Hybristophilia: Why Women Fall for Criminals — From TikTok to Ayn Rand
Monday, October 6, 2025.
Ted Bundy got marriage proposals in prison. Richard Ramirez, the “Night Stalker,” had fangirls camping outside the courthouse.
And today? TikTok is the new courtroom balcony, where millions publicly swoon over killers in slick edits set to sad-girl audio.
There’s a word for this: hybristophilia — sexual attraction to criminals. It sounds like a rare orchid, but psychologists use it to describe a very old phenomenon: finding danger desirable.
A recent study confirms TikTok is fueling it, showing that actively engaging with videos that romanticize criminals predicts higher hybristophilia scores among young women.
Personality traits like psychopathy and Machiavellianism were the strongest predictors (Treggia et al., 2024).
Simply scrolling past Bundy edits doesn’t count. Clicking “like” does.
TikTok’s Criminal Crush Aesthetic
Researchers analyzed 66 TikTok videos and 91 comments posted between 2020 and 2024. From that glossy content emerged seven themes:
The Halo Effect – Attractive offenders reframed as “misunderstood.”
Actor-Offender Confusion – Zac Efron plays Ted Bundy, and suddenly Bundy’s hot too.
Romanticizing Antisocial Traits – Stalking recast as loyalty. (See: Joe Goldberg from the tv show You).
Protection & Loyalty – Violence interpreted as devotion.
“I Can Fix Him” – The Florence Nightingale complex, true crime edition.
Gen Z Irony – Dark memes and sarcasm as plausible deniability.
Victim Fantasy – The unsettling minority eroticizing their own endangerment.
Apparently, murder looks better in high-resolution clips with soft lighting.
Ayn Rand and Her Murderous “Superman”
Hybristophilia is not a TikTok invention. Even Ayn Rand, long before she wrote The Fountainhead, scribbled adoringly in her journals about William Edward Hickman, a charismatic young man who kidnapped and dismembered 12-year-old Marian Parker in 1927.
Newspapers called him “The Fox.” Rand described him admiringly as a “superman,” praising his indifference to conventional morality (Rand, 1997).
Yes, the same Ayn Rand who built a philosophy around rational self-interest once warmed her ideals on a child-killer.
Philosophical consistency was not her strongest suit. But she clearly minored in psychopathy.
Her fixation mirrors today’s TikTok scripts: the halo effect, projection of ideals, and the eternal “I can fix him” fantasy. Rand had her diary; Gen Z has hashtags.
The script endures.
The Halo Effect: Beauty, Crime, and New Research
For decades, psychologists assumed attractive offenders got leniency — the so-called halo effect (Mazzella & Feingold, 1994). But more recent research complicates things:
Knox & TenEyck (2023) found that attractiveness alone reduced odds of arrest and conviction — but when grooming and personality cues were factored in, beauty sometimes increased exposure to justice (Knox & TenEyck, 2023).
A large analysis confirmed attractive people were 14% less likely to be convicted, but the benefit weakened or reversed once personality was considered (PMC10566695).
A 2023 study found no consistent attractiveness bias in guilt judgments at all (SAGE, 2023).
A few cases even show a beauty penalty: attractive defendants punished more harshly if their looks seemed part of the crime — swindles, seductions, scams (PMC6775219).
So, beauty is a double-edged sword: it can excuse or condemn. TikTok, however, reliably amplifies only the leniency side.
Why Dangerous Men Remain Attractive
The TikTok survey confirmed that engagement with criminals is predictive of hybristophilia, and traits like psychopathy and Machiavellianism make it more likely (Treggia et al., 2024).
From a therapeutic angle, the eroticization of danger persists because it scratches several psychological itches:
Projection – Offenders serve as canvases for fantasies of power or devotion. (Think Harley Quinn insisting she’s the Joker’s salvation.)
Thrill-Seeking – Risk itself becomes erotic, especially for those high in sensation-seeking (Baughman et al., 2014). Why else did half of Tumblr want to marry Kylo Ren?
Control Fantasies – “I can fix him” isn’t romance. It’s a trauma echo — the child rehearsing mastery over chaos.
Cultural Glamorization – From Bonnie and Clyde to Netflix’s Dahmer, we package pathology as charisma (Schmidt, 2014).
And though research mostly examines women, men are not immune. Case in point: male fans who romanticize Casey Anthony or Karla Homolka. Hybristophilia crosses gender lines, though less often.
A Therapist’s Note of Caution
Dark humor online can be harmless. But irony often masks desire. For some, hybristophilia is just another meme. For others, it’s the residue of attachment wounds — confusing intensity for intimacy, reenacting trauma by loving someone unsafe.
The “I can fix him” fantasy is rarely about him. It’s about trying, once again, to repair what couldn’t be repaired in childhood.
People Also Ask
What is hybristophilia?
It’s sexual attraction to criminals, sometimes called “Bonnie and Clyde syndrome.”
Why do some women find criminals attractive?
Projection, thrill-seeking, and reform fantasies. Danger often gets mistaken for passion.
Is this new to Gen Z?
No. Ayn Rand admired Hickman in the 1920s. The impulse is old; TikTok is just amplifying it.
What is the eroticization of danger?
The transformation of threat into allure. Outlaws, antiheroes, and killers are recast as passionate lovers.
Does attractiveness affect how criminals are judged?
Yes, but inconsistently. Sometimes beauty softens judgment; other times it may trigger a “beauty penalty.”
Why does society glamorize criminals?
Because it’s a safe way to flirt with danger. Culture keeps grinding out hybristophilia for us — from outlaw ballads to TikTok edits.
Final Word
Hybristophilia is older than TikTok. Rand’s Hickman crush, Bundy’s love letters, Jeremy Meeks’ modeling contract — the same story repeats: dangerous men recast as desirable.
What’s new is the platform. Rand had a diary; TikTok has algorithms.
The danger isn’t only that some confuse irony with intimacy. It’s that culture itself keeps monetizing us to eroticized danger.
The dangerous man doesn’t need fixing. He needs fucking handcuffs.
What may need fixing instead is our appetite for the dangerous story — the way we keep mistaking peril for passion, and intensity for intimacy.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Baughman, H. M., Jonason, P. K., Lyons, M., & Vernon, P. A. (2014). Liar, liar pants on fire: Cheater strategies linked to the Dark Triad. Personality and Individual Differences, 71, 35–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.04.028
Knox, D., & TenEyck, M. F. (2023). Beauty is only skin deep: An examination of physical attractiveness, attractive personality, and personal grooming on criminal justice outcomes. PLOS ONE, 18(9), e0291922. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291922
Mazzella, R., & Feingold, A. (1994). The effects of physical attractiveness, race, socioeconomic status, and gender of defendants and victims on judgments of mock jurors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24(15), 1315–1344. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1994.tb01552.x
Rand, A. (1997). Journals of Ayn Rand. Edited by David Harriman. New York: Dutton. Archive link
Schmidt, R. (2014). “I love you to death”: Collectivizing hybristophilia—the erotic attraction to criminals. Deviant Behavior, 35(5), 384–400. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2013.859051
Shechory-Bitton, M., & Cohen-Louck, K. (2014). Women who love inmates: Attachment styles and personality differences. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 58(10), 1149–1166. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X13495112
Treggia, E. V., Ioannou, M., Tzani, C., Lester, D., Rogers, L., Williams, T. J. V., Synnott, J., & Drouin, M. (2024). Gen Z hybristophilia: The role of TikTok in young women’s attraction to deviant men. Deviant Behavior. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2024.xxxxx