I’ve spent a lot of time recently explaining my intent behind this channel. I’ve realized that while I appreciate the conversation, I no longer feel the need to justify my interests to people who have already decided to misinterpret them.
Here is where I stand:
Aesthetics vs. Actions: I make edits because I like the visual language of the internet. The timing, the music, the "dope" transitions. Being able to find a 15-second edit visually interesting is not the same as supporting a crime. I can hold two truths at once: I like the dark aesthetic, and I find the real-world actions horrific.
The "Streaming" Hypocrisy: We live in a world where corporations spend millions to dramatize tragedies for profit, yet niche creators are attacked for exploring the same themes. I don't "debut" these cases for the world; I research them for a specific audience.
Detachment as a Tool: People often say you shouldn't interact with this content unless you were affected by it. I believe the opposite: being detached is exactly what allows me to look at the data, the reports, and the "why" without being blinded by pure emotion.
The Limit of My Control: I don’t condone idolization. I tell people in the comments I don't agree with it. But I am not responsible for the internal psychology of every viewer. If someone chooses to romanticize a tragedy, they would find a way to do that regardless of my content.
Intent vs. Impact: I’m not disputing that impact matters. People have every right to be mad at what I make. But I have every right to make it. That is the nature of the internet.
I’m done with the explanation debt. If you’re here for the research, the forensics, and the deep dives into systemic failure (Sylvia Likens, WM3, etc.), welcome. If you’re here to assume the worst about my character, you’re free to do so elsewhere.
The case of Sylvia Likens refers to the 1965 torture and murder of a 16-year-old girl in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is often described by legal experts and historians as "the most diabolical case" or "the most terrible crime" in the state's history.
In July 1965, Sylvia and her younger sister, Jenny, were left in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski, a 37-year-old mother of seven. The girls' parents, who were traveling fair concessionaires, agreed to pay Baniszewski $20 a week to board them. The abuse began incrementally after payments from the parents became inconsistent.
Over the course of three months, Sylvia was subjected to escalating physical and psychological torment.
The abuse was led by Gertrude Baniszewski, but she encouraged and directed her own children and several neighborhood teenagers to participate.
Sylvia was eventually held captive in the basement, starved, and denied water.
When her body was discovered on October 26, 1965, an autopsy revealed over 150 wounds, including cigarette burns, scald marks from hot baths, and the words "I am a prostitute and proud of it" etched into her abdomen.
The official cause of death was a subdural hematoma (a brain injury from a blow to the temple) and shock, complicated by severe malnutrition.
The 1966 trial drew national attention due to the involvement of children in the torture.
Gertrude Baniszewski: Convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. She was released on parole in 1985 and died in 1990.
Paula Baniszewski (Gertrude’s daughter): Convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life (later reduced on appeal; she was paroled in 1972).
John Baniszewski Jr., Coy Hubbard, and Richard Hobbs: Convicted of manslaughter and served roughly 18 months to two years.
Sylvia’s death led to significant changes in Indiana law. It was instrumental in the creation of the mandatory reporting law, which requires any person who suspects child abuse to report it to authorities. This was a direct response to the fact that many neighbors had heard Sylvia’s screams or seen her condition but did not intervene.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the "Grey Space" of the Alyssa Bustamante case, looking for the "Why" behind the 2009 tragedy. Recently, an interaction in the comments (with a younger person, ironically) gave me a massive "hitch" in my thinking and forced me to re-evaluate some of my older content.
In some of my earlier videos/threads, I used the language of Forgiveness. At the time, I saw it as a way to stay empathetic and clinical. However, I’ve realized I was wrong.
Forgiveness is a sacred authority that belongs only to the victims and those directly impacted. As a researcher, my role isn't to forgive, my role is to document and analyze.
What’s Changing:
The Language: You will see a shift toward objective, clinical analysis. We can understand the "Why" (systemic neglect, mental health failure) without overstepping the moral boundaries of the "What."
The Goal: To provide a database of information on Systemic Silence so we can recognize the red flags before the next tragedy happens. I’m grateful for the "worthy opponents" who challenge my views. It’s how the research gets sharper. We are moving forward, older, wiser, and more focused on the data.
Next Case: The Neighbors of Silence (Sylvia Likens) & The Cost of an Aesthetic (WM3).
