Don't be sad: I watched the Netflix Elisa Lam Documentary

I watched the new docu-series about the Elisa Lam case. For those that don’t know Elisa Lam was a (spoilers ahead!) 21-year-old woman visiting L.A. in 2013 and went missing and whose body was ultimately found in a water tank of the hotel she stayed in. Basically, just every detail of the story is awful but people are fascinated by awful things.

Overall, what my biggest takeaway was- what really resonated with me- was how just how much people fear empathy. The documentary revealed how a few very odd details and coincidences (some I am still scratching my head about) along with some misinformation elevated the event from something simply tragic to a frenzy of online theories and accusations. With something as uniquely terrible as this I can’t help but feel as though all these conspiracy theories, etc. arise from a very strange need in people. 

One piece of that need is of course the desire for a damn good story- I think we all tend to distance ourselves from the actual pain of these sorts of events and instead try to find some entertainment in it all- we immerse ourselves in those private CSI-Law and Order-NCIS fantasies so many of us have. We want that excitement of solving something for ourselves and we want that solution to be just a grotesque and sexy as it can be.

Another aspect of this need we got is just a desire for outrage. People wanna be angry, not sad. So they invent plots and motives and someone to point all these negative emotions towards. Anger is so comfortable. It's a great defense if you hate what you're feeling.

What this comes down to in all its aspects is a discomfort with feelings of empathy and compassion so we either distance ourselves so we can roleplay in these tragedies or simply view them as entertainment or we avoid sadness and instead find something we can all scream at and declare a monster.

The conclusion of the series is not a climatic one- it’s not exciting. It’s just simple and heartbreaking. The most likely conclusion of the case is the one that's boring but it’s one that is absolutely defeatingly sad. And I think it’s the one that people with all their might turned away from.

None of us want to look at a senseless tragedy so we hope for senseless killers and causes and just some meaning to all of this- because the thought that this can happen for no reason at all terrifies us. We’re all so shy of the chaos of everything so we try to fit some order to it and often hurt others and lose a piece of our humanity in the process.

Anyway, I do recommend the series- it’s four parts and on Netflix. Seems like a lotta folks are talking about and they should- it’s well done and unexpected in it’s result.

I love you.

-Tete