So, this is an ugly thread and I owe everybody who has peeked at it an apology for that. I agree with your points, MJG, on the strange fever these people seem to be afflicted with but that was not really what I was after.

There are lots of people that have commented on our need to be entertained and distracted, Neil Postman comes to mind, and as in the article you posted those who "desire" to be the amusements at whatever the cost are a curious lot. The squealing young woman in the original video I posted is, as you and the articles you have added clearly state, easy to make fun of, despise, or in some cases for those riddled with the same disease, feel envious of. Yeah, and it's nothing new, the bearded lady, Siamese twins, dancing midgets, humankind has long loved a good freak show and now we have access to it 24/7 & 365. Chance the Gardener is our spiritual guide in this wasteland.

The thing that hit home for me was the idea that here are what appear to be some healthy young people that could be out doing anything else at that point in time but instead were in some odd place being asked by strangers to sign a document that said they could be put in harm's way and to "eat human flesh" with the only payoff to this that they may be on a tv show. They were not doing this under duress, to save their own lives, or because there was a guy in the corner of the room holding a gun to the head of their child. They did it of their own free will and seemed to treat it as little more than a mild oddity.

How did they reach that point?

If healthy young people would do such a thing even though there was no reason for them to do so how can anything be a shock or surprise to us? The Holocaust makes perfect sense in this light but at least the people that perpetrated this great tragedy were driven to believe that there was cause to commit these acts no matter how insane the acts were. In fact many of the people that were involved with the Holocaust probably believed if they did not participate they too would be herded into a camp to meet their end. So there is at least self-preservation to help us understand or at least rationalize an event like the Holocaust.

Attacking Iraq, dropping atomic bombs on Japan, fire bombing Dresden all could be given the self preservation defense even if we find that defense nonsensical, distasteful, and hard to swallow.

What defense could be given for the squealing young woman in the video I posted?

This may seem a strange argument but does she not seem even more a monster because she does what she does in that video for no reason other than she chooses to do it for entertainment? She will entertain others with her behavior and entertains herself with visions of fame and glory.

Is it any wonder then that Fred Phelps has followers or Sting will jet off to play for the benefit of a brutal regime? Phelps at least sells his followers with the threat of losing their eternal soul and swimming forever in a lake of fire. Sting's act may be closer to our squealing cannibal but he can at least hide behind his rationalization that he was bringing art and culture to Uzbekistan. Sting does after all display a talent where our squealing cannibal only seems capable of debasing herself.

This young woman is/was somebody's daughter. I have no idea how life led her to be there but was there no person along the way that made it clear to her there is something very wrong if a stranger asks you to eat human flesh? Even if that person offers to put you on tv.

Fred Phelps is not wrong when he screams "You're gonna eat your babies!"

We are eating them. Sometimes we eat them from the inside out and sometimes we feed them into the giant machine and stuff all that juicy meat into a pig intestine to be served on Dagoty-Honoré china.