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.
It is kind of wild how easily people extend empathy to fictional characters who commit terrible things, yet shut it off instantly when it comes to a real person. With creepypasta, horror movies, even shows like Dexter or Hannibal, people will go deep into "but here's why they're like this" mode. They'll sympathize, excuse, even romanticize. But when it's someone real, like Alyssa, suddenly that empathy is "off limits." Recognizing her humanity and her circumstances isn't the same as condoning the act. It's just refusing to erase her in the process. There are reasons, not excuses. She didn't wake up one day and do this is a vacuum; she was a teenager carrying unbearable weight, in an environment where she didn't (or couldn't) get what she needed. And when someone that young is pushed that far without help, tragedy can follow. Honestly, I think the reason people resist applying that same compassion to real cases is because it forces them to confront something uncomfortable: that evil acts don't always come from "evil people." Sometimes they come from hurting, neglected, or misunderstood ones. And that's scarier than anything fictional.
I'm going to say this once so I don't have to keep repeating myself in comment sections.
Discussing or analyzing a perpetrator is not the same thing as excusing, defending, or idolizing them. Acknowledging that someone is a human being does not erase the harm they caused, and it does not center them over their victim. Two things can be true at the same time:
1. A crime can be horrific and unforgivable
2. The person who committed it did not stop being human the moment they did it
If your position is that trying to understand why something happened automatically means approval, then we fundamentally disagree, and that's fine. You don't have to agree with my content, and I'm not trying to convince you to.
What I won't engage with:
1. Comments assigning intent to me that you can't possibly know
2. Claims that I'm obsessed, idolizing or hiding behind anything
3. Moral accusations framed as certainty about who I am as a person
At that point, it's no longer a discussion about ideas, it's a personal attack, and I won't participate in those.
You're allowed to feel disgust, anger, or discomfort. Those reactions make sense. But disagreement doesn't require character assassination, and outrage isn't the same thing as insight.
If this content isn't for you, that's okay. Scroll, mute, block, protect your peace. I'll do the same.
You are not "exposing" me by disagreeing. You're just stating an opinion. I'm not obligated to debate my morality with strangers, and I'm done pretending I am.
If someone insists on misunderstanding me after clarification, that misunderstanding is serving them.
In true crime, a case's entire narrative can be hijacked by a single, terrifying phrase. For young perpetrators, this often means the media ignored years of documented trauma and mental illness, and instead, elevates one chilling diary entry, or callous quote, or one short soundbite as the only truth.
This is the sensational quote trap. It's a calculated rhetorical move that serves to simplify a complex, tragic life into a clean, sensational headline.
A short shocking statement (like "I did it for fun") is pulled entirely out of context from hundreds of pages of court documents, psychiatric evaluations, and case history.
Because the quote is emotionally jarring, it's easy to repeat, fits perfectly into a news ticker, and generated instant outrage. The media amplifies it until it becomes the public's primary memory of the case.
Once amplified, the quote effectively erases all the difficult, inconvenient facts that surround it: the self harm history, the untreated severe depression, the lack of parental stability.
When a case is boiled down to one soundbite, it allows the public to perform the Fundamental Attribution Error we discussed, it attributes the crime solely to a brief moment of inherent cruelty, not the long, agonizing process of psychological breakdown.
This trap makes empathy impossible, not because the facts don't exist, but because they are made invisible by the sensational headline. The complex reality, that a child drowning in mental pain made a monstrous choice, is replaced by a marketable, black and white villain.
If we want to understand and prevent violence, we have to look past the headline and ask: what is the full paragraph surrounding that one shocking sentence?
Lyss
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. 🩶
1 day ago | [YT] | 3
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.
3 days ago | [YT] | 3
View 7 replies
Lyss
If you need to call me names to feel morally safe, go ahead.
4 days ago | [YT] | 5
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 days ago | [YT] | 3
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.
6 days ago | [YT] | 2
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.
6 days ago | [YT] | 6
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 week ago | [YT] | 3
View 2 replies
Lyss
It is kind of wild how easily people extend empathy to fictional characters who commit terrible things, yet shut it off instantly when it comes to a real person. With creepypasta, horror movies, even shows like Dexter or Hannibal, people will go deep into "but here's why they're like this" mode. They'll sympathize, excuse, even romanticize. But when it's someone real, like Alyssa, suddenly that empathy is "off limits." Recognizing her humanity and her circumstances isn't the same as condoning the act. It's just refusing to erase her in the process. There are reasons, not excuses. She didn't wake up one day and do this is a vacuum; she was a teenager carrying unbearable weight, in an environment where she didn't (or couldn't) get what she needed. And when someone that young is pushed that far without help, tragedy can follow. Honestly, I think the reason people resist applying that same compassion to real cases is because it forces them to confront something uncomfortable: that evil acts don't always come from "evil people." Sometimes they come from hurting, neglected, or misunderstood ones. And that's scarier than anything fictional.
1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 3
View 0 replies
Lyss
I'm going to say this once so I don't have to keep repeating myself in comment sections.
Discussing or analyzing a perpetrator is not the same thing as excusing, defending, or idolizing them. Acknowledging that someone is a human being does not erase the harm they caused, and it does not center them over their victim. Two things can be true at the same time:
1. A crime can be horrific and unforgivable
2. The person who committed it did not stop being human the moment they did it
If your position is that trying to understand why something happened automatically means approval, then we fundamentally disagree, and that's fine. You don't have to agree with my content, and I'm not trying to convince you to.
What I won't engage with:
1. Comments assigning intent to me that you can't possibly know
2. Claims that I'm obsessed, idolizing or hiding behind anything
3. Moral accusations framed as certainty about who I am as a person
At that point, it's no longer a discussion about ideas, it's a personal attack, and I won't participate in those.
You're allowed to feel disgust, anger, or discomfort. Those reactions make sense. But disagreement doesn't require character assassination, and outrage isn't the same thing as insight.
If this content isn't for you, that's okay. Scroll, mute, block, protect your peace. I'll do the same.
You are not "exposing" me by disagreeing. You're just stating an opinion. I'm not obligated to debate my morality with strangers, and I'm done pretending I am.
If someone insists on misunderstanding me after clarification, that misunderstanding is serving them.
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 5
View 3 replies
Lyss
In true crime, a case's entire narrative can be hijacked by a single, terrifying phrase. For young perpetrators, this often means the media ignored years of documented trauma and mental illness, and instead, elevates one chilling diary entry, or callous quote, or one short soundbite as the only truth.
This is the sensational quote trap. It's a calculated rhetorical move that serves to simplify a complex, tragic life into a clean, sensational headline.
A short shocking statement (like "I did it for fun") is pulled entirely out of context from hundreds of pages of court documents, psychiatric evaluations, and case history.
Because the quote is emotionally jarring, it's easy to repeat, fits perfectly into a news ticker, and generated instant outrage. The media amplifies it until it becomes the public's primary memory of the case.
Once amplified, the quote effectively erases all the difficult, inconvenient facts that surround it: the self harm history, the untreated severe depression, the lack of parental stability.
When a case is boiled down to one soundbite, it allows the public to perform the Fundamental Attribution Error we discussed, it attributes the crime solely to a brief moment of inherent cruelty, not the long, agonizing process of psychological breakdown.
This trap makes empathy impossible, not because the facts don't exist, but because they are made invisible by the sensational headline. The complex reality, that a child drowning in mental pain made a monstrous choice, is replaced by a marketable, black and white villain.
If we want to understand and prevent violence, we have to look past the headline and ask: what is the full paragraph surrounding that one shocking sentence?
1 month ago | [YT] | 5
View 0 replies
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