While at boring jobs one has a tendency to come across interesting sites such as a site on real-life crime. One can spend a lot of time reading real-life crime stories when there is nothing to do. Every once a while we all need to be reminded of the cruelty of the human race and so reading such stories is a good idea. The question is why factual crime stories have such an appeal to us.
If one cracks ones memory and tries to remember the case of OJ Simpson, we will know that it surpassed records, one being that millions of viewers watched it for a series of days. Regardless of race, social background and religious associations everyone was hooked. It is a good question to consider why humans are so interested and attached to the facts of a rape, ritual killing or murder. Many real crime stories become legendary (no matter how old they are) because they are discussed too much.
For ages the matter of a human being’s undying interest in violent crime stories has sparked the investigation of criminologists and psychologists who have not really come up with much to offer as explanation. All that has come out of it is speculation and assumptions. Firstly, many people have boring uneventful lives; if they see some event that is beyond that they attach themselves to it. If you consider violence in slums, there is no excitement but there might be in a quiet rural place which rarely faces crime. Second, it is in our nature to know how and why a crime was done. Sometimes we see criminals expressing their reasons but this might not always be the case. Often a story only becomes more interesting as people continue to try and figure out the reasons behind it.
Third, some professionals have the belief that humans seek for justice to be served. In this noble pursuit they have to be interested in the details of the crime stories and this results in being fascinated with the crime. Fourth, it might also be because people enjoy seeing how much others can fall as it gives them contentment regarding their characters, as they think they can’t ever commit such things.
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Fifthly, some people believe that others are afraid of being the victims of the same crimes so they seek to know enough to be able to protect themselves so they keep all this information in their subconscious. This is openly contradicted by the assumption that in most crimes of violence, the victim is quite helpless and defenseless so the information and interest shown in crime stories does not help the situation. Last but not least we have the media creating hype in such cases. They delight in displaying bodies, blood and such. Even when viewing the news we come across at least a few crimes. Your location is not important; due to the TV you’ll be able to find out about someone murdering his wife who might even be 5000 miles off. If media stops giving crime so much importance the interest would lessen and so would the awareness. No matter what is behind our fascination, we will by nature chase the details till there are none to be found.