Thoughts on TCC

So, like any other bored teenage girl surfing the web, I stumbled across a video describing a horror story about hundreds of women going missing and reappearing, dead and in horrible condition. It shocked me at first, obviously, I knew murderers exist but I never cared to look into it further. Bless the victims' and their families hearts and curse the perpetrator. Of course, it wasn't my first contact with the "crime" media, horror and I go way back. I remember snippets of my childhood, spent hiding behind my parents who sat on the living room couch at midnight and watched the horror movie they put on, with them thinking I'm sound asleep in bed. 

I was fascinated, shocked, scared, and confused at first. But most importantly curious; How can people be so cruel? Why did nobody notice? Why didn't they get punished accordingly? 

Back then, I was simple-minded, thought the world was constantly bettering itself because grannies are nice and candy tastes good and the sunshine is so warm on my skin. But that is because I was blissfully unaware of what was happening around me, all around the world. Somewhere someone is getting violated, killed, threatened, is running for their life of killing or planning to kill someone. I could be watching Spongebob Squarepants, the episode in which Garry goes rogue and think "This is the saddest thing ever" mourning Spongebob's loss, meanwhile someone else passed away somewhere. 

The point is, as soon as I got connected to the internet and its endless information my hope diminished. I became mistrustful, and skeptical and even had a phase in which all I felt was misanthropy for the world. I felt some sort of pleasure from hearing of other people's downfall, thinking "so what? There are people who are worse off".

True crime videos became fun to watch, I was more amazed at the ways people could kill or were killed, felt irritated when the criminal was convicted and interacted with that part of TCC on Tumblr. I thought some of them were cute and so edgy, watching "We need to talk about Kevin" didn't help. I seemed to be a hopeless cause. 

I feel ashamed even recounting my memories because I genuinely can not tell you why I felt that way. 

Until I found a study case about the women who sent love letters to scum such as Ted Bundy. These women seemed normal on the outside, well groomed and dressed, trusting faces and all. But the loving way they spoke about a vile pedophilic misogynistic serial rapist and killer frightened me, the second I saw those videos of interviews my heart dropped. I realized I could've been one of them if I were any older and more desperate. I suddenly felt disgusted, at first I thought "I would never" but after accepting it, something changed in me. My love for horror and the obscure became tainted, I had nightmares too realistic for comfort, and I finally snapped out of it. 

This period in my life was very brief, maybe 1 month at most, I frequent the internet outside my personal interest bubble a lot so maybe that is why I saw reason early on. It was like I was saved from becoming worse, I am still grateful for YouTubers, who do a much better job at educating the general public than TV Shows. 

I am however forever grateful this extremely guilty pleasure was just that and I grew out of it.