How to justify passionately listing facts about a cannibalistic serial killer in the middle of the party.
I have always been the kind of person with whom a conversation could transition from anything into a discussion about Ted Bundy’s brain. My passion for the mysterious world of murders and crime may have stemmed from detective stories I loved as a child, but like more people than you would expect, it has grown into something that can only be contented with true crime content. To the point of obsession, we tend to consume content that does not expose milder forms of crime, but the most gruesome and disturbing of murder cases
Maybe this fascination of ours teeters along the lines of immorality, as we draw awe from the tragedies of others. But is it really the lack of empathy that enables us to sit through hours of true crime documentaries and podcasts against feelings of guilt? To my relief, the answer is not inhumanity, but a complex and multifaceted trip back to its basics, to our most important instincts.
The most fundamental of our emotions is fear, considering its role in facilitating the instinct we naturally fight for survival. Our intrigue lies in the disregard of survival frequently shown in true crime content. Dr. Scott Bonn, Criminologist and Crime Expert and Analyst for News and Entertainment Media, stated that an average person possessing emotions such as love, shame, and remorse, cannot fathom the workings of a mind that would compel a person to torture and kill another. The severity of these acts and our inability to comprehend them shocks our humanity and morbidly draws us in because we feel compelled to make sense of it. This is especially true when it comes to the inexplicable nature of the acts of serial killers, for example, which are not driven by coherent emotions even in their severest intensities. They force us to reconsider our safety in a way that sends shivers down our spines, like monsters or horror movies no longer could. Dr. Bonn’s research concluded that the effect of true crime content is similar to what causes humans’ tendency to stop and look at a violent road accident, the intense and almost addictive jolt of adrenaline that is a contrast to the mundane flow of everyday life.
A curious fact that I have learned reading on this is that women have a greater tendency to be interested in true crime, as per a study published by the Journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. A common explanation to this occurrence is that due to the usual target of stories covered by the media being women, we are naturally oriented to try to answer the why’s and the how’s, and most importantly, understand to protect ourselves. Some might find that result discriminatory against women, but there might be a deeper-set yearning to explore the fascination of deviant psyches. But in any case, psychologists agree that these stories make us hypothesize and create theories, and stimulate our brains in a way similar to puzzles, as we try to string together the evidence that was presented. Many of the cases discussed in true crime shows are cold cases that do not have a conclusion, and there’s no way to guarantee how definitive the truths are shown to us in closed cases, either.
It could be a paradox: we savor the safety of a horrid true story being told in a controlled environment, but also the thought that serial killers target people they have put in certain categories, and who knows whether we fit into one?
References:
Bonn, S. A., Ph.D. (2016, May 30). The Guilty Pleasure of True Crime TV. Retrieved July 7, 2018, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/wicked-deeds/201605/the-guilty-pleasure-true-crime-tv
Bonn, S. A., Ph.D. (2014, September 22). Here’s Why We Love Serial Killers. Retrieved July 7, 2018, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/wicked-deeds/201409/here-s-why-we-love-serial-killers
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