According To New Research, Here Are The Six Most Common Killers Found On Facebook

You know that dude on Facebook that you swear will one day snap and kill a countless number of innocent people? Yeah, that guy. Well, sadly, there are thousands of guys just like him on social media. You’ve got your “potential Facebook killer” and I’ve got mine. Scary but truth.

Murders do use Facebook. Watch any Dateline NBC show or just read the newspaper. It happens more often than you realize. It happens so often, a university in the U.K. did a study on social media murders.

The point of the study was to discover whether or not murders that involved social media were different than other types of homicides. The conclusion? Nope! Researchers concluded that they were not and Facebook acts as a type of tool or weapon to assist with the crimes but not really an an incentive to commit the crime. That’s slightly good news.

In the first ever study on Facebook and criminal behavior, researchers at the U.K.’s  Birmingham City University identified six types of killers that use the social media platform to commit, plan, or confess murderous crimes.

The types of killers, which were identified using 48 case studies from around the world, are as follows:

  • Reactor: A person that reacts with violent passion to something they see on Facebook, then goes on to commit an act of violence out of rage
  • Informer: A person that uses Facebook to tell others that they have, or intend to, kill someone.
  • Antagonist: A person that engages in hostile exchanges on Facebook, which escalate into face-to-face confrontation, and in some cases, lethal force
  • Fantasist: A person for which murder is the result of blurred lines between reality and make believe on social media
  • Predator: A person that creates and maintains a fake profile to lure a victim to an offline setting
  • Imposter: A person that poses on Facebook as somebody else in order to gain information, or maintain the illusion that the victim is still alive

Does your Facebook buddy fit any of these descriptions? Even if you’re on the fence, unfriend the freak, because it might save your life. Unless you’re on other social media websites because murders use other places like Twitter, Craigslist, 4Chan and Reddit to commit crimes.

Just pick up your computer and chuck it out the window. Be safe.

H/T Curiousmatic