I've Got A Really Bad Special Interest

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I recently read "Helter Skelter" and now I can't get Charles Manson out of my head. It's really the only thing I willingly bring up in conversation, and the only thing that consistently interests me. I know it's a really bad thing to talk about, but it really is the special interest I have. But don't admire him or anything, I think he's a terrible person.I don't know how to change interests. Anyone ever had this problem?

Last edited by Julia_the_Great on 30 Sep 2008, 7:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

im obsessed with serial killers. as long as you dont actually admire them for thier deeds, or talk about it excessively, i dont see the problem. i like charles manson as well, ted bundy, richard chase, all of them

not really; "bad" is a POV.



I consider Seung-Hui Cho a martyr for the fringe.....so I say 'no'.

i suppose you could pick a brighter one .. but i dont see anything wrong with it.. although I've heard if you get too interested in that then you can become just like them.. be ware!

I had a serial-killer obsession for a couple of weeks. It was morbid fascination, really, plus wondering how in the world a human being could lose so much compassion as to kill others for... what--fun, satisfaction, some sexual need? Whatever reasons they were, they never seemed enough. I still haven't figured it out.

I still like One-Winged Angel from Final Fantasy 7, which I used to be rather obsessed with.

Charles Manson ... Adolph Hitler ... Joseph Stalin ... Richard Speck ... Jeffrey Dahmer ... Idi Amin ... Ted Bundy ... David Berkowitz ... Ed Gein ... Herbert Mullin ... Yang Xinhai ... Eusebius Pieydagnelle ... Jack the Ripper ... the list goes on (Click on this link to see a listing by country).

I've never worshipped sociopaths, so I've never had a problem like yours. You may want to seek professional help.

I've had an afinity for them most of my life, as well as many other nut jobs. I've read biographical and autobiographical books about the most screwed up people. I find them quite interesting, but don't really discuss them with other people.

Edit: Just caught Fnord's post. I guess I should note there's no worship involved.

Last edited by claire-333 on 29 Sep 2008, 7:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was obsessed with capital punishments and serial killers. I was very ashamed of it, I hid it. I didn't talk about it. I had to wait till my interest changed.

OMG, I hope you didn't mean you literally like them.

I get freaked out when someone likes a serial killer or have them as their hero.

Obsession / Worship ... To-MAY-toe / To-MAH-Toe ...

Charles Manson was a really unique killer, somewhere in between the pure sadists like Dahmer, Gacy, and Ted Bundy and the big time megalomaniac genocidal dictators like Hitler and Pol Pot who inspired whole nations to do unspeakably evil things. For one thing, it's never been proven that Manson personally killed anybody. He wasn't even at the Tate scene. The legal doctrine that masterminds are equally as responsible for the crime as those they lead is what put him away.

He was a cult leader, but his inner circle was relatively small-no more than 15-17 people at its peak. I've read that he was inspired by a cult called Four Pi, which supposedly practiced bestiality and cannibalism and which grew out of Scientology (thus the much ballyhooed Manson-Scientology connection). Manson was described by some as a hypnotic figure similar to the big guys like Hitler, but he never began to approach Hitler's level of following.

Manson certainly looked like Rasputin, the Russian cult leader who supposedly counted the Tsarina among his followers and who is partly blamed by some for the 1917 revolution. It's unknown if Manson has Russian blood, since we don't know anything about his biological father. Manson was sort of a mini-Hitler. He never began to approach Hitler's mental clarity and sharpness of philosophy, but he certainly had the charisma and hypnotic nature.

Most serial killers seem to kill simply to satisfy carnal bloodlusts or for revenge. Manson certainly saw himself as bigger than that, an agent of apocalypse. The 60s were an apocalyptic time, with Vietnam being seen as a precursor to a Russian attack on the US itself and many people holding the idea that the protest movement was the beginning of a systemic collapse that would be sort of a purification by fire like in the Bible. Manson was sort of the perfect avatar of the 60s, armageddonism taken to its logical extreme. The other was Patty Hearst, although she was more about what people saw in her than reality. She didn't really renounce privilege for revolution, as Che Guevara had-she was brainwashed.

