This shows a beast. They call it Monster. It’ll eat your screen time like Jeffrey Dahmer. If you haven’t seen it you’ve definitely heard of it. It’s like some kind of slang or new lingo, part of Tik Tok’s most debated controversy. It’s placed in Netflix’s Top 10 for five weeks and counting, and a story known across the globe. After nearly three decades, this story has jumped back into mainstream media. But who was Dahmer? And why does this new hit series have such a strong chokehold on today’s media? It’s time to discuss the Dahmer debate.

Jeffery Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960. He was 18 when he murdered his first victim, Steven Hicks on June 18, 1978. The rest of his killings went as follows: Steven Tumoi, Jamie Doxtator, Richard Guerrero, Anthony Sears, Ricky Beeks, Eddie Smith, Ernest Miller, David Thomas, Curtis Straughter, Errol Lindsey, Anthony Hughes, Konerak Sinthasomphone, Matt Turner, Jeremiah Weinberger, Oliver Lacy and lastly Joseph Bradehoft in 1991. A whole paragraph of lives lost. It’s the gravity of Dahmer’s crimes that makes Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story so controversial. There’s an uproar about how the victim’s families never knew about Monster until it was released. Rita Isbell, the sister of Errol Lindsey, said to Insider, “I was never contacted about the show… I feel like Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. They didn’t ask me anything. They just did it.”

Viewers love to sink their teeth into a good crime show, and you yourself have likely settled into your cozy blankets on a late October night to watch a toe curling thriller. But hardly anyone gives a second thought to the real life victims of the horrors that fill your screen. Junior Jax Kobey said, “I think a show that’s about a serial killer was made just for the money should not have been made.”

On the other hand, fans are praising Netflix for a job well done. Social media posts compare footage from Dahmer’s trial with clips from Monster to display how the scenes are down ‘to a T’. Everything from the actor’s clothes and gestures to camera angles and speech delivery prove that Netflix told the story right and left viewers with new insight. Senior Louis Falcon said, “It’s just crazy, they [the police] should’ve been aware of it, there was something wrong with Dahmer, they should’ve done more.”

But that’s not all. Plenty of teens on Tiktok have their own ideas about the show. Senior Megan Ziafat said, “Weirdly enough I’ve been seeing edits romanticizing Jeffrey and the things that he did.” Those who have romantic feelings say it’s not Jeffery they like, but the actor who plays him, Evan Peters. This raises the question: are serial killers glorified in modern media? Falcon said, “Yeah they are, you heard of the Night Stalker? He was glorified”.

The internet can’t decide what’s right and what’s wrong, but perhaps one thing can be concluded: Netflix created a Monster.