He who fights monsters must be careful lest he turns into a monster, Nietzsche warned. Likewise, Robert E. Lee cautioned that a man must not become “overly fond” of war. A similar thing can be said of True Crime junkies like me. The vast majority of us are entirely harmless; as a general rule, criminal deviants don’t take much interest in studying THEMSELVES. No, the risk we run is in becoming so captivated by the clinical study of serial killers and other violent deviants that we allow our empathy for the victims to become dampened. It’s a self-defense mechanism, I think. Subconsciously we learn to tune out the most horrible stuff because if we allow ourselves to get too close to it, to really contemplate things from the victims’ perspectives, it would overwhelm us. Thus we remain detached, analytical. We become Mr. Spock at his most inhuman.
This board game (see source link below), “The Serial Killer Trivia Board Game,” is in all kinds of bad taste. It also looks really interesting. I daresay I’d do well at this game, if I didn’t win it outright. Is it that big a step to go from having a library filled with books on the subject of serial murderers to having a game based upon their depredations? Where does one draw the line between what is and isn’t appropriate? At what point does morbid curiosity give way to plain tackiness?