My parents watch Criminal Minds and similar shows all the time, two friends of mine bought a book about a serial killer and my Twitter timeline is full of people talking about a new true crime podcast. It's just my bubble or is it a broad cultural phenomenon?
I always thought of it more like a twisted murder mystery. Only instead of trying to figure out "who did it" the audience spends its time trying to figure out "why they did it".
For some its probably entertainment from a very dark place, for others its trying to find a "scientific" explanation for why a human being did something that is so horrible that it breaks their brains to think that it all happened "for the lulz."
Because Agatha Christie mysteries aren't dark or gritty enough for people
Well... I there's a difference between a work of fiction and something that happened in real life.
Like, how does a person just decide, "Hey, I'm going to dress as a clown, kill people, and bury them in a crawlspace?"
Is this just a thing that can happen (which is terrifying as it means everybody around you is a monster waiting to kill and eat you) or was there some series of events that turned a person into this or at the very least can we find some "signs" that somebody was going to do something monstrous?
I suppose I sort of understand it as a control thing but to be honest if you're worried a person in your life might seriously be a serial killer then for whatever reason that lack of trust should be enough of a red flag.
And if it's a worry about being killed by some random person you should probably prioritise the statistically more likely threat of dying by almost anything else
Maybe I'm doing a terrible job of explaining whats in my head.
I haven't followed any of this type of thing in the last 15 years or so but when I used to frequent more conspiratorially themed sites there was a TON of time spent psycho analyzing "bad" people. It wasn't always for the purpose of self defense but obsessing over what caused the terrible incident. Its the same shit that I used to go down rabbit holes for. Like why did 9/11 happen the way it did, or why did the response to Hurricane Katrina happen the way it did, etc.
Its like, there's this event that shakes your faith in society, the world, maybe even reality, and you're desperately trying to wrap your feeble human mind around the truth that the cosmos is uncaring, unfathomable, and apathetically cruel. Its some real HP Lovecraft vibes for some of us, after having stared into the abyss and lost a bit of sanity, there's a desperate clawing to try to go back to a reality that no longer exists.
That just sounds like morbid curiosity like rubbernecking
For some sure but for others there is an impulse to "fix" things that gets triggered when there is an event like this.
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