys like the original show and making this content for people’s entertainment?” 其中一位自称“斯基特·汉森”（Skeet Hansen）的人，出现在 2025 年 MTV 关于《日界线》节目的纪录片《猎食者》（Predators）中。在大卫·奥西特（David Osit）执导的这部影片中，斯基特·汉森回应了对该运动的批评，他说：“从来没有哪个侦探在破获谋杀案后是不拿报酬的。那么，我为什么不能像原版节目那样，通过抓住这些人并制作娱乐内容来获利呢？”

One of many issues with that argument is that these hunters aren’t professional investigators—and sometimes they get things wrong. 这种论调的诸多问题之一在于，这些“猎人”并非专业调查人员——而且有时他们会搞错对象。

In April, YouTuber and Kick streamer Vitaly Zdorovetskiy apologized after publicly—and wrongly— accosting a man of Indian descent. He accused the man of wanting to “rape a 16-year-old” in a mock Indian accent and called him “Mr. Mumbai.” In March 2025, The New York Times reported that Zdorovetskiy’s tactics for ambushing suspected creeps included beating some of them up, dressing like the Joker; the Times piece found that there have been more than 170 violent vigilante attacks by predator-hunting groups since 2023. 今年 4 月，YouTuber 和 Kick 主播维塔利·兹多罗韦茨基（Vitaly Zdorovetskiy）在公开且错误地骚扰了一名印度裔男子后道歉。他用模仿印度口音的语调指责该男子想要“强奸一名 16 岁少女”，并称他为“孟买先生”。2025 年 3 月，《纽约时报》报道称，兹多罗韦茨基伏击嫌疑人的手段包括殴打他们，并打扮成小丑的样子；《纽约时报》的文章发现，自 2023 年以来，猎捕恋童癖团伙发起的暴力私刑攻击已超过 170 起。

I spent over a year investigating similar groups in Canada for Vice, starting in 2015, and found that some of the people being targeted in stings had severe intellectual and physical disabilities. 从 2015 年开始，我曾为 Vice 杂志花了超过一年的时间调查加拿大类似的团体，发现一些在诱捕行动中被针对的人患有严重的智力和身体残疾。

Law enforcement groups, meanwhile, have repeatedly denounced vigilantes, noting that their evidence often can’t be used within the criminal justice system and that confronting alleged pedophiles can allow the targeted person to escape before police can step in. In some cases, the so-called predator hunters have ended up being charged with child-porn offenses themselves. 与此同时，执法部门一再谴责这些私刑者，指出他们获取的证据往往无法在刑事司法系统中使用，而且与所谓的恋童癖者对质可能会让目标人物在警察介入前逃脱。在某些情况下，这些所谓的“猎食者猎人”最终自己反而因持有儿童色情制品而被起诉。

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Primetime. 警告：以下内容包含《黄金时段》的剧透。

In Primetime, the catastrophic consequences of these rogue busts culminate in a sting taking down Louis William “Bill” Conradt Jr., a chief felony assistant district attorney in Rockwall County, Texas. Conradt doesn’t agree to come to a decoy house, so both the TV crew and police show up at his home, where he shoots and kills himself. (The real-life Hansen told the Hollywood Reporter he doesn’t regret the November 2006 sting. Neither he nor NBC responded to a request for comment for this story.) 在《黄金时段》中，这些流氓式抓捕行动的灾难性后果在一次针对路易斯·威廉·“比尔”·康拉德（Louis William “Bill” Conradt Jr.）的诱捕行动中达到顶峰，他是德克萨斯州罗克沃尔县的首席重罪助理地方检察官。康拉德拒绝前往诱捕屋，于是摄制组和警察直接出现在他家中，随后他开枪自杀。（现实中的汉森曾告诉《好莱坞报道》，他不后悔 2006 年 11 月的那次诱捕行动。他和 NBC 均未回应本文的置评请求。）

There are no heroes in Primetime, and the movie doesn’t wrap up any of these threads neatly. 《黄金时段》里没有英雄，电影也没有将这些线索圆满收尾。

At the end, struggling actor “Decoy Dan,” played excellently by Skyler Gisondo, finally gets career validation when his appearances on the show earn him a SAG-AFTRA card, but it’s clear from his expression that he’s not comfortable with what he had to do to get it. 影片最后，由斯凯勒·吉桑多（Skyler Gisondo）出色饰演的挣扎中的演员“诱饵丹”（Decoy Dan），在凭借节目表现获得演员工会（SAG-AFTRA）会员卡时，终于得到了职业生涯的认可。但从他的表情可以明显看出，他对自己为了得到这张卡所做的事情感到不安。

Meanwhile, Hansen’s character, who repeats the phrase “What would have happened if I wasn’t here?” to suspected predators throughout the film, leaves the audience to grapple with that question. The answers are far from black-and-white. 与此同时，汉森这一角色在整部电影中不断向嫌疑人重复那句“如果我不在，会发生什么？”，将这个问题留给观众去思考。而答案远非非黑即白那么简单。