Ted Bundy had courtroom groupies. Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez were sent love letters in prison. Now, in the age of social media, thousands like, share, and thirst in the comments over stylized fan edits of serial killers. There’s a term for this psychological phenomenon: hybristophilia.

A new study has found a connection between young women’s engagement with this type of TikTok content and their sexual attraction to criminals.

Those who liked or repeatedly watched clips glorifying notorious serial killers such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer or fictional villains like Joe Goldberg from Netflix’s “You,” scored higher for hybristophilia, than those who scrolled past, according to the peer-reviewed research published in the journal Deviant Behavior, the only journal that specifically

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