Controversial Opinion

[stainless]

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.

Comments

[yvannairie]

Ah, yeah, it's more a comment on how acceptable it is for neurotypical people to demonise anyone who doesn't fit a very narrow set of behaviours, because they're fascinated by the most extreme behaviours. Like, a friend of mine studies psychology and they regularly tell me horror stories about how acceptable it is to completely dehumanise the people they discuss. I mentioned it in an attempt to illustrate that being fascinated by outlier humans is acceptable to an uncomfortable degree.

[ettina]

I can't parse what you're objecting to, here.

I'm a psychology major in large part because I am fascinated by unusual people. Including people like Ted Bundy. I don't know what this has to do with demonizing people or something like that. In fact I think the amount of research I've done into this area leads me to be less likely to demonize people, a) because I know just how much serial killers are outliers not only among people in general but also among the people who share diagnostic labels with serial killers, and b) because I can see even serial killers as human beings with reasons for what they do rather than like incomprehensible demons with no humanity.

[yvannairie]

I feel like you're reacting to a more expansive point than the one I was making. To me, the existence of the type of person I mentioned is a point in favour of "it's totally normal to be fascinated with people with outlier behaviour", and on top of that I'm pretty creeped out as a person with a stigmatised neurotype by how far some people take that fascination.

If you're one of the good ones, good for you.

[stainless]

I think it depends what exactly "fascination" means here. Like, I think it's normal (though it might also be rude!) to be intrigued by something you're unfamiliar with. Kids ask me point-blank questions about my scars all the time, because they're huge and there's a story there. And it's a little awkward, but I can't say I haven't done my own share of staring at people who look unique or wondering "what's up with that?" or flat out asking "hey, if this is rude just tell me to buzz off, but I noticed X. What's that about?"

But there's also a thing where people dehumanize people and treat them like... mm, I'm not sure, some sort of malfunctioning machine that isn't a person, and I can see how someone doing that and having a special interest in whatever it is could combine in Very Bad ways.

[yvannairie]

Yeah, by fascination I don't mean curiosity or professional interest. I'm not here to demonise normal human attention retention patterns, that would be silly. But, lik, I'm pretty sure if I could just find the right word, it would directly map to a "oh, fuck those people response for you", I just don't know what that right word would be outside of the ones I've used already.

[stainless]

Yeah, I think I get it. There's curious about what's going on with someone, and then there's... Mengele.

[stainless]

I’m not certain myself, but I think they might mean... like some time ago there was an anonymous tumblr supposedly run by someone who worked in a psychiatric hospital, and the person would post things that the patients did that were annoying or weird or seemingly inexplicable, and it really bothered a lot of people because it felt like using them as zoo exhibits rather than seeing them as people struggling with something hurtful or scary.

I think I lean more to your view of things, though. I actually watched a bunch of serial killer documentaries recently, and the thing that struck me was how much they calmed me down rather than frightened me. My mind had imagined several of them having a lot more victims and being a lot smarter about the whole thing than they turned out to be.

Which, if we insisted on focusing only on the victims, it might be harder to get that weird sort of reassurance.