How Many Twitter Followers Could Charles Manson Get?
It’s that time of the semester! Time to buckle down, put the nose to the grindstone, and all the other awful sounding cliches that indicate the next month of my life will be miserable. With impending final papers, presentations, and projects I’ve been doing a bit of light reading for one of these papers I have due. Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi, is a book to give you nightmares.
For those of you not familiar with one of the most famous true crime books, Helter Skelter details the Manson murders and the subsequent trials of the Manson family.
While I’m reading this book, I’m thinking about how absolutely terrifying it is that one average guy can brainwash so many young men and women into committing brutal and gruesome acts of murder and inspire the kind of loyalty and unfaltering willingness to obey that the Manson family members exhibited. However, what I’m also thinking about is how Charlie Manson would shape up as a criminally insane cult leader in the social media age. Although I do not pretend to be an expert on cult behavior, I find myself intrigued by the idea that cult leaders would recruit members using social media sites.
Psychos such as Manson have long been glamorized by the traditional media and entertainment industry. Even more recently we have seen a rise in depictions of the anti-hero or villains. For example, on TV right now are three shows that give us a look into a killer’s mind: Dexter, Bates Motel, and Hannibal.
The stars of these shows are psychopathic and sympathetic. The creators of these shows are asking us to get inside the minds of these killers, to see what they see and to feel what they feel. So is the next logical progression is to do what they do?
Whether or not these shows are having an actual impact on the public’s psyche does not matter. The traditional media outlets like the news are doing a good enough job of over publicizing homicidal tragedies like the Aurora, Colorado shooting and the horrific Newtown massacre.
So what does this all really mean? Essentially, the world we live in has a fascination with the macabre. We obsess over it in the news, we turn to it for our entertainment. So is it such a far cry to think that psychopaths like Manson and Holmes and Lanza will soon turn to the Internet? And more specifically, will the next targets be the vulnerable semi-anonymous users of social media? Are we really that safe in our obsessions when we turn to sites like Twitter or Facebook to connect with people who only may be who they say they are?