Supply and demand?

Question

ok....take a minute to think about serial killers...............

the human race, the media, everything is obsessed with death and mutilation, and they are feeding this obsession....so it's supply and demand right?

Answer 1

Great character-voice for a first-person novel, man. The psychopathic killer who believes he's doing a public service. Hell, I'd buy that.
It's like an evolution of the concept put forward by Harry Harrison in his Stainless Steel Rat books - set in a future where the populace are compliant and bored, and the only time the news becomes exciting is when there's a major crime to report - he feels like he's doing the world a service by breaking people out of their boredom. All we need to do is cross the border from crime to killing and it becomes a logical mindset.

In real terms, you may, sadly, have a point - it's also like the argument that the paparazzi use to justify their activities - "people want this stuff, I'm just giving it to them". But the same question applies to the "supply and demand" ethos whether it is addressed to paparazzi who invade people's privacy or serial killers who invade and put an end to people's existence - does public demand drive the supply, or does supply drive public demand?

If people didn't know the details of serial kills, would they be obsessed with them? Without the thrill of finding themselves famous and feared, would serial killers continue to kill? I'd suggest the answers would be no and usually, yes respectively.
That means we can say that most serial killers kill for their own reasons, rather than any specific obsession with the publicity. So supply would remain, even if demand were radically curtailed. Which I think might be where the system breaks down.

Interesting thought though.

Answer 2

In other words, the common people need a spectacle of brutality, so serial killers oblige by killing people in grisly ways? I think it's a weak argument. Surely it's more that we're fascinated with the depths at which a human can operate when it happens, not that we urge them on to do it... or am I missing something?

How can you quantify that rule anyway? If you judge the killers to be a supply, when the supply decreased, demand for more killings would rise to due to the relative rarity of killings at that point. If the supply somehow got above demand levels, then the cost of murder would somehow be cheaper to reflect this. It's would be like, 'oh, that's really more killing than we need- we can get this younger lunatic to do it just as well.' What? Economic rules just don't work here.

You might be able to call it cause and effect though... you'd have to be arguing that an obsession with brutality in the general public was leading more unhinged people to kill out of admiration or something- 'copy-cats'.

Sure, there may be some sympathy between killer and victimised at a stretch of the imagination, but rather than the demand for killings being a human trait in general, it'll probably be in selected segments of society- like among tabloid newspaper reporters who want a sensational story...

We humans can be perverse, but it's an aberration to be out there wishing for evil things to happen to other people to satisy your own boredom or insecurities... you'd have to be unstable... a bit like a serial killer in fact ;)

Answer 3

I am not obsessed with death and mutilation and I do not believe that the human race is either. To think that people who work for benevolent organisations like Greenpeace, The Red Cross, Amnesty International are obsessed with death and mutilation is complete nonsense. And how many people of the human race have you spoken to before posting a question like this. Take a look on the Internet for benevolent organisations, environmentalists, the Dali Lama, and the many other groups of people who are not at all interested or obsessed with death and mutilation and then think about people again. This is a ridiculous statement about people.

Answer 4

Definitely supply! I have to moderate the TV shows my 9-year old austistic son watches because he cannot process out the violence he sees. Unfortunately, it is shocking how little that leaves for him to watch. I don't believe children today are demanding a diet of violence just because. It has been delivered to them since they started on TV or games.

What I really wonder and worry about is the young adults who create this kind of "entertainment". It's as if they are acting out their own "dark sides" in the shows and games they create. I wonder if our young adults are grown up in their bodies but their minds don't have the conscience or awareness to understand what they are creating for the children of today.

Does this explain serial killers? I don't know, but I think that the diet of visual violence our children are nourished with only numbs them to the horrific stuff they are watching. Plus, the violence obviously creates a neurochemical rush. Who could not be effected? For some, this rush becomes an addiction and they have to continue to feed it more and more.

Some seem to be immune (my 15 year old;) some are not (my 9 year old.) It has to be my responsibility as a parent to regulate the input from this crazy world.

Answer 5

I don't think it's supply and demand. I think think it's the media's obsession with sensationalizing events that shouldn't always be paid so much attention to.

When a serial killer happens, it's so taboo and uncommon that the media wants to bring it to the attention of people. If society didn't pay attention to it, then the media would change what they cover.

Answer 6

I have studied serial killers for years and I believe they are born not created. Social influences do affect ones psyche but can not be soley blamed.

Ted Bundy at 3 years old entered his aunts bedroom and lined up knives on his aunts bed intending to operate on her. At 3 years old what could have influenced this behavior ??? Thinking back that this was in the 60's so the world was a different place.

The TV both educates us and encourages violence but if someone wants to kill they will regardless of outside influences.

Answer 7

I've got to agree with Buzzard here.
There has been no increase in serial killers in recent years, so the supply and demand question does not apply.

What has increased is our all round insensitivity to grisly crime. That means that instead of just knifing someone, a killer is more likely to perpetrate further acts of depravity. Probably because they're insensitive to normal pain and suffering rather than from their desire to oblige a hungry public.
So there is no factual support for your hypothesis.

Answer 8

We as a people have been so desensitized to death and destruction of the human race that the media has to continuously find more and more disgusting ways to get our attention. Stories about love and acceptance just won't do it for us anymore, so sad but true.

Answer 9

it could be, but the media promotes only bad things, and nothing good, wheneveer you turn on the news, its always some crime scene, or some little girl was raped and then stabbed, and when you look on teh newspaper the main headline is how some people got killed and robbed or somthing, and when you turn on the radiop, tehre talking about some car crash where everyone died. so it kindof is supply and demand, the media has a huge impact on it

Answer 10

OK... And you definitely have a point.... but if there is supply and demand from that sort of thing, then both the suppliers and consumers of that stuff have a problem !!! No one else but them !!