TikTok’s relationship to sexual attraction to criminals

3 days agoLast Updated: November 1, 2025

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TikTok’s relationship to sexual attraction to criminals

By Eve Upton-Clark | Published: 2025-10-31 19:45:00 | Source: Fast Company – technology

Ted Bundy had groups in the courtroom. Love letters were sent to Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez in prison. Now, in the age of social media, there are thousands of likes, shares, and a thirst for comments on stylized fan edits of serial killers. There is a term for this psychological phenomenon: hybristophilia

new He studies She found a link between young women’s engagement with this type of TikTok content and their sexual attraction to criminals.

Those who liked or frequently watched clips glorifying notorious serial killers, like Bundy and Dahmer, or fictional villains, like Netflix’s Joe Goldberg Youscored higher on hebrisophilia than those who passed on such content, according to peer review Published research In the magazine Deviant behaviorThe only magazine that deals specifically and exclusively with social deviation.

The results also indicate that personality traits such as Machiavellianism and psychopathy are strong indicators of these tendencies.

Previous research on hebristophilia has often focused on women who already have relationships with convicted criminals. Instead, researchers at the University of Huddersfield in England aimed to explore how this attraction manifests itself in younger generations, particularly through social media platforms like TikTok.

The study analyzed 66 TikToks and 91 comments posted between 2020 and 2024, then surveyed nearly 100 TikTok users between the ages of 18 and 27, measuring levels of compassion, empathy, and dark personality traits.

As we saw in recent reactions to the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Luigi Mangione, who was loved to the point of obsession online and sent mailings to his fans in prison, the corona effect can play into these killers’ favor.

The crimes of traditionally attractive criminals like Mangione are often downplayed, while researchers have found that comments like “daddy” or “crush” are commonly used in reference to notorious serial killers.

Some users even expressed what the study called victim fantasies, with 7.6% of participants admitting to having sexual fantasies about “conventionally attractive” perpetrators like Bundy.

In their research, the study authors found that violent behaviors are often romanticized and reframed as crimes of loyalty or passion. Some expressed the belief that love could fix killers, a theme the researchers called “I can fix.”

In some cases, social media users have confused serial killers with their Hollywood counterparts, a phenomenon known as actor-perpetrator crossover. The attraction to actors like Zac Efron and Evan Peters, who played Bundy and Dahmer on screen, then extended to an attraction to real killers.

For those who worry that innocently scrolling through social media will suddenly make you fantasize about serial killers, fear not.

The study found that exposure to content that romanticizes criminals on social media does not in itself predict attraction to criminals. Only when users engage with the content by watching, commenting, or otherwise interacting does the link itself appear.

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(Tags for translation)Criminal

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