| This is about something I observed yesterday, and before I start the story contains a couple of graphic details of some violence so, just a warning if anyone is sensitive.
I'm a post-grad criminology student, and yesterday we went to a conference run by ex-prisoners. They would get up on stage and tell their stories, and then in the afternoon we split into different groups for a q&a session, and there was about 100 students in this group.
One of the speakers came in, and I have to say that he showed some of the main characteristics of a psychopath - charismatic, lack of empathy etc.
He was basically a career criminal, started out ram-raiding shops (driving a car through windows and robbing), stealing cars, assault and then progressed into drug and firearm dealing. He was very charismatic and humorous giving a kind of 'cheeky chappy' persona.
A couple of his crimes were particularly heinous. The first he described was "we'd ram-raided a shop and a security guard ran at me, so I picked up this metal bar and hit him, and kept on hitting him. He's now deaf and blind in one eye".
Later he described 'one night this young lad put a brick through my brothers window, so I got hold of him and beat him between the eyes with a hammer. There was blood coming out of his eyes and ears, and knocked all his teeth out. He deserved it."
One thing that got my back up was when a student asked a question which assumed he burgled houses, which upset him because he said "i never burgled, I hate burglars, your taking peoples personal possessions that they worked hard for". So I raised my hand and asked him how he felt about selling guns to people who may then go on to kill someone, giving examples of mass shootings and young kids being killed. He didnt like this, and just started rambling about how he's not responsible for what others do, all he saw was the money.
But what I observed was a lot of students, mostly females, started defending him, and making me feel like the bad guy. He'd pretty much won them over to his side. Furthermore, at the end, girls were lining up to take selfies with him, as if he was some kind of celebrity. One girl made the comment to her friends "dont you think, not his looks tho, but he's kinda hot? Like the stuff he says". This horrified me, after hearing about his brutal past. We all know girls like a bad boy, but this is quite something. We hear stories of women writing letters to serial killers in prison, but I thought that was relatively rare. But what struck me most, it was A LOT of girls showing this (essentially) attraction towards him.
LOL i think when people say on this site, "it doesnt matter what you say, its how you say it" is definitely true! And i suppose the other lesson is, you can never be too much of a bad boy.
I'm actually really angry about this and came out of there almost shaking at how despicable he was and the complete lack of remorse and empathy for his crimes, and how he justified them to himself.
I hope this was an interesting read.
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