Sometimes it does end well.

[SeaCat]

Just found this on the local news. Sometimes these types of stories do end well.

Teen found safe.

Cat

 

[cantdog]

I think the current pop-culture and television-movie obsession with serial killers and such has an empowering effect on people with real emotional problems. Serial killers are cool; serial rapists sell books, get ratings. Silence of the lambs, and on and on. The theme is ubiquitous. Neurotics and psychotics with a bent for this sort of thing are led to see it as a career or something.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I think the current pop-culture and television-movie obsession with serial killers and such has an empowering effect on people with real emotional problems. Serial killers are cool; serial rapists sell books, get ratings. Silence of the lambs, and on and on. The theme is ubiquitous. Neurotics and psychotics with a bent for this sort of thing are led to see it as a career or something.

I agree, cantdog. I do think it encourages copy-cats, and also- delimns the techniques that someone otherwise might not think of on their own. I wish th epress would learn some self control again, not only in this, but in other things that rip personal privacy away from people- celebrities, who can never have a moment's peace for instance. Or families who have just lost a member- and having to face a barrage of cameras and shouting asshole.

 

[cantdog]

Personally, events may be experienced as sharp, yawning gulfs of hopelessness, crises of faith in a benign God, horrible and sudden deprivation and loss. To the reporter, it's just a good story which will sell papers.

And I admit, the extreme examples, the serial killers with a bizarre axe to grind-- these people make great plot bunnies. And when you spin a tale with such people in it, you have every opportunity to depict the beauties of will and morality, sacrifice for the common good, and so on, in the antagonists to the foul fiends with these kinds of madness.

You can write a helluva story with little effort if you have a serial killer in it. And it sells, too. But honestly. How come the serial killers don't have conventions at the Marriott? There are so many of them, now.