I want to share something I don't talk about often. When I was 13, I was in that grey space many of you see in my edits. I was dealing with verbal abuse, and I was the "safe person" for a friend who was struggling with self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
The adults in my life reacted with terror rather than help. My mom was more afraid of the "idea" of me being suicidal than she was interested in the "why" behind my pain. To the rest of the world, I was just "weird" or "seeking attention." When you're 13 and the people who are supposed to protect you are just scared of you, you stop talking. You build a spine of iron just to survive.
I stopped the darker path at 13, not because my life suddenly got better or the abuse stopped, but because I had a realization: it wasn't doing anything for me. It wasn't solving the problem, it was just keeping me stuck in the cycle.
That realization is why I make my edits today.
I use hooks because I want to reach the kids who are currently 13, 15, or 17 and feeling like they have to become a headline just to be understood. I want to catch them before they are "too far gone."
Understanding the "why" behind people who committed heinous acts isn't about excusing them, it's about showing the grey space kids where that road actually leads.
To the survivors: I hear you, and my work is fueled by the desire to make sure there are fewer of us in the future.
To the "messed up" kids: I see you. You don't have to pick up the shovel to be seen. You can choose a different mode of communication before it's too late.
Context doesn't excuse, but it explains. And in that explanation, we find the red flags that save lives.
I see a lot of comments calling Alyssa "stupid" for how she handled the aftermath, like scratching out her diary or burying the body where it could be found. People say, "a smart person would have burned the page."
But that's exactly the point. When we look at this through the lens of developmental trauma, the poor execution of the crime isn't a sign of low IQ, it's a sign of total psychological collapse.
1. Survival intelligence vs. Systematic logic Alyssa was forced to be "smart" in ways no child should be. When you are 6 years old and left alone to care for your siblings because your parents are incapacitated, you develop survival intelligence. You learn how to endure, how to hide, and how to stay silent. You don't learn how to respect "rules" or "consequences" because the adults in charge of those rules never kept you safe.
2. The diary: a discharge, not a plan The act of writing and then aggressively scratching out her thoughts wasn't a "failed plan." It was a physical release. Her brain was so deregulated that she was just trying to move the "darkness" from her head onto the paper. The scratching out was the sound of a silent scream, a desperate, messy attempt to "delete" a reality she couldn't handle.
3. The "explosion" A calculated killer wants to get away with it. A person in a "slow burn" explosion just wants the internal noise to stop. For a few minutes, she projected her internal chaos onto the world so she didn't have to carry it alone anymore. It was a monstrous choice, but it was also a moment of extreme vulnerability.
The takeaway: if we just call her "stupid," we miss the lesson. Her inability to plan or cover her tracks is the biggest piece of evidence that her mind had been decaying for years. She wasn't a "mastermind"; she was a kid who had been parentified and neglected until she finally hit the point of no return.
I've noticed a recurring pattern lately: people sharing my content not to engage with the message, but to perform moral outrage for their friends. They see an edit, their brain triggers a "this is wrong" response, and they rush to label it "sick" or "disturbing" to prove they are on the "right" side of history.
If that's you, I want to be very clear about what this space is, and what it isn't.
1. The edit is a metaphor People struggle to separate the medium from the message, just like they struggle to separate the human from the crime. If you can't look past a stylized video to hear a clinical and psychological autopsy of systemic failure, you aren't ready for the conversation I'm having.
2. Consensus isn't truth Sharing a video just to get your friends to agree with your hate isn't "activism," it's a performance. It's the "Social Validation Loop" in action. Needing a crowd to confirm your morality only proves that you are afraid to sit in the grey space alone.
3. We don't "click off" here The easiest thing to do when a child is "messy, edgy, or broken" is to look away and call them a monster. My channel is for the people who refuse to click off. It is for those who are brave enough to ask "why?" even when the answer is ugly.
4. Disgust is a feeling; hate is a choice It is natural to feel disgusted by a horrific act. I feel it, too. But using that disgust as a license to attack my character or ignore the reality of adolescent mental health collapse is a choice. I won't tolerate performative hate here.
To my real community: Thank you for being the ones who stay. Thank you for being the ones who understand that humanity isn't a status you lose when you break, it's the reason we have to keep looking, even when it hurts.
