Category: Jeffrey Dahmer

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So I wanted to buy a book.

I avoid Amazon because I find Jeff Bezos business practices suspect, to say the least, but I needed to buy the book quickly and didn’t have it in me to try something new and Amazon is easy which is long way to go to say I had to buy a book from the horrible Jeff Bezos.

Somehow in the process of buying the Kindle book, I also bought the audio book. I didn’t want the audio book. I tried to return it. After about 15 minutes of fruitless reads of the “Help” pages. I surrendered. I would to talk to Customer Service. It took me a good few minutes to find the Customer Service phone number but I finally found the hidden icon. I was immediately informed that it would when be a half hour wait to actually talk to someone and they kindly informed that there were other avenues to get help for my problem. Do you really want to wait a half hour on hold when Chat can help you right now.

I tried Chat. I told Chat I wanted to return an audio book. Amazon had a drop down box for accidental purchase which means accidental purchases of audio books is a frequent problem. Now, I want to pause my rant to point out something this should be a red flag to whoever is in charge of their system that there is a problem with people accidentally purchasing audio books. If it happens so often that they have an actual drop down box for it means it happens a lot. But I am pretty sure that the accidental purchase of unwanted products is a benefit not a feature of their system. How much money does Amazon earn from accidental purchases from people who don’t realize they have accidentally purchases something. What a wonderful source of passive income for the company.

Anyway, I was cracking away with the Chat function when Chat told me I could only return an audio book if I paid with a credit card which was mystifying because I had paid with a credit card. Since Chat was convinced that Chat had resolved the problem Chat wouldn’t let me talk any longer about my problem. Whenever I tried to return to the subject of my accidental purchase, Chat reminded me that Chat couldn’t help because I needed to have purchased with a credit card. The matter was resolved as far as Chat was concerned. I am assuming Chat’s reluctance to discuss the matter any further was because Chat was an AI robot and not an actual person. I couldn’t change Chat’s mind because Chat didn’t have a mind to change.

I decided to wait for phone operator. It took about 20 minutes, so less than the half hour mentioned at the beginning of the call. I spoke to Mohamed who took all of one minute to resolve my problem. ONE MINUTE, I tell you. He also let me in on why I couldn’t get a refund from Chat because I needed to belong to some Audio Club to get the refund. This might explain why the system wouldn’t let me use the normal refund process. I wasn’t supposed to get one because I didn’t belong to the Audio Club. The system just lumped my accidental purchase under a general category of not buying with a credit card because that happened a lot more.

I was bothered that I shouldn’t get a refund for my accidental purchase. It was an accident after all. In a conversation that resembled a comedy show routine, Mohamed said that only club members could return audio materials but I reminded him that I accidentally purchased the audio item. Mohamed then said and that was why he was refunding my money. He just wanted me to know that, in the future, I couldn’t return audio materials. But what if I accidentally purchase it, well then Mohamed said he would refund. Which begs the question why not just use the regular Amazon return system instead of forcing me to call them and explain that I accidentally purchased an audio book.

Never mind, I am pretty sure that Mohamed didn’t understand the policy either. He was doing his job, and quite well I might add. Someone up the food chain wants customers to know that if they accidentally purchase an Audio book they aren’t supposed to get a refund unless they belong to the Audio Club. Mohamed ticked that box. He didn’t understand the policy any better than I did so he couldn’t explain the policy to me. He followed his company script and that was all that mattered.

There are several reasons for me to be irritated with this customer service encounter:

  1. A human being resolved my problem quickly and efficiently. The Chat robot and help pages were time consuming and utterly useless.
  2. Making it difficult to talk to an actual human being is unhelpful. The company is actively thwarting good customer service by giving a show of alternates that aren’t as good. I tried for a good 15 minutes to use the help pages and then tried for another 10 minutes with Chat. Neither could help me, a person could.
  3. I spent a good 45 minutes to get $5.44 back when a human being could have help me almost instantaneously. How is routing customers to ineffective tools and wasting your customer’s time helpful.
  4. I am starting to believe that this is all an intentional way for Amazon to get passive income. How many people give up trying to get a refund? Indeed I thought several times is this worth my time to get back a paltry $5.44. There were so many impediments in my way. First, I didn’t realize I had bought the audio book, then I couldn’t return it through normal return process, the “Help” pages were no help at all, Chat couldn’t help me and I had to wait 20 minutes to get a customer service agent. I am certain that there are people who would have given up and ka-ching and extra $5.44 in Jeff Bezos pockets.
  5. Why aren’t more human beings hired for customer service? Jeff Bezos is a billionaire numerous times over. Real live human beings are better customer service than all the self-help bull shit put in our way. They just are. So why not have the customer service phone prominently displayed on every page and properly staffed so a customer doesn’t have to wait long to get help.
  6. Also, and this over everything else think might matter to someone like Bezos, the whole process made me hate Amazon all the more. Yes, I will use Amazon under duress but I am willing to pay more to stop him from getting any more of money that is absolutely necessary.

Rant complete.

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Ten years or so back, I stopped watching movies set in Concentration Camps. I got the point even before I began watching the movie — concentration camps were horrible places, human beings can do horrible things and we can never let this happen again. I agree. If I never watch another movie about Concentration Camps, I will still remember this. It is permanently lodged in my memory as few other things are. Watching a new Concentration Camp movie isn’t going to change anything.

