Why are humans so quick to avoid any type of suffering ourselves, yet so drawn to it as entertainment? Especially as modern literary audiences, we want conflict within our protagonists. We want them to go through difficult and painful things. Often we even want them to inflict suffering on others, whether by accident—in the more traditional sense of a hero—or intentionally, as in an antihero or a villain as the protagonist. This fascination doesn't stay within the boundaries of fiction; we seek out true crime like we need it to survive.
So what is it about suffering—and violence—that makes us so enthralled by it, whether openly or in guilty indulgence? Suffering is interesting because we’re intrinsically optimistic. We see bad things as a deviation from the norm. And so, of course, they’re more interesting. It's like abnormal psychology: few people want to know the mundane facts of everyday brain function, but a lot want to know what makes a serial killer.
I don't mean that everyone is an optimist in the sense of cheerily expecting the best. I wouldn't put myself in that category, to be sure—if anything, I expect the worst too often. But underneath every one of my deepest anxieties, there's also brash confidence that I'll be okay. When I worry about the big problems of life—starvation, murder, natural disaster, climate change, et cetera—they're nearly always framed as things that happen to other people. I think most people, however pessimistic they are generally, have a similar sense of indestructibility.
Violence and suffering mess with this invulnerability. We're engaged because it makes us think for a moment, "What if that was me?" Most of us have ideas of what our lives would be like if they involved less suffering—that can be nice to think about, but it's less interesting because it's more common.
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