The Unravelling of an Expert on Serial Killers | Hacker News Reader

The Unravelling of an Expert on Serial Killers

newyorker.com

86 pointsbenbreen52 comments

I don't really like the habit of profiling relatively inconsequential transgressions of people, especially if the people aren't that relevant today. I don't think this guy necessarily deserved a New Yorker article about any lies he told in the past.

Am I supposed to be mad at him? As a matter of fact I've already forgiven him after reading this. The lies made him more interesting.

>Am I supposed to be mad at him?

Families of the victims should be mad , yes. He preyed on their need for solace and made money out of it :-(

I took away a lesson (which is closer to the ethos of HN)

If something has gathered momentum (someone doing something unbelievable or something that other people are harping about), dig a bit deeper. Either you'll discover something nice or you can debunk the hype. Either way, you would have learned something.

> which is closer to the ethos of HN

HN has an ethos? I thought there were just a set of guidelines.

The HN ethos has one rule: Each level of comments shall disagree with the level before it, with the article counting as level 0.

First-tier comments shall disagree with the article. Second-tier comments shall disagree with first-tier comments and agree with the article if necessary (but only when necessary). Third-tier comments shall disagree with second-tier comments and may or may not be related to the article, and so on.

that's very good, but there are some exceptions. If the article is about any health related topics, terminal illnesses, diet studies, etc., no matter how interesting, all comments shall be tangentially related personal anecdotes.

And any article along the lines of "I had a terrible work experience" is viewed as an open invitation to participate in Story Time.

Which I actually love - best part of HN is the pub talk

I click them more often than not.

My favorite part of HN is that the comments are usually collectively better than the article.

Now this comment can neither agree nor disagree. Barber shaving their own head and such. EDIT: now I realize not really since the above being false doesn't force me to agree.

All articles are true in some sense, false in some some sense, and meaningless in some sense.

All comments are true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, true in some sense, false in some some sense, and meaningless in some sense.

It’s turtles all the way down.

I agree with you

and by doing so you disagree, thus proving their point.

Soo .. did I disagree with the OP of this thread? ;-)

My comment disagrees with itself

Of course, this is not the ethos, and whatshisface is completely wrong on account of also of having a forgettable name. I'll often see someone chime in to agree as well as to disagree, to clarify. It's all just a bit.

I thought the rule was to inject a personal connection to everything.

As a frequent reader of HN, this has been my experience.

> The HN ethos has one rule: Each level of comments shall disagree with the level before it, with the article counting as level 0.

this doesn't sound right.

That was my feeling. I got to the end of the article and thought -- was that it? Nothing is grubbier than the pieces about serial killers, and this isn't even that: it's a piece about someone who writes pieces about serial killers. Who is a bit of a fantasist, so what? Not even entirely a fantasist! He'd inflated the number of serial killers he's interviewed. The fewer the serial killers who are talked to, the fewer who have attention given to them, the better, frankly...

Perhaps it being from a different culture makes it seem less important? But yes, it's bad to lie and make up things people say and sell those lies for money and to burnish your reputation.

It does make you question what type of person is fascinated with murder so much that they lie and fantasize about it.

The kind of person who wants to make more money. Crime stories sell really well, like half of the top podcasts right now are true crime based.

Better to make up that you talked to a serial killer than convict someone through hearsay like so many of those podcasts do.

I mean you sort of are describing a sociopath. Lots of murders are motivated by profit.

They aren't murdering anyone though, just writing stories. Almost everyone is motivated by profit, it's not some unique trait of sociopaths.

When they lie about experience with serial killers in order to profit, that is definitely a sign that something is messed up in their life.

Very uninteresting story droning on in long form. I could not make it through it.

He still tells the lies, to this day. I'm a bit puzzled why you perceived the article as describing someone's past lies.

You're not supposed to be mad at him, you're supposed to be engrossed by a fascinating story with lots of depth. It's a biographical piece, not a referendum, or call to action.

I guess I was wondering if I should be mad because I didn't find it that fascinating of a story. I personally know multiple people who have told more fantastic lies than the ones this guy has told. Admittedly the way the story was framed I was almost expecting it to be about him killing his partner and becoming a serial killer expert to explore his guilt, so the lie that it never happened seemed tame in comparison.

I am kind of fascinated by this concept of "mandatory feelings" seemingly many people operate with. I don't know whether you should be mad or not. It does not make sense to me as a question ... either you are mad or not. Why should someone else dictate your emotional reaction.

