Jeffrey Dahmer

I started watching Dahmer on Netflix last night and it’s uncomfortably relatable to me. He and i had shockingly similar upbringings. I felt like i was watching my own life at times, except for the parts where he murders people and gets sexually aroused by organs. But the family life with his parents fighting intensely and the amount of independence and alcohol he had as a teenager as well as the educational failure were all very reminiscent of my own past. It actually makes me feel bad for him.

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Interesting, How a show can make viewers compassionate towards a serial killer / cannibal.

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I read a lot about serial killers at one point.

You do kind of feel bad for some of them in a weird way.

Almost all were victims of horrible abuse themselves.

But a lot of people grow up under similar circumstances and don’t grow up to chop people into little bits.

Interesting topic.

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Thankfully these days serial killers are pretty rare because of surveillance cameras. They get caught early now.

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Yeah…I remember the guy with the mini-submarine in denmark. Apparently his temptation to kill got him caught. It’s scary that people like that can do those things. He was kind of a celebrity in denmark and was on tv a few times.

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some serial killer just got caught on facebook…I forget where.

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There is often trauma involved but i dont think that has anything to do with the urge to kill people. Ted bundy claimed to have a completely stable and trauma-free life. Many other cases like that as well. Colonel russell williams is another such example. I think there is a poorly understood developmental problem that causes these people to have an inexplicable desire to murder, similar to how our brains are predisposed to become psychotic. It could be that a traumatic upbringing just makes it more difficult for them to repress their desires.

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I was going to point out Ted Bundy as an exception.

It’s true.

Serial killers are mysterious and interesting,

As sick as it is.

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In the show, dahmer claims that he would have had the desire to murder regardless of how his life went. I believe this is the truth. Some people just have strange desires build into them, but murder is the one that gets the most attention because of how extreme it is. The people who like to eat bricks dont get talked about as much.

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My mom likes to watch the show ‘World’s most evil killers’ with her boyfriend.

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Hmm,

I only watched the first episode of the show,

But it was really good.

It’s always interesting to hear what drives people to such extreme action.

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Paul Bernardo seemed to be mostly raised well…

…other than being the product of an affair.

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I really don’t know much about Canadian serial killers.

Never heard of this guy, but it’s scary how seemingly normal people are monsters.

I think we kind of want our serial killers to have horrible pasts because that kind of explains it.

With people like this, you just never know.

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We had this awful serial killer who targeted children in the 90s called Marc Dutroux. He even escaped from prison once in Belgium.

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I had a traumatic childhood, but it didn’t turn me into a rapist or killer. I admit that giving foot rubs is a turn on, but I think that’s the worst of it in terms of my sexual interactions with others. :smiley:

I didn’t become an abuser myself, either. My daughter - who never saw me when I was drunk - suggested I should call my autobiography Born to be Mild. She thinks I’m weird, but harmless. LOL.

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It’s always a gradual escalation. They never start big, and often the first murder is an accident. But eventually they become desensitized to murder and the guilt goes away, that’s when they can do really unthinkable things.

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Just finished watching dahmer. I’m on the confession tapes now. Really interesting.

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I couldn’t get into the Netflix series, Dahmer. I stopped it where I think he had a victim. I didn’t really want to see what happened.

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We don’t owe these guys compassion, but we do need to try to understand them. The more we can learn about them the better we will be at stopping them.

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