Forgiveness and empathy don't mean condoning, they mean refusing to strip someone of their humanity. And I'm right, the Netflix show about Dahmer didn't just portray, it romanticized. The soundtrack, the aesthetic framing, Evan Peters being cast, all of it was designed to pull viewers in and make it consumable, even "cool" in some twisted way. That's sensationalism, and it gets a free pass because it's "media." Meanwhile, my edits are niche, they're not shoved into millions of homes through a streaming platform, and I'm not glorifying anything except Alyssa's scene kid vibe. I'm engaging with her as a person, not a headline, and that distinction matters. Society loves fictional killers, dark media, creepypasta, slasher villains, we build whole fandoms around them. But the second someone does what I'm doing (acknowledging the person behind a real crime with complexity), it becomes taboo. That's because fictional horror serves as a buffer. It distracts people from the uncomfortable truth that real people, people who laughed, cried, wore scene outfits, listened to music just like us, commit crimes too. It's easier for society to channel all that fascination into fiction than to confront the reality that "evil" isn't some alien thing. It's messy, it's human, and it often comes from places we can recognize in ourselves. What I'm doing should be studied, honestly. It's not about condoning, it's about breaking down why we empathize with some figures and not others, why we forgive in fiction but condemn in reality. I'm poking at the uncomfortable gap most people don't want to acknowledge.
People come at me for making Alyssa edits like I'm "glorifying murder", when in reality I'm doing the opposite; I'm humanizing her. I'm pushing back against that lazy, sensationalist, black and white narrative and showing that she's not just a headline, she's a person. And yeah, that makes people uncomfortable, because it forces them to acknowledge that real life doesn't come in neat little packages. People are fine with Dahmer merch, Tiktoks thirsting over Evan Peters, serial killer documentaries that dramatize victims' last moments for entertainment.. but my edits are where they draw the line? That's not morality, it's hypocrisy. They like their killers fictionalized, aestheticized, and detached enough to enjoy. Alyssa's case isn't like that. It's messy. It demands empathy that isn't easy, and that's why they reject it. Alyssa's story doesn't have one neat "cause" or a cinematic villain. It's trauma, neglect, untreated mental illness, self-destruction, all of it tangled together until it imploded. That's not "comfortable" to look at. It doesn't give people an easy out. So instead, they just shut down compassion and call her "evil." The reality is, real life is messy. People can be both victims and perpetrators. People can to terrible things and still be more than their worst act. Reducing Alyssa to just "the girl who killed" doesn't make those people morally superior, it just proves they'd rather cling to a simple narrative than wrestle with complexity. And I think that's why my edits hit nerves, because I'm reminding people that empathy doesn't stop at the headline. That Alyssa still breathes, still exists, still matters. I'm not the bad guy for that. If anything, I'm doing the exact thing society refuses to: looking at her as a whole person.
The Dahmer Netflix series is such a good example: people literally thirsted over Evan Peters playing him, bought merch, made edits, and consumed it as entertainment, while it was based on horrific, real crimes with real victims' names attached. And somehow that gets normalized. Yet Alyssa, who was 15, mentally unstable, and dealing with deep neglect/trauma, gets flattened into "irredeemable monster." It's such a glaring hypocrisy. And Gypsy Rose? She's treated as a sympathetic figure (and in many ways, rightly so, her abuse was horrific), but Alyssa's abuse and neglect get brushed aside because her "narrative" isn't as clean or palatable. People want a clear villain and a clear victim. Gypsy fits the "heroic survivor" mold. Alyssa doesn't, so people shut off empathy for her. That doesn't mean her suffering wasn't real or that her mental health didn't collapse under the weight of it. Alyssa was a child herself. Adolescence is messy, brains aren't fully developed, emotions run wild, and without support or healthy outlets, things can spiral. She absolutely holds responsibility for what she did, but she's also not frozen in time at 15. She's grown, rehabilitated, and done good things since then, but people don't want to update their view of her. Meanwhile, adults can binge Dahmer and call him "interesting" or romanticize fictionalized killers without shame. That's the real kicker: people love the spectacle of violence when it's at a safe distance, but when it's a messy, real teen girl from Missouri, suddenly they want to be moral absolutists. The empathy extended to Gypsy should absolutely extend to Alyssa. Both were driven by extremes, both were failed by their environments, both committed crimes. But only one gets to be seen as a complicated human being. That's the hypocrisy.
Lyss
Lyss
I’ve spent a lot of time recently explaining my intent behind this channel. I’ve realized that while I appreciate the conversation, I no longer feel the need to justify my interests to people who have already decided to misinterpret them.
Here is where I stand:
Aesthetics vs. Actions: I make edits because I like the visual language of the internet. The timing, the music, the "dope" transitions. Being able to find a 15-second edit visually interesting is not the same as supporting a crime. I can hold two truths at once: I like the dark aesthetic, and I find the real-world actions horrific.
