If you have been on the internet in the last two months, you may have heard of Wade Wilson. He’s a Florida man recently convicted of murdering two women in cold blood, who went viral because a certain faction of deeply disturbed folks on TikTok decided he was super hot.
In 2019, Wilson went home from a bar with a woman and strangled her to death in the middle of the night. Then he stole her car, asked a lady on her way to work for directions, proceeded to strangle that lady also, and then ran her over with the stolen car approximately 15 times. Yeah. He’s a gem.
His trial for the double murder began in late June, and his first appearances in court sent TikTok into a frenzy. Wilson is quite tall, with what maybe used to be a conventionally attractive face, now covered in some truly wild tattoos. Including two swastikas. And some other white supremacist markings. Oh, yeah, and stitches all across his mouth like a Joker smile. Some decided that, despite damning evidence that he brutally murdered two women in cold blood, he’s hot.
To be perfectly clear, we are talking about Wade Wilson the convicted murderer, not Wade Wilson the phenomenal Marvel character also known as Deadpool, played by Ryan Reynolds, who it is perfectly acceptable to thirst after.
Naturally, when people began to make edits about how sexy he is, some even calling for him to be freed, the rest of the internet fought back. And when the internet disagrees, of course, there will be blame. It’s a valid question that many asked, why on earth would women express attraction for a man who is so objectively horrible? The answer some came to was a proliferation of dark romance novels romanticizing dangerous men.
The thing is, unhealthy attraction to attractive monsters is not a new thing. Long before the rampant popularity of authors like Shantel Tessier, Rina Kent, and H.D. Carlton, women were falling all over themselves for Ted Bundy. And he’s just the most famous example.
Dark romance is fiction, and I believe most (emphasis on most, the lady who married Ted Bundy is an outlier) people can make the distinction between what is fun to read about and what actually makes a good partner.
More importantly, even the darkest of dark romance male main characters do not have swastikas tattooed on them. Very few of them kill innocents (although these books do exist, and there is a market for them). And more importantly, no actual women were harmed in the making of these stories, which cannot be said in the case of Wade Wilson.
Obviously, this is an unsettling piece of our culture. It’s uncomfortable to watch people turn a piece of shit into a god because he’s kind of tall. But blaming dark romance novels for this behavior is like blaming video games for school shootings. It ignores the deeper sociological reasoning for this kind of behavior, which I am no expert in, and will not attempt to explain, but certainly must be there.
Ultimately, these TikTok edits are insulting to the families of the victims, people of color, and anyone who has been victim to the kind of violence that Wade Wilson perpetrated. Rage against this strange phenomenon all you want, but place blame where it truly lies and not with dark romance novels.
Leave a Reply