Recently there has been an absurd amount of obsession with serial killers. With the release of the now renown “Conversation with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes,” some people now act as if they are professionals in the field of repetitive killers.

Fascination with serial killers has been around long before Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. People have been fascinated with serial killers since the largely considered first serial killer Herman Webster Mudgett.

However, now that the youth is proving an interest in serial killers, Netflix has honed in on mass-producing serial-killer-related shows.

The problem with this lies in the fact that amateurs are acting like experts. Also, the ignorance that ensues from watching one show and considering oneself an expert is that one might be so close-minded on the realm of serial killers that one might be narrow-minded on the subject.

Exaggerated depictions of serial killers in the mass media have blurred fact and fiction. As a result, real-life killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer and fictional ones like Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter have become interchangeable in the minds of many people. Many people report believing that Hannibal Lector was a real serial killer, according to a study conducted by Psychology Today.

Some people consider serial killers to be “celebrity monsters,” according to Psychology Today. Furthermore, some, after the release of the “Conversation with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes,” have grown so infatuated by Bundy that they believe they are in love with him. They make fan-fiction, blogs and posts on various social media that could be considered as delusional and terrifying.

The public’s intense fascination with serial killers and mass murderers is disturbing when it is taken to an adoration. Having a normal, curious fascination with serial killers is perfectly fine, as long as you know the facts. Dahmer, Bundy, and Gacy were objectively terrible people, but there is something we can learn from them if done in a correct, orderly way.