A friend of mine asked this, so I thought I'd make a post on it. After all, it does seem to be somewhat of a pattern in the current social climate.

• Firstly, the emotional roller coaster. Drama in general is an emotional roller coaster (which attracts women because it's stimulating), and since women are the largest consumers as a demographic (esp of media), they are going to be the target audience. This is why drama shows have exploded over the past 20 years or so. But as to why true crime is more popular to them then other drama shows—it's because of the following point:

• Women tend to be more intuitive/introspective than men via their neuroticism (they tend to overthink things, which is also why they suck at making good decisions). The plot twists intertwined with the seriousness of the situations is similar to their way of thinking: the plot twists are akin to their illogical rationale (i.e. how their mind takes wacky turns when interpreting something), and the seriousness being akin to their emotionality making seemingly small things much larger than they need to be. In this sense, it gives credence to their overthinking and validates it (or at least its process).

• They suffer from main character syndrome. This means they consider themselves to be the helpless victim who's saved or who is the subject to the hands of the powerful man, or (and this ties back to the previous point of it validating their general thought processes) they are the ones to solve the mystery. Usually it's a mix of both (double whammy effect).

• True crime is just another trend in modern social culture right now; it's hyped up and glamorized more so than, say, 30 years ago (and even just 5 or 6 years ago tbh). As women conform to social pressure more than men, they're going to follow along with the hype of other women and watch it more than they would otherwise. This makes up a significant portion of it.

• The black pill. Ted Bundy is attractive and one of the serial killers in the list. The Netflix series done on him used an overly attractive actor, and Netflix literally released a public message about it so that women could stop making sexual remarks about him (a lot of their replies and quote tweets about the series were full of lewd remarks).

• There's also a lot of sensationalism behind "bad" men who are rule-breakers, especially with those who can "beat the system" (i.e. get away with their crimes). It also shows true fearlessness and drive which is extremely attractive to women, not to mention exhilaration of going against society stimulating their minds well above normal due to potential danger/consequences. You simply cannot (truly) be this way and be weak as a man.

• This is why you'll sometimes see people in the manosphere rave about the Dark Triad being "inherently" attractive to women. It's not that being a bad, immoral person is attractive, it's that the type of men to not care about the social norms telling men to emasculate themselves are also the same type of men to not care about social norms dictating morality either. It's definitely something the mainstream manosphere misunderstands (plus, it doesn't make sense how women simultaneously conform to society and its social rules while liking men who break all of them).

• Nowadays, some guys try to resemble those so-called Dark Triad men by putting on a persona of not giving af or "being gangsta" or some stupid sh!t like that, but most of those guys are p*ssies outside of their group of friends, and the majority of women can tell the difference between those fake bad boys who try too hard and are really just going for a look vs someone who is ACTUALLY more dangerous than most. Men who are actually dangerous just have that edge to them.

• True crime is to women as gore is to men. Some people have an almost traumatic fixation on things like gore, most of whom are men for some reason. True crime is like that for women.

The weight of influence each of these points have on women vary from one woman to the next, with some being more than others. That's why true crime stands out a bit more than other drama/mystery cases. Plus, the hype of women who are more affected than others is enough to draw in interest from other women as well, creating a noticeable herd mentality due to women's strong social conformity. This is why point number 4 is larger than some of the others.

Lastly, there's one female misandrist serial killer. Her being female plays into the feminist narrative that's become apart of the gynocentric status quo we see today while also providing a different twist from the mainstream view that only men are serial killers. This gives it an angle that separates it from other crime and drama shows, making some other women who otherwise wouldn't watch these things more likely to. When you combine this with Ted Bundy's attractiveness, it adds to the social hype even more (which only further strengthens the point 4), making it a new niche genre that stands out from the rest. Not to mention how the whole "based on a true story" sells more since it feels more real; it's not just a "that was a nice movie" dynamic, it's a "this actually happened" dynamic. You can even read about the cases on Wikipedia, the story doesn't stop just because you turned off the TV. Plus, the realism makes it more "traumatic" so it lights your brain up more.

If Ted Bundy (and I suppose Richard Ramirez, for that matter) weren’t hot and that crazy woman didn't exist, true crime wouldn't be nearly as famous amongst women as it is today and wouldn't even beat House MD or other Sherlock-esque films/series in terms of female viewership.