Agreed, no idea why they keep asking how they should feel.

Idk dude, you tell me!

I mean I don't think it's that tricky of a concept. Every piece of writing, or art for that matter, is generally supposed to elicit some sort of feeling. The only one this piece made me want to feel was anger or indignation toward the serial killer expert, which I thought was pretty unfair and one-dimensional way of presenting the man. He was well respected in the crime community and by law enforcement, and because he made up a relatively harmless lie the New Yorker kind of eviscerated him in the last paragraph...all to drive home the point you shouldn't lie I guess? Life's more complicated than that.

IMHO part and parcel with the general increase in skepticism/distrust the past few years. Hard for me to verbalize. Feels very similar to the feeling I get as soon as someone starts telling me about what "They" think and do.

Let me try verbalizing this: People's own motivations tend to distort their own perception of other people's motivations and whether people are motivated in a direction at all: we see it here simply as this person was probably estatic just to have the opportunity to write for the New Yorker, much less for a paycheck, yet the immediate comments at the time were focused on noting how they felt about, broadly, "cancelling", and assumed this was an instance of such.

My 3rd biggest passion is finding a way to disarm the Theys and guesses at motivation. I never, ever, can...the way I do it in my own personal life is being very upfront and active, possibly rudely so, in asking people if I'm unsure. Everyone's on twitter?

I have no doubt most media outlets have “so-so” quality stories that get run when nothing better is available.

Maybe this was one of them?

We can hold people that make non-violent mistakes to account. As much as I bristle at the modern tendency for public shaming, this sort of premeditated lying is worth the piece (assuming the human interest is there, of course).

You’re supposed to be mad at him.

> I don't think this guy necessarily deserved a New Yorker article

I am not familiar with New Yorker, but looking at their front page they would present to their readers any article they think is well written.

I see a movie staff interview and cow documentary review. This piece could pretty much fit I think, it looks to me like its primary purpose was to provide a long read to the readers, and not change the world in some dramatic way.

If you're not a New Yorker subscriber and have run out of free articles, there's a good free-to-read account of him in this Guardian article from November 2021: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/nov/09/secrets-of-top-... (There are some quotes from this article in the New Yorker piece).

Or: https://archive.ph/Qv2i3

"Sadly" their system isn't that bulletproof, I have Firefox set to clear cookies on exit, and when I reopen Firefox, it forgets that I ran out of free articles.

"Luckily" they know that! Porous paywalls are price discrimination. Someone willing to restart their browser/wiggle their VPN/watch an ad etc. is just not at the point in their life where they are likely to pay, so it's intended to allow you to read without making the paying customers feel like they paid for nothing.

The next step ip is to replace some (but not all) of the agony with some (but not all) of the price: coupons, year-end sales, bundles etc.

Or you can simply disable javascript on uBlock Origin; works a treat on many sites (including the NYT).

there's a browser extension for this.

Since this entertaining article is profiling a fraud by using at least one criminal profiler as a source, it’s worth pointing out that whole discipline is of rather dubious merit.

Good article, but I thought this one [1] in The Guardian, written by Scott Sayare last year (and which this article seems to be based on), was better at explaining the severity of Bourgoin's transgressions. He is clearly a shady character who built his career on inventing connections with famous people, and nothing he writes or says should be trusted.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/nov/09/secrets-of-top-...

TLDR he made up most of the stories on his side of things. He wasn’t a serial killer himself.

Yep. I found reading the Wikipedia page was sufficient. Reading pretentious long article on this is pointless.

Reading the article and the writing in the New Yorker for many people IS the point.

Not everyone emulates a machine and just wants data.

Once you grow up, you'll stop just trying to score points. And the only one pretending anything here is those that feel their "just the facts" attitude to life is somehow superior.

Like, riddle me this: if you're such a rational genius that you're never motivated by this girly weakness called emotions, what's the point of telling us about it?

Thank you. I wish somebody did it to every NewYorker "article".

Yes! Shakespeare too! "TDLR: They both die". So much better ! /s

Shakespeare starts Romeo and Juliet with a TL;DR for you. No need to add one

This will be on the ap test\ Take time to not\ Read this intro in jest

TL;DR: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stéphane_Bourgoin

I’ve been traveling internationally and I’m hoping this is in the print edition piling up at my house.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com