Why are we as humans so interested in the culture of crime: whether it be abuse, murder, robbery, or even cults

The sensation of murder

There are hundreds if not thousands of documentaries, movies, shows, or even podcast about the topic of murder. Many of the shows gets millions of viewers each year. Each one has a fandom of their own. Whether it be the Manson murders, Ted Bundy, Gypsy Rose or even the Menendez brothers. Hundreds of thousands of people obsess over these cases and know everything about them. About 2 Halloweens ago people were dressing up like Dahmer. What about these murderers makes them so interesting and so easily capitalized on. Is it the media, is it the killers themselves or even is it the people? Me and You who create these sensations.

The celebritization of these killers

I’m sure you’ve heard of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a girl who her and her boyfriend formulated a plan to murder her mother. The story of Gypsy a girl went through years of trauma and who helped commit a horrible murder has been turned into an overnight celebrity following the release of the popular show “The act” . Currently she is sitting at 10 million followers on just TikTok alone. This culture alone allows murders to gain cult followings and to become very infamous in their allotted areas.

This popularity of a murderer allows for many of their crimes to be swept under the rugs especially in the instance of gypsy and the Menendez brother who were all victims of abuse. While these people did what they believed that had to do, modern culture has allowed this behavior to be normalized in typical today society.

But with this under night fame comes significant room to quickly turn on these victims. For example with the recent murder photos of dee dee Blanchard being posted on the internet for all to see many people have turned their backs on gypsy who their previously celebrated getting out of prison. These instances show how quick the media is to turn a tragic and gruesome murder into something to capitalize on and how the the people are quick to turn these victims into these god like figures, who when they subsequentially find out and see these shocking details which were here the whole time they are quick to turn their backs on these victims and they turn into what they deem as essentially human trash who are the epidemy of evil.

The romanticization of the killers

After these big killers get turned into celebrities many are quick to romanticize them them and their crimes

Did you know criminals deemed unattractive receive on average 22 months more then those deemed attractive. This phenomenon is know as the halo effect, this means that the more attractive a person is the less dangerous they’re perceived to be. This can be seen especially in the Bundy case and in Richard Ramirez.

Hybristophilia or commonly know as bonnie and Clyde syndrome is the attraction to criminals and murderers. One of the most known examples of this is when Ted Bundy allegedly received hundreds of love letters from women while he was incarcerated, and married a woman, Carole Ann Boone, whom he had met while both were working in Washington. He proposed to her in the middle of proceedings while Boone was on the witness stand.

How does this affect the victims

Imagine this, your mother was murdered by a serial killer and now you hear stories about people trying to marry them for the crime they did. While not as often as simple as that tons of people have this happen to them. Not only do you have to deal with the psychological effects of your mothers death but now you have to attempt to deal with people trying to get with her murderer.

It takes many years for the victims to even get over the tragic lose of a family member or friend and that’s with out the traumatic instances of murder. These instances of romanization of these killers and the capitalization harms the victims and needs to be recognized to what it is

People need to step back and realize that their behavior is harmful to others and themselves when it implies that such things have been so normalized in todays time.