By Cassie Dugan
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New Year’s Day you would have found me curled up on the couch, eyes pried open, watching “Criminal Minds” for 13 consecutive hours. Creepy? Maybe. But by the end of my marathon, I found that I wasn’t necessarily scared or freaked out…but more that I had come to a realization.

After having witnessed crime after crime, I realized that I had just sat through a large handful of distorted, gruesome murders and as bad as it sounds, it really didn’t faze me. The gore, the guts, the blood – it didn’t really bother me as it used to. I know I’m not alone here. “CSI,” “Criminal Minds” and shows of that sort are extremely popular today. Setting aside the entertainment and good acting, isn’t it kind of disturbing that we are addicted to shows that revolve around the death of our fellow species?

I have always been into these kinds of shows. My original obsession was “Law & Order.” However, when I discovered how much more intense and in-depth “CSI”  was, the “Law & Order” crimes just didn’t cut it for me anymore. And then, on that New Year’s Day, I found my new fix. “Criminal Minds” proved to me that it had some of the craziest, most terrifying and flat out weirdest plots I have ever seen, making “CSI” simply pale in comparison. It was like I was an addict, just looking for a higher high each time. That’s when it dawned on me that I have become almost completely desensitized to the concept of murder in general. And my guess is that my loyal crime-show watchers out there have as well. That’s scary. Way scary.

The repercussions of this, I fear, are that if a psychotic murderer appears in our society and starts committing heinous crimes, to many viewers of these shows, it’s just going to be like “Oh, I’ve already seen this episode.” We’ll sit there and analyze all the little details of the crime, attempting to guess the identity of the felon and hopefully beat Horatio Cane and Gil Grissom to the solution.  Our minds won’t be focused on the tragedy the family must be experiencing, where they truly should be. My fear, is that our criminally exposed minds won’t understand what the big deal is because we’ve already gotten a higher high. To us, it’s just a rerun.