The "Streaming" Hypocrisy: We live in a world where corporations spend millions to dramatize tragedies for profit, yet niche creators are attacked for exploring the same themes. I don't "debut" these cases for the world; I research them for a specific audience.
Detachment as a Tool: People often say you shouldn't interact with this content unless you were affected by it. I believe the opposite: being detached is exactly what allows me to look at the data, the reports, and the "why" without being blinded by pure emotion.
The Limit of My Control: I don’t condone idolization. I tell people in the comments I don't agree with it. But I am not responsible for the internal psychology of every viewer. If someone chooses to romanticize a tragedy, they would find a way to do that regardless of my content.
Intent vs. Impact: I’m not disputing that impact matters. People have every right to be mad at what I make. But I have every right to make it. That is the nature of the internet.
I’m done with the explanation debt. If you’re here for the research, the forensics, and the deep dives into systemic failure (Sylvia Likens, WM3, etc.), welcome. If you’re here to assume the worst about my character, you’re free to do so elsewhere.
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 2
View 8 replies
Lyss
The case of Sylvia Likens refers to the 1965 torture and murder of a 16-year-old girl in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is often described by legal experts and historians as "the most diabolical case" or "the most terrible crime" in the state's history.
In July 1965, Sylvia and her younger sister, Jenny, were left in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski, a 37-year-old mother of seven. The girls' parents, who were traveling fair concessionaires, agreed to pay Baniszewski $20 a week to board them. The abuse began incrementally after payments from the parents became inconsistent.
Over the course of three months, Sylvia was subjected to escalating physical and psychological torment.
The abuse was led by Gertrude Baniszewski, but she encouraged and directed her own children and several neighborhood teenagers to participate.
Sylvia was eventually held captive in the basement, starved, and denied water.
When her body was discovered on October 26, 1965, an autopsy revealed over 150 wounds, including cigarette burns, scald marks from hot baths, and the words "I am a prostitute and proud of it" etched into her abdomen.
The official cause of death was a subdural hematoma (a brain injury from a blow to the temple) and shock, complicated by severe malnutrition.
The 1966 trial drew national attention due to the involvement of children in the torture.
Gertrude Baniszewski: Convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. She was released on parole in 1985 and died in 1990.
Paula Baniszewski (Gertrude’s daughter): Convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life (later reduced on appeal; she was paroled in 1972).
John Baniszewski Jr., Coy Hubbard, and Richard Hobbs: Convicted of manslaughter and served roughly 18 months to two years.
Sylvia’s death led to significant changes in Indiana law. It was instrumental in the creation of the mandatory reporting law, which requires any person who suspects child abuse to report it to authorities. This was a direct response to the fact that many neighbors had heard Sylvia’s screams or seen her condition but did not intervene.
3 weeks ago | [YT] | 4
View 4 replies
Lyss
I’ve spent a lot of time in the "Grey Space" of the Alyssa Bustamante case, looking for the "Why" behind the 2009 tragedy. Recently, an interaction in the comments (with a younger person, ironically) gave me a massive "hitch" in my thinking and forced me to re-evaluate some of my older content.
In some of my earlier videos/threads, I used the language of Forgiveness. At the time, I saw it as a way to stay empathetic and clinical. However, I’ve realized I was wrong.
Forgiveness is a sacred authority that belongs only to the victims and those directly impacted. As a researcher, my role isn't to forgive, my role is to document and analyze.
What’s Changing:
The Language: You will see a shift toward objective, clinical analysis. We can understand the "Why" (systemic neglect, mental health failure) without overstepping the moral boundaries of the "What."
The Goal: To provide a database of information on Systemic Silence so we can recognize the red flags before the next tragedy happens.
I’m grateful for the "worthy opponents" who challenge my views. It’s how the research gets sharper. We are moving forward, older, wiser, and more focused on the data.
Next Case: The Neighbors of Silence (Sylvia Likens) & The Cost of an Aesthetic (WM3).
3 weeks ago | [YT] | 5
View 3 replies
Lyss
I want to share something I don't talk about often. When I was 13, I was in that grey space many of you see in my edits. I was dealing with verbal abuse, and I was the "safe person" for a friend who was struggling with self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
The adults in my life reacted with terror rather than help. My mom was more afraid of the "idea" of me being suicidal than she was interested in the "why" behind my pain. To the rest of the world, I was just "weird" or "seeking attention." When you're 13 and the people who are supposed to protect you are just scared of you, you stop talking. You build a spine of iron just to survive.
