While the personal diary was once reserved for this sort of behavior, in the 21st century the internet has become the primary home for voicing horrible opinions. Bhad Bhabie is the American Dream. Mr. Krabs is thicc. And now, serial killer Ted Bundy is having a moment. With the release of Netflix’s Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and the first trailer for the Zac Efron–as-Bundy movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the internet—specifically Twitter—has once again decided to be the worst:
To outline the hypothesis that has gained a disconcerting amount of momentum in the past six days: Theodore Robert Bundy, a man who confessed to killing 30 women between the years 1974 and 1978, a man who likely killed even more women than that, could have, as they say, gotten it.
Why, in a world where men like Chris Evans and Robert Redford exist, do people have the inexplicable urge to label Ted Bundy “hot”? To attempt to answer that question, I turned to the people who work beside me, the people who spend a majority of their days on this grotesque cesspool known as the internet.
“I don’t understand people who obsess over how hot he is, but by conventional standards … I mean, he’s a relatively attractive person, right?” editor Molly McHugh pondered. “On [My Favorite Murder] they talk about how he was something of a shape-shifter as far as his clothes and hair and how he would try and fit in.”
“Personally, I think he’s ‘jerk-off ex-boyfriend of the female lead in a romantic comedy’ hot, at best,” Rob Harvilla, who recently reviewed the Ted Bundy Tapes, told me in a Slack message.
This ordinariness has been as much a part of Bundy’s narrative as the murders themselves. Much of Bundy’s appeal, the argument goes, is his ability to blend in with the rest of us; his so-called “hotness” derives from the fact that he looks exceptionally average. And that is where the unavoidable truth regarding the horror of his crimes come in. If you ask this debased pocket of the internet, Bundy’s acts do not negate his appeal—they enhance it.
“People love the forbidden. It’s why everyone is thirsting after Joe on You,” said TV writer Alison Herman, referencing another (albeit fictional) problematic creep propped up by Netflix. “Also, they understand Ted Bundy as an abstract fictional character, much like the lead of any other Netflix drama.”
It’s true. The streaming giant has an uncanny ability to craft Internet Boyfriends, most notably non-murderers Noah Centineo and Jacob Elordi. To its credit, Netflix hasn’t pushed The Ted Bundy Tapes the same way it promoted The Kissing Booth, but the association remains. As many logged on this weekend to watch an episode of The Office they’d already seen 15 times (this is a made-up example not at all based on personal experience), they were met with large images of Bundy’s smiling face, possibly sitting right next to that of Centineo. “Behold all of our dashingly handsome men, a group that includes serial killer Ted Bundy,” the Netflix homepage seems to say.
Within The Ted Bundy Tapes, Harvilla notes that there is a “weird fixation on his handsomeness,” though he is quick to add that it is “not supported by the evidence.” Maybe this—and the ongoing dialogue surrounding Bundy’s charm and attractiveness—shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, the first episode is titled “Handsome Devil.” Still, on Monday, perhaps sensing it had partially and inadvertently elevated a convicted murderer to bae status, Netflix stated on Twitter that people ought not regard Bundy with the Centineos of the streaming world:
Which brings us to Movie Ted Bundy.
The “Ted Bundy Is Hot” movement swelled when Zac Efron was cast in a biopic about the killer, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, and reemerged when the first trailer for the film was released:
By the hotness transitive property, we see that Zac Efron = hot, and that Zac Efron is playing Ted Bundy; thus Ted Bundy = hot. Sound logic, but perhaps evidence that one’s ethics should never be founded on mathematical axioms. Digging deeper, though: The person responsible for the above tweet purports to be “very sarcastic” in their Twitter bio, which suggests a different, though equally troubling, motivation beneath the movement. Perhaps this is just the work of amateur edgelords on Twitter, thirsty not for Ted Bundy, but for retweets. True-crime aficionado and cohost of The Flat Circle: A True Detective Aftershow Jason Concepcion expounded on this idea: “I think the ‘Ted is hot’ thing is also part of the internet’s long tradition of weirdo transgressive objectification of people who are not usually physically objectified, i.e., ‘the hot mugshot guy,’ and so on.” Given the subject and the context, perhaps those tweeting various forms of “Ted Bundy is hot” have seen this comedy model work in the past and hope that they too will be retweeted by @KaleSalad.
The desire to be seen as “edgy” and “cool” on Twitter is a relatable one. But saying you want Ted Bundy to run you over with a truck or throw you off a building is likely going too far, as Ted Bundy may have been all too willing to comply with that request.
So why do people think Ted Bundy is hot? That’s a question with numerous answers. But regardless of whether it’s part of a dark comedy routine or a predilection for bad boys, one thing is for sure: “Ted Bundy is hot” is a part of internet culture we don’t have to partake in. Sometimes—and basically every time, when it comes to calling serial killers hot—the best thing to do is nothing at all.