This Is Why We’re So Fascinated With True Crime

From Making a Murderer to Conversations With A Killer: Ted Bundy to The Staircase, we are so weirdly fascinated with true crime documentaries.

We know murder is bad. So why are we so obsessed it?

We know we can detach if we need to.

It’s like a train wreck – it’s painful, but we just can’t look away. In a weird way, it’s comforting to know it’s not happening to us and that distance allows us to detach, if need be. And in a weird way, we like being scared. That adrenaline factor is just something we crave. It’s dramatic and society lives for drama, am I right?

We like to get our brains going. 

We like thinking, solving a mystery or a puzzle, and being challenged one way or another. We always want to make sense of things we can’t wrap our brains around.

We feel prepared. 

Women in particular love true crime because it makes us feel prepared if anything were to happen to us and we want tips on how to survive. We are drawn to relatability. We know that, unfortunately, this is the world we live in and we need to know how to defend or protect ourselves if we are ever in a bad situation.

We’re fascinated with evil. 

As (somewhat) good people, we are so intrigued by bad people. We’re fascinated with behavior that is different from us. The dynamic between good and evil has always been a topic of fascination and that tension fuels us.