So what if a new Concentration Camp comes along that surpasses all other Concentration Camp movies in artistic merit, in messaging, in production values, in acting — shouldn’t I see the movie for the art? Maybe, but I don’t want to. That’s all I can say. I don’t want to. I feel like I am wasting my time seeing an excellent rendition of something I already am convinced was horrible. Just because something is done well, doesn’t mean I need to watch it. I am not required to see all good art. More importantly, it just depresses me. Why put myself through that even if it is great art?

I once slipped and started watching The Boy in the Striped Pajamas because everyone was raving about it. The premise of the movie is that the German son of the Concentration Camp Commander befriends a Jewish boy through the fence of the camp. The fence is no match for the industrious German boy who soon visits the Jewish boy in the camp. I am betting that most of you can see where this movie is going. Tragedy. I stopped watching when I figured out where this story was going. What point was there in seeing the end? So I can see a well done depiction of a horror that I have seen many times before? How was this going to make my life any better?

This is how I feel about the recent television series Dahmer. I have very few complaints about the series. There is great acting, great production values, and an interesting story. Yet I hated almost every great minute of it. Dahmer, as portrayed by Evan Peters, is an inarticulate loner with an unchecked alcohol problem who tries, always unsuccessfully, to make friends. He has an early fascination with taxidermy which may lead him to his future murderous actions. He stumbles into his first killings but, after these “accidental” murders, he realizes that killing and cannibalism are the only things that satisfies his sexual urges and thus begins his descent into serial killing.

There are 10 episodes in the series which easily could have been cut down to 3 to 5. Yet, the movie goes on and on showing him preying on his victims, his family complaining about how strange he acts and why doesn’t he behave like a regular person, his neighbors complaining about his strange behavior and meeting with police indifference to this strange man and his strange behavior. Yes, it’s well done. So what? Dahmer is difficult person to connect with so, despite all of the episodes, his motives are still baffling at the end. He is a seemingly bland ordinary person who, for no apparent reason, descended into Hell and brought every person he meets into Hell with him. There is no suspense, no identification with him as person, and no hope that anyone could ever stop future serial killers from slaughtering their victims.

And, because there are 10 episodes to fill, the producers and director keep showing the same terrible situations over and over again. But, just in case you missed it or didn’t understand it before, the series gives the audience a fairly comprehensive accounting of what a monster Dahmer was. If you need this confirmation, by all means, see Dahmer; otherwise try to find some other well done television show, or book, or painting that enlightens you or entertains you or makes you look at life in a different way because Dahmer is a well done bummer.

Most importantly, always remember, you don’t have to see something because it is good.

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Netflix created a small controversy when it tagged Dahmer as LGBTQ television series. Some in the Gay leadership felt that Dahmer was really about a serial killer who preyed on Gay men. That the murderer was also Gay is irrelevant because the story is about a serial killer and not reflective of Gay life. The bigger concern is that by labeling Dahmer with the LGBTQ tag that Netflix is portraying Gay life in a negative manner. How, really? Do they think that straight people will believe that Jeffrey Dahmer is the role model for all gay men? And Dahmer is, in fact, gay. This is why this tempest in a tea cup has bothered me. Do you only get the LGBTQ label if you show positive portrayals of gay people? This doesn’t seem possible because sometimes Gay people do terrible things. More importantly, sometimes these terrible actions are directly related to the person being Gay.

Then isn’t Dahmer is a good example of that? Could some ambiguous feelings about being gay have contributed to his actions? I would think likely and certainly worth exploring. So, why would a LGBTQ labeling be wrong? Does every show labeled as LGBTQ have to have a positive depiction of Gay life? Where does one draw the line? Would showing a Gay person in depression or with suicidal thoughts risk the same kind of scrutiny as Dahmer? While it would be very nice to only have heroic people in whatever group you are talking about, it is very unlikely. All groups have all types of people even serial killers.

This controversy reminds me of another one involving the movie Cruising. Gay activists in 1979 tried to shut down the making of this movie because of its depiction of the gays into leather and sadomasochism They were afraid that the heterosexual community who, at the time, had very little contact with the gay community would see this depiction of promiscuous sadomasochistic sex play as representative of the whole gay community instead of it being about a small subset of gay people. Instead of just saying no comment and moving onto more important matters, they tried the movie made. In the meantime, these leaders had no problem dissing a significant group of gay men because they failed to represent the perfect gay image. The fact is that some Gay men like S/M, they like it so much that they risk going home with strangers who are potentially dangerous.

Indeed this is part of what Dahmer is showing. Is the allure of a one night stand worth more than the dangers of choosing a killer? I would venture to say that most Gay men have gone home with a stranger. I know I have. That is a very real part of most gay men’s lives which actually may be more beneficial to the average gay than some heroic image guy. These critics want straights to see the white middle-class monogamous couple with 2 children and a dog. It is impossible for one movie to show the entirety of gay life. Some movies will be darker than other movies. These movies may be difficult to watch because they show Gay people engaging in self-destructive or harmful ways. Dahmer happened, and it happened within the gay community. We will just have to leave it up to good judgement of straight people that Dahmer is not your typical gay man.

****Corrected on 10/7/22, 2 paragraph, changed very likely to very unlikely.