I stopped the darker path at 13, not because my life suddenly got better or the abuse stopped, but because I had a realization: it wasn't doing anything for me. It wasn't solving the problem, it was just keeping me stuck in the cycle.
That realization is why I make my edits today.
I use hooks because I want to reach the kids who are currently 13, 15, or 17 and feeling like they have to become a headline just to be understood. I want to catch them before they are "too far gone."
Understanding the "why" behind people who committed heinous acts isn't about excusing them, it's about showing the grey space kids where that road actually leads.
To the survivors: I hear you, and my work is fueled by the desire to make sure there are fewer of us in the future.
To the "messed up" kids: I see you. You don't have to pick up the shovel to be seen. You can choose a different mode of communication before it's too late.
Context doesn't excuse, but it explains. And in that explanation, we find the red flags that save lives.
Thank you for being part of this community. 🩶
3 weeks ago | [YT] | 5
View 3 replies
Lyss
I see a lot of comments calling Alyssa "stupid" for how she handled the aftermath, like scratching out her diary or burying the body where it could be found. People say, "a smart person would have burned the page."
But that's exactly the point. When we look at this through the lens of developmental trauma, the poor execution of the crime isn't a sign of low IQ, it's a sign of total psychological collapse.
1. Survival intelligence vs. Systematic logic
Alyssa was forced to be "smart" in ways no child should be. When you are 6 years old and left alone to care for your siblings because your parents are incapacitated, you develop survival intelligence. You learn how to endure, how to hide, and how to stay silent. You don't learn how to respect "rules" or "consequences" because the adults in charge of those rules never kept you safe.
2. The diary: a discharge, not a plan
The act of writing and then aggressively scratching out her thoughts wasn't a "failed plan." It was a physical release. Her brain was so deregulated that she was just trying to move the "darkness" from her head onto the paper. The scratching out was the sound of a silent scream, a desperate, messy attempt to "delete" a reality she couldn't handle.
3. The "explosion"
A calculated killer wants to get away with it. A person in a "slow burn" explosion just wants the internal noise to stop. For a few minutes, she projected her internal chaos onto the world so she didn't have to carry it alone anymore. It was a monstrous choice, but it was also a moment of extreme vulnerability.
The takeaway: if we just call her "stupid," we miss the lesson. Her inability to plan or cover her tracks is the biggest piece of evidence that her mind had been decaying for years. She wasn't a "mastermind"; she was a kid who had been parentified and neglected until she finally hit the point of no return.
4 weeks ago | [YT] | 4
View 7 replies
Lyss
If you need to call me names to feel morally safe, go ahead.
4 weeks ago | [YT] | 6
View 0 replies
Lyss
I've noticed a recurring pattern lately: people sharing my content not to engage with the message, but to perform moral outrage for their friends. They see an edit, their brain triggers a "this is wrong" response, and they rush to label it "sick" or "disturbing" to prove they are on the "right" side of history.
If that's you, I want to be very clear about what this space is, and what it isn't.
1. The edit is a metaphor
People struggle to separate the medium from the message, just like they struggle to separate the human from the crime. If you can't look past a stylized video to hear a clinical and psychological autopsy of systemic failure, you aren't ready for the conversation I'm having.
2. Consensus isn't truth
Sharing a video just to get your friends to agree with your hate isn't "activism," it's a performance. It's the "Social Validation Loop" in action. Needing a crowd to confirm your morality only proves that you are afraid to sit in the grey space alone.
3. We don't "click off" here
The easiest thing to do when a child is "messy, edgy, or broken" is to look away and call them a monster. My channel is for the people who refuse to click off. It is for those who are brave enough to ask "why?" even when the answer is ugly.
4. Disgust is a feeling; hate is a choice
It is natural to feel disgusted by a horrific act.
I feel it, too. But using that disgust as a license to attack my character or ignore the reality of adolescent mental health collapse is a choice. I won't tolerate performative hate here.
To my real community: Thank you for being the ones who stay. Thank you for being the ones who understand that humanity isn't a status you lose when you break, it's the reason we have to keep looking, even when it hurts.
We are looking for answers, not applause.
