(TL;DR): I love being terrified, and this has led me to a fascination with imagining being a witness to / a victim of various tragedies. Is that weird?
The earliest example I can remember of wanting to know what it was like to be a victim of a tragedy was when I first learned what happened on 9/11. We were visiting my grandma, and she was watching a documentary about it. That’s the first time I had seen the footage and heard an explanation of it all, and I was still a child (like way too young to be processing what I was seeing), but I was fascinated by it. Even after everyone had left the room to hang out on the porch, I stayed in the living room to watch more. I wanted to know everything, but most of all I wanted to know what it was like to be there. Both as a witness and a victim.
To this day, I would pay good money to get hooked up to something like Roy from Rick and Morty so I could safely experience it without knowing I was safe. And I’d like to choose as many perspectives as I want. From the hijackers, to the people on the directly impacted floors, the people on floors adjacent to the impact, the people who jumped, the people who were outside and witnessed the crashes and collapses, the people who were trapped on the upper floors and remained inside during the collapse…
Besides 9/11, others at the top of the list are things like mass shootings, earthquakes and other natural disasters, catastrophic workplace accidents (mostly explosions), the sinking of the Titanic, Hiroshima/nuclear testing sites, other war related events, various atrocities committed by/against mankind (like the torture committed by the CIA against people suspected of being involved in the 9/11 attacks), the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide, a significant portion of Charles Manson’s life… It’s a mix of wanting the experience and curiosity about the stories/information that never made it into public knowledge.
I don’t have a death wish or anything, it’s just for some reason I have a fascination with terror. I love getting sleep paralysis and having nightmares, and I feel a weird sense of catharsis when I wake up and realize I’m safe. My favorite ones are when I’m utterly convinced I’m going to die. Even as a kid I loved terrifying shows (like Courage the Cowardly Dog and Mr.Meaty), and as a teenager it evolved into broader consumption of surrealist art, and then I started watching Live Leak videos where I got a more realistic sense of terror. I watched all of the Bjork stalker’s tapes, which, if you aren’t familiar, they end with him shooting himself after mailing a letter bomb to her. Knowing he filmed his suicide was what piqued my interest, but I also wanted to get into his head so I started from tape #1.
How weird is all of this? Any psychological explanations/speculations about why I’m like this? (And are there any other subs I should ask this in?)
In 2001 I was a teacher and I had my TV set to automatically turn on as my alarm clock set to the local news/traffic/weather.
So the TV turns on and it’s a plane crashing into the tower, and I’m like WTF? Why are they showing a movie? Where’s my news and traffic?
Then the 2nd plane hits and OMFG. That’s when it sinks in.
They closed Manhattan. There’s talk of a dirty bomb. Nobody knows what’s going on and Bush is flying all around like a scared bunny rabbit.
That first night, we knew we were going to war. We didn’t know with who yet, but it was clear we were going to war, and if we were super unlucky, Bush might just nuke somebody.
I didn’t sleep for a week.