When I first watched The Perfect Neighbor—the one where the Karen kills the neighbor—they showed the kids’ reaction to their dad telling them their mom died. It was on bodycam, and I didn’t feel sad at all. I kind of liked seeing them sad and cry. When the kid said, ‘No, but my heart is broken,’ I rolled my eyes and cringed. Sometimes I go back to watch their reactions for fun. Is this normal? (No, I’m not trolling.)
Edit: And sometimes I just dont care when I see kids or people in pain either way.
There’s a chance you care if you look deeply and subtly enough.
You may also be surrounded by lecturing idiots who make caring about folks lame, insufferable, or like losing a battle. A normal (subconscious) response to such a thing would be to pull back and not care, to get others’ nagging out of you.
That or, sometimes brains have to do bizarre, desperate things to be able to process something as awful as others’ pain like that. Those things would naturally have to be strong to have any effect, and may themselves have their own draw, which isn’t the same as liking the pain, it’s liking a coping mechanism.
Hell, maybe the movie just kinda sucked.