What Can Happen if You Watch too Much “Criminal Minds”?

After you’ve watched enough “Criminal Minds,” you begin to wonder how some people become fucked up enough to hurt people in some cruel ways, enjoying it and feeling no guilt about it. Some episodes are too creepy to enjoy watching; too disturbed.

Why do I still watch it? That’s a good question. The characters’ chemistry and the puzzles which they’re trying to solve engross me. The stories fascinate but the sick and depraved psyches of the criminals makes me seek answers or reasons for this on Perplexity.ai. I see anti-social personality disorder narcissism and other psychiatric terms.

I wonder how many of the creepiest episodes are based on true crimes. I ask my favorite AI search tool. I find Jeff Dahmer’s interview in which he calmly describes deciding to consider victims as objects. My curiosity about and fascination with the cracked psyches leads me down a rabbit hole of Wikipedia pages and YouTube videos. I ask Perplexity about diagnoses of some infamous killers. The responses of antisocial personality disorder, sadism and others don’t sate me.

After seeing “The Company” episode of Criminal Minds, I ask Perplexity.ai about any real case. That directs me to Colleen Stan. “The Girl in the Box” case makes my jaw gape! Like passing a nasty car accident on a freeway, instead of keeping my eyes forward toward pleasantness, my gaze persists on the Wikipedia page. Why? If I read more, then will I grasp how sick or evil a person must be to be and do so vile?

I research sociopathy on YouTube. Afterward the page offers links to criminals who are strangers instead of infamous to me. I find that these new names did crimes that are grievous. To my imagination, they are worse than what I’ve seen “Criminal Minds” dramatize.

For example, after watching a British psychiatric nurse, Paul Deacon, on YouTube describe his work at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, the case of British serial killers Fred and Rose West appears as an option. (I ought not have pressed on that one!)

Their depravity ventured beyond the implicit moral constraints that I have on my imagination. In other words, I can’t imagine someone choosing to do this..!

Aside from the Wests’ murders of lodgers, the reality that the dad raped his daughter with mom Rose present, and told the daughter that that was part of a dad’s duty…! Upon incorrigible further reader, it seems that beside killing lodgers, Mr. West went to stalk other young women to kill.

Again jaw agape, seeking context, according to Wikipedia, it seems that Fred West’s mom had molested or raped him in his elementary years. Unfortunately for me, needing the world to make sense, my curiosity persists about how criminally sick people exist and persist. I hope that I’ll finally concede that no more research into serial violence and predation will calm me into finding that the world, my world is as safe and sane as it was before “Criminal Minds”.