Controversial Opinion

I've heard a few people saying lately that they would prefer to hear about Ted Bundy's victims rather than Ted Bundy, and... well, first of all I'm not sure entirely what brought on the Bundying, maybe there's a movie or show?

But I feel like... on the one hand, I do get it. It's a lot easier to remember awful people doing terrible things than it is to remember regular people who died by violence, but the regular people are the ones who deserve to be remembered.

And yet, I always feel slightly odd when I see this, because I'm one of the people who would rather learn about the killer than their victims.

Someone who kills people is unusual. Yeah, I know, people like to attribute bad things to social phenomena, say, "misogyny," and then go "we all know what misogynists are like, so that's not interesting, and we shouldn't glorify it by treating it like it's suddenly become interesting."

Which is a weird thing to say in the first place, because just because I've met someone (a whole bunch of someones) who think I shouldn't do X because I'm a girl, it doesn't mean I've met a serial killer. (I mean, it's possible I actually have--violent people are less rare than we like to think they are. But I don't know what one thinks just because I've heard sexist comments before.)

But even beyond that... I want to know about things. I want to study things that don't make sense, and... not necessarily understand them, but have a better working knowledge of how they work and why. Scary things especially. If I know about them, I feel more like I can predict them, and if I can predict them, I can avoid them. So I feel safer.

So I feel weird when I see posts like that because... I get the compassionate impetus behind them. But I'm really uncomfortable with "that's too awful for you to want to know about."

I... want to know about awful things because I've endured awful things, and ignoring them doesn't make them go away.