It's not bad to be fascinated by the 60s and the leftist desire for revolution, although it may get you on a watch list. I would say that if you're overly fascinated with Manson to immerse yourself in the revolutionary movements of the 60s and in hippieism. Sometimes young people get so obsessed with it that they run away to live a wanderer's life, true, but they were unhappy with their lives in the first place.

I don't know that it's either, really. I've enjoyed horror all my life. Even as a young child, I loved scary movies and read the most disturbing crap. As I've grown older, I just don't read that much fiction any more. I still like horror flicks, but if I read something scary; it is real. However, it is not as though it is all I read. I'm currently reading a memoir of a business man who ended up in prison and a book of American arechitecture...maybe I'll get something gross on my next trip to the library. Who knows?

well, only to the extent that it proves there's someone more #$%^'d up than me..

I read the book too, back in the 80s...he just sounded like a prison punk. I dunno...everyone to their own taste...

History has shown that there's nothing new about outsiders feeling a sense of identity with killers, because alot of serial killers lived lives where they were outcasted. It doesn't mean you idealize them in the sense that you want to go out and kill, but in more of a sense that you understand how they would feel being alone and misunderstood.

Also alot of serial killers had mental illnesses that today could possibly have been treated with medication, and in those cases it's really sad, because them hurting others was a manifestation of their illness, not their personal will. Like Ed Gein was Schizophrenic and hallucinated his extremely religious mother telling him to kill sinners. I kind of have a sort of sarcastic joke about Ed Gein. Had Ed Gein got medication, he might've been a great interior designer. I mean, it takes crafting ability to make lampshades from skin.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who has this issue. Since middle school I've noticed that I tend to get interested in scary stuff. Near the end of fifth grade I became interested in the Holocaust, and I also used to be interested in Elizabeth Bathory. Go look her up if you don't know who she is. Then in the beginning of my senior year of high school I became curious about Jeffrey Dahmer. I heard his name a few times when I was younger. I knew that he was a serial killer and nothing else. In October 2007, I looked him up on Wikipedia. I watched a documentary that someone had uploaded on YouTube. What started out as curiousity became full-blown obsession that still hasn't disappeared.
What someone else said about lonely people identifying with killers is true. After reading about Dahmer, I found that he had some things in common with me. I know this sounds creepy, but hear me out. His dad was a chemist. So is mine. When Dahmer was six his family moved to Ohio. This upset him a lot. His parents tried to cheer him up by getting him a dog. I spent my early childhood in Idaho. I was actually born in Kansas City, MO, but I was only a baby when we left so I don't remember it. When I was six, my parents moved to Texas because of my dad's job. My life in Idaho was perfect. I had friends and got invited to birthday parties just like any normal child. When we got to Texas, I had a tough time adapting. My social life would never be the same again.
When I found out all this stuff about Dahmer, I was surprised at the coincidences. Both our fathers were chemists and we both got upset about moving at age six. What are the odds of that?
I also found out that Dahmer was a loner when he was growing up. He would lure people to his house and kill them because he didn't want them to leave. When he was 18, his parents got divorced. They couldn't get custody of him because he was considered a legal adult. So they moved away and left him in the house alone. Most young people would love this. "My parents are gone! Party at my place! I can play loud music and dance naked. There's nobody telling me what to do!" Dahmer didn't see it that way. He felt that he had been abandoned. That same summer Dahmer brought a hitchiker to the house. They got drunk, listened to music just like typical people of that age. When the hitchiker started to go Dahmer killed him because he didn't want him to leave.
While I would never do any of that stuff that Dahmer did, I can understand what led him to do it. I can especially identify with the whole turning 18 thing. All of a sudden you are considered an adult even if you're emotionally immature. I just turned 18 in July. I would hate it if all of a sudden people stopped treating me like a part of my family just because I reached some arbittrary age. I'm still the same person I've always been.
I this post has been long, but this stuff has been on my mind for a long time. This thread has given me a place to let it out.

There was a year that I was so obsessed with Jack The Ripper, that I went to a Halloween dance dressed as him.