.         This article discusses some topics that may be triggering to readers. Continue at your own risk. 

.         It seems as though every few weeks the internet finds some new “scandal” to follow. Whether it’s influencers engaging in petty arguments with each other, or brands falsely advertising their products and getting exposed, sometimes people go a step too far and treat other, more serious topics in the same way they’d treat your average run-of-the-mill drama. What should be handled with the utmost care and respect is sensationalized, romanticized, monetized, and subjected to mockery and satire.

.         What am I talking about? Take a guess. If you’re thinking of true crime, then you’ve guessed right.

.         While it has the benefit of spreading awareness to the general public on how to keep yourself safe, the massive fanbase that true crime has amassed over the years has problems too. As stated previously, many individuals don’t treat the criminals they hear about in these stories as what they are. Rather, they treat them as celebrities, pop-culture icons, Hollywood crushes. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? It’s true. As of 2024, the #dahmer tag on TikTok has 148.9K posts underneath it, followed by #dahmeredit having nearly 5000 posts. This isn’t a new thing, either. From the time he was incarcerated to the time of his death, Dahmer was sent twelve thousand dollars worth of money from admirers around the world, along with love letters and cards. 

.         As if this wasn’t concerning enough, Dahmer is far from the only one. There are many examples of people celebrating or romanticizing crimes and criminals, and there have been for hundreds of years. Take older criminals, like Richard Ramirez, the “Night Stalker”, or serial murderer and rapist, Ted Bundy. Both of these men have committed heinous atrocities, yet were met with similar spotlights as Dahmer. Richard Ramirez was also sent a ridiculous amount of fan mail while he was incarcerated, and he even ended up marrying one of his fangirls. In a series documenting the life of Richard Ramirez, a reporter going by the name of Tony Valdez even went as far as to say that “In all my years of covering trials in Los Angeles, I never saw a defendant with more sex appeal than Richard Ramirez.” It was the exact same way with Ted Bundy– maybe even worse– along with money and cards, people would mail in lewd photographs and arrive in the courtroom dressed as his victims in order to capture his attention. This obsession with the killer only grew after the release of the movie “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.” People made edits of the felon, turning to social media to voice their opinions about how attracted they felt to him, almost as if they had completely forgotten the destruction he had brought upon real people and their families. 

.         It was a similar deal with the Columbine High School massacre. The perpetrators of an attack that took the lives of twelve innocent students and one teacher became known as misunderstood, troubled, anti heroes– they began forming a fandom online, and numerous books, movies, and other forms of media have been made inspired based off of their actions. People have created fanart, written fanfictions, developed roleplay games based off of the shooting, and even gone as far as to dress up as the shooters themselves. Rather than recognizing the event for what it was– a tragedy that could have been prevented, it has been embellished to the point of it becoming a part of popular culture, and that is simply unacceptable.

.         While most of the previously mentioned criminals have been men, many female serial killers have been treated the exact same way as well. One of the most recent examples of this is Yuka Takaoka, the “too beautiful killer.” Yuka Takaoka is a woman who was arrested in the year 2019 for attempting to murder her boyfriend by stabbing him repeatedly in their apartment in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Rather than being held accountable for what she did, people began to protest online, calling on the Japanese government to release Yuka, claiming that she was “too beautiful” to be a criminal. Others celebrated the fact that she was a criminal in and of itself, dubbing her a real life “yandere,” a descriptive Japanese term often used in anime and manga to describe someone who has been driven to insanity or violence by love. Hundreds of people have made fanart of the woman in both photo and video form, once again indicating a larger problem of fan bases forming around criminals that are almost akin to celebrity worship.

.         All of these examples lead us to the question– what is it about killers that people like so much? Why are we so fascinated with people who do bad things? 

.         Well, there isn’t exactly a definite “one size fits all” answer to this question. Different people are drawn to killers and criminals for different reasons. Some people have hybristophilia, which is a paraphilia involving attraction to those who commit crimes. These individuals have often had traumatic childhoods consisting of severe abuse that may have been sexual or physical in nature, causing them to crave control that was stripped of them time and time again. By being on the good side of someone who is violent towards others, they feel that they will be able to vicariously gain the control that they so badly crave. These types of people may also feel a sense of control by indulging in the fantasy that they can “change” a serial murderer for the better. By being the one to tame such a wild beast, they feel a sense of power that makes them feel like they can do anything. 

.         The halo effect also plays a role in how people view criminals. Humans are hard-wired to associate good traits with attractive individuals, so even though killers like Dahmer and Bundy committed heinous crimes, because they were both tall, thin, conventionally attractive able-bodied men, the atrocities they committed were not perceived as harshly as they would have been had the men been bad looking.

.         Another reason that people romanticize certain killers is because of this increasingly popularized idea that the villain is the true hero. This trope becomes more and more popular by the day in all sorts of media, so it’s no surprise that people have begun to apply the same logic in real life as well. Rather than seeing criminals for what they are, people want to see them as misunderstood villains with tragic backstories– completely disregarding the fact that their actions have hurt real people, and that no possible redemption can ever undo the damage done. 

.         All of these reasons stem from a place of insecurity, because we as people have come to a place where we really want to be different. Everyone feels misunderstood, and everyone wants to feel special, and everyone feels like they can fix him or her, and sometimes you just can’t. Sometimes you have to understand that the man you’re trying to fix isn’t a softie deep down. Sometimes murderous felons aren’t misunderstood, and they really are just murderous felons.