For years, a subculture of amateur investigators has been publicly performing a by-now familiar script. Posing as children online, they arrange meetings with unsuspecting adult men, then show up with cameras and broadcast the confrontations to audiences that can number in the millions. Some turn their evidence over to the police. The most successful have become full-fledged social media influencers, complete with production crews, merch, paywalled content, recurring characters and devoted fans.

Despite their large audiences, this subculture thrived for years outside mainstream attention. Then David Osit’s documentary “Predators” jolted audiences at Sundance last year by putting a critical spotlight on the amateur catchers who adopted the format of “To Catch a Predator” as their own. Now Lance Oppenheim’s “Primetime” tackles the legacy of the original predator catcher in a new narrative feature film. The questions being raised are important ones: Are these people — beginning with Chris Hansen, the host of “To Catch a Predator” — vigilantes? Do their catches actually help police? And what happens when someone is publicly accused of being a pedophile before they have been charged with a crime or had a chance to defend themselves in court?

I got an unusually close look at this world when I attended the October 2024 trial of Cody Mattingly, the founder and sole member of the group People v. Preds, who has published over 500 sting videos since 2021. He was being sued in a Los Angeles courtroom by Kapish Haldia, the subject of one of the hundreds of predator catches Mattingly had conducted and broadcast online. The complaint accused Mattingly and 20 John Does of defamation, false light, negligence, civil harassment, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

Are these people — beginning with Chris Hansen — vigilantes?

Haldia alleged that the men behind People v. Preds had falsely branded him a pedophile, published his personal information and encouraged followers to contact his employer, family and friends. Mattingly had posed as a 15-year-old boy named Trey on Grindr, exchanged messages and explicit photographs with Haldia, and eventually gotten his home address. Then he showed up with a camera and a flashlight. Haldia insisted that “Trey” had never identified himself as a minor — or, if he had, Haldia hadn’t noticed. Mattingly said otherwise. But the trial exposed something larger than that dispute: a form of public punishment administered in real time, before an audience.

The confrontation was livestreamed for roughly two hours and later edited down to five minutes. Mattingly shines a flashlight in Haldia’s face and accuses him of arranging to meet a 15-year-old. Haldia either plays dumb or is genuinely dumbfounded. When he turns to go inside, Mattingly starts screaming: “Haldia likes children!” and “Haldia invited over a 15-year-old boy tonight!”

The audience joined in. According to the testimony of Haldia’s parents, online trolls watching the livestream began calling them and harassing them via Facebook. Haldia was gay but not out to his parents; within hours, his parents knew. Strangers told Haldia to kill himself, while his family, friends and employers were harassed.

Haldia’s own testimony wasn’t entirely convincing. He maintained that he never knowingly arranged to meet a 15-year-old, but under cross-examination his explanations became increasingly difficult to follow. At one point, against his lawyer’s advice, he testified about “age play,” a BDSM practice where consenting adults pretend to be underage.

Watching the trial, I was never able to decide exactly what Haldia believed that night. It was entirely possible that he knew “Trey” was supposed to be 15 and invited him over anyway. But that still left another question: What gave Mattingly the right to decide what his punishment should be?

In the end, two adults had a confrontation; one lost his job and an apartment as a result. But things could always be worse.

What gave Mattingly the right to decide what his punishment should be?

Two years before the Haldia confrontation, Mattingly had used essentially the same playbook on Craig Gertz, a real estate attorney in Encinitas, California. Mattingly connected with Gertz on Grindr while posing as a 13-year-old boy, then confronted him on a sidewalk bench with a camera. When Gertz walked home, Mattingly followed him, screaming that he was a pedophile loudly enough for the neighbors to hear. The scene was so intense that a passerby called 911.

The recordings captured some of what happened next. As Mattingly pursued Gertz, he could be heard taunting him: “Oh, so now you’re going to kill yourself?” Later, Mattingly called 911 himself to report hearing a “loud bang.”

Gertz had gone to his bedroom, retrieved a handgun and killed himself while Mattingly was still outside broadcasting. Mattingly deleted the livestream afterward and it has yet to resurface.

If Mattingly was a marginal influencer, the predator catcher who goes by Skeeter Jean (real name Ken Chapman) represents what happens when the format becomes mainstream YouTube entertainment.

Skeeter began his career impersonating Chris Hansen as “Skeet Hansen.” Today, he has more than 2.5 million YouTube subscribers, a production crew, merchandise, memberships and paywalled content. His catches increasingly resemble elaborate game shows: fake Corvette and Lamborghini giveaways, an anime convention, influencer collaborations and even one alleged predator taking a bath.

Ironically, YouTube’s attempts to rein in this kind of content may have helped make Skeeter more successful. The rawer material gets pushed behind paywalls or onto other platforms. What remains on YouTube is slicker, funnier and increasingly elaborate. Mattingly is abrasive, chaotic and frequently unpleasant to watch. Skeeter has figured out how to make the same basic spectacle into a show. (This may explain the difference in income. “I’d make more money working at AutoZone,” Mattingly said during the Haldia trial.)

That tension between catching predators and entertaining an audience isn’t lost on Chris Hansen, who created the format Skeeter and the others inherited.

In “The Sick Mind of EDP445 ,” a documentary released on YouTube this summer, Hansen dismissed much of the current predator-catching scene as a “clown show.” He singled out Alex Rosen, whose Predator Poachers confronted the enormously popular YouTuber EDP445 in 2021 after posing online as a 13-year-old girl. The confrontation went viral, but EDP445 was never charged.

Skeeter has figured out how to make the same basic spectacle into a show.

“Had this been me doing an investigation, your EDP445 ass would be in prison now,” Hansen says in the documentary. Rosen may have generated “a lot of views and clicks,” he argues, but “this case is unprosecutable.”

But the distinction between Hansen and Mattingly, between investigation and entertainment was never quite that clean. The confrontation was the climax of every “To Catch a Predator” segment, with millions of viewers watching men realize, in real time, that their lives were falling apart. The show itself ended after Texas prosecutor Bill Conradt died by suicide during an aggressive home raid coordinated with NBC cameras and Hansen himself. Nearly two decades later, Craig Gertz killed himself while Mattingly was still outside his house livestreaming.

Earlier this month, Alex Rosen (the “clown show” mentioned by Hansen) sent out an email titled “RIP UPDATE.” The subject was Colin McGuire, a man Predator Poachers had recently caught who later killed himself in prison. McGuire, a fetishist, wore a diaper to the sting and soiled himself in front of Rosen’s cameras before being arrested.

“I’d say rest in piss,” Rosen wrote, “but that would be enjoyable to him.”

Then he linked readers back to the original Predator Poachers video. It’s available on his Locals channel for five bucks a month.

I first discovered the predator catcher subculture the way most people do, when the algorithm recommended a video on YouTube. At the time, I thought to myself: These predator catchers are so unlikable, they almost make the predators seem sympathetic .

But that doesn’t make the people they catch innocent. Mattingly testified that 68 convictions resulted from his catches. The problem is what happens when investigation, punishment and entertainment become indistinguishable from one another.

The restraints built into the criminal justice system aren’t there because criminals deserve special consideration. They’re there for the rest of us. They restrain not only what we are allowed to do to another person, but what we can become accustomed to doing ourselves. We should be able to aggressively investigate people who prey on children while still insisting on due process, limits on police power and basic civil liberties.

If protecting children were really the overriding priority, predator catchers probably wouldn’t exist at all. They certainly wouldn’t have an audience of millions watching people being humiliated for entertainment. Their existence says something uncomfortable not only about the failures of the criminal justice system, but about the rest of us watching along.

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