I watched a show recently, Vexed, where the main characters are discussing the suitability of a flat over a corpse. They become so wrapped up in the nature of the apartment that they forget (apparently) that a deceased person is below them, her last moments bled out on the floor. Are you laughing yet?

Murder-mystery shows are something I've long avoided because of the tendency to background victims. Usually, the victims are simply plot fuel to move the story along. They are faceless, nameless, valueless; they function as editorial glue to keep the puzzle in place so that the reader or watcher can figure out who is responsible for the murder. Vexed simply takes this trend to its logical end -- the victims are treated as objects of contempt, openly ignored or mocked.

I recoil against this, and twine with the words of John Donne, "One man's death diminishes us all." So anything that I let into myself must essentially value human beings. The few murder-mystery shows I do watch tend to be heavy, because they are emotionally honest. The true crime stalwarts (Dateline, 48 Hours) do this really well, because they deal with actual people and actual cases. They never forget the human cost of murder.

In contrast to that, I've known people who are obsessed with serial killers; I know of no-one who is obsessed with the victims of serial killers. Not only do some people geek out about such sordid subjects, they try to justify it as helping others, or criminal profiling, or something else, but the reality is not so. The more that criminals are celebrated, the less the victims are remembered, until the only shadow cast is by those who have ended the lives of others. Quick - name the victims of Jack the Ripper. Can you? I cannot.

All of us have become infected with murderphilia, to some degree or another.

Yet there is a way out -- stop glamorizing murder. Mourn and grieve, instead. Even choosing to know nothing at all about it is better. Do not publish the details of the crime. Do not spend time trying to analyze their thinking and spread that knowledge everywhere; we already know their characteristics. To care about people means to do what we can to stop serial killers from developing, but how much effort has been expended in that direction? I don't know of any. That would save lives, but doing that would also starve the sick of their thrills, repudiate the bloodthirsty reporters, and shame all those involved in such charnel feasts. So the death parade goes on, because the lives of the innocent are not as valuable as the lives of the guilty and their fetishized admirers -- the murderphiles.

Murderphiles are ghouls, incisors sharpened, sitting at a festal table of bones, their lips caked with blood. And they move from house to house, never satiated, turning them into abandoned husks like in a zombie apocalypse; theirs is the nation of Murderphilia; ours is the nation of Murderphilia.