Do you think little kids are drawn to folks with criminal tendencies?

No.

I haven’t noticed that. In my experience, little kids are drawn to the person who is funniest or the one who “gets” them. Depending on how secure they feel in the situation.

Don’t think so. When I was a kid, my hero’s were ball players, all NY Yankees. Roger Marris, Mickey Mantle, and the incomparably funny Yogi Berra. “It ain’t over ‘till the fat lady sings’, ‘Grease don’t taste good, taste taste’s good”. (?) And one of my mentors when I was a teen, was actually an Austin Police Dept. Sgt. We grew to be good buds later in my life. The man has since passed on : (

You remind me of this recent wave of obsession for criminals among teenagers in my country. Basically some people, who otherwise have nothing good to contribute to society, post videos of themselves on social media basically doing outrageous stuff like picking fight with people or saying psedo-intellectