Today on the Lindy Newsletter
Getting away with Murder
One mystery of the 20th century is why serial killers suddenly appeared for a few decades and then disappeared
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What was so unique about these 4 decades that led to an explosion of men who killed random people over and over again without getting caught?

If you search for serial killers throughout history you won't find a ton. Sure, they existed, a little bit. But nothing like the 4 decade Serial Killer era.
“Of 2,604 identified serial killers in the United States during the twentieth century, an astonishing 89.5 percent (2,331) made their appearance between 1950 to 1999, with 88 percent of those appearing in just the three decades from 1970 to 1999—the ‘epidemic’ peak years"
Most people grew up and lived their entire lives where they were born. They knew everyone in the community. It's tough to get away with murder when everyone knows each other. Even when the first cities started during the industrialization, people lived in ethnic neighborhoods. They transported the village to the city.

Even someone like Donald Trump in Queens knew everyone in the 50s and early 60s.
Jane Jacobs calls this the eyes on the street.
Everyone is watching everyone. That's how it's always been.

But American society of the 1940s is not American society of the 1970s and 1980s.
Mass suburbanization happened.
The interstate highway happened.
people started moving around anonymously
The cities started decaying
Films like Taxi Driver came out in the late 70s. Dark gritty tales of alienation

The eyes on the street were gone. People didn't know their neighbors as much. The organic lindy prevention of serial murder was gone
All of a sudden we can live in a society where you could murder people randomly over and over and get away with.
These guys weren't masterminds. They just walked into someone's house, killed them, and walked out.
the police were not equipped to deal with this societal change.

There was a big emphasis on "psychological state" of serial killers. The talking heads sung about it in 1977.
But people who grew up with trauma and childhood issues always have existed.
Except they didn't live in a society where they could act out their most terrible impulse without being stopped. That was the change
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Why did it end?
Technology
Cameras are everywhere. especially ring cameras now. Cell phones, etc. DNA evidence improved. police forensics improved.
Essentially we had to become a surveillance state to stop the serial killer era.
In order to bring us back to a more lindy time of everyone knowing each other and doing civic policing, we had to accept massive surveillance.
A huge trade-off.

But this era has had profound effects.
Today streaming services do huge numbers with serial killer content. We are intrigued by these people and the era they lived in.

We have our own killers today. The mass shooters. These guys come along every week now. But we have zero curiosity of these people outside of the first (Columbine). They come and go. It's just not interesting killing a bunch of people and knowing you're going to get caught.

The other endearing legacy
we don't hitchhike anymore.
The serial killer era ended that high trust activity.
We use uber. But uber is attached to a gigantic technological company that tracks you wherever you go
I'm getting into a strangers car but that stranger is being tracked