4 weeks ago | [YT] | 5
View 3 replies
Lyss
Forgiveness and empathy don't mean condoning, they mean refusing to strip someone of their humanity. And I'm right, the Netflix show about Dahmer didn't just portray, it romanticized. The soundtrack, the aesthetic framing, Evan Peters being cast, all of it was designed to pull viewers in and make it consumable, even "cool" in some twisted way. That's sensationalism, and it gets a free pass because it's "media." Meanwhile, my edits are niche, they're not shoved into millions of homes through a streaming platform, and I'm not glorifying anything except Alyssa's scene kid vibe. I'm engaging with her as a person, not a headline, and that distinction matters. Society loves fictional killers, dark media, creepypasta, slasher villains, we build whole fandoms around them. But the second someone does what I'm doing (acknowledging the person behind a real crime with complexity), it becomes taboo. That's because fictional horror serves as a buffer. It distracts people from the uncomfortable truth that real people, people who laughed, cried, wore scene outfits, listened to music just like us, commit crimes too. It's easier for society to channel all that fascination into fiction than to confront the reality that "evil" isn't some alien thing. It's messy, it's human, and it often comes from places we can recognize in ourselves. What I'm doing should be studied, honestly. It's not about condoning, it's about breaking down why we empathize with some figures and not others, why we forgive in fiction but condemn in reality. I'm poking at the uncomfortable gap most people don't want to acknowledge.
1 month ago | [YT] | 3
View 5 replies
Lyss
People come at me for making Alyssa edits like I'm "glorifying murder", when in reality I'm doing the opposite; I'm humanizing her. I'm pushing back against that lazy, sensationalist, black and white narrative and showing that she's not just a headline, she's a person. And yeah, that makes people uncomfortable, because it forces them to acknowledge that real life doesn't come in neat little packages. People are fine with Dahmer merch, Tiktoks thirsting over Evan Peters, serial killer documentaries that dramatize victims' last moments for entertainment.. but my edits are where they draw the line? That's not morality, it's hypocrisy. They like their killers fictionalized, aestheticized, and detached enough to enjoy. Alyssa's case isn't like that. It's messy. It demands empathy that isn't easy, and that's why they reject it. Alyssa's story doesn't have one neat "cause" or a cinematic villain. It's trauma, neglect, untreated mental illness, self-destruction, all of it tangled together until it imploded. That's not "comfortable" to look at. It doesn't give people an easy out. So instead, they just shut down compassion and call her "evil." The reality is, real life is messy. People can be both victims and perpetrators. People can to terrible things and still be more than their worst act. Reducing Alyssa to just "the girl who killed" doesn't make those people morally superior, it just proves they'd rather cling to a simple narrative than wrestle with complexity. And I think that's why my edits hit nerves, because I'm reminding people that empathy doesn't stop at the headline. That Alyssa still breathes, still exists, still matters. I'm not the bad guy for that. If anything, I'm doing the exact thing society refuses to: looking at her as a whole person.
1 month ago | [YT] | 7
View 4 replies
Lyss
The Dahmer Netflix series is such a good example: people literally thirsted over Evan Peters playing him, bought merch, made edits, and consumed it as entertainment, while it was based on horrific, real crimes with real victims' names attached. And somehow that gets normalized. Yet Alyssa, who was 15, mentally unstable, and dealing with deep neglect/trauma, gets flattened into "irredeemable monster." It's such a glaring hypocrisy. And Gypsy Rose? She's treated as a sympathetic figure (and in many ways, rightly so, her abuse was horrific), but Alyssa's abuse and neglect get brushed aside because her "narrative" isn't as clean or palatable. People want a clear villain and a clear victim. Gypsy fits the "heroic survivor" mold. Alyssa doesn't, so people shut off empathy for her. That doesn't mean her suffering wasn't real or that her mental health didn't collapse under the weight of it. Alyssa was a child herself. Adolescence is messy, brains aren't fully developed, emotions run wild, and without support or healthy outlets, things can spiral. She absolutely holds responsibility for what she did, but she's also not frozen in time at 15. She's grown, rehabilitated, and done good things since then, but people don't want to update their view of her. Meanwhile, adults can binge Dahmer and call him "interesting" or romanticize fictionalized killers without shame. That's the real kicker: people love the spectacle of violence when it's at a safe distance, but when it's a messy, real teen girl from Missouri, suddenly they want to be moral absolutists. The empathy extended to Gypsy should absolutely extend to Alyssa. Both were driven by extremes, both were failed by their environments, both committed crimes. But only one gets to be seen as a complicated human being. That's the hypocrisy.
1 month ago | [YT] | 4
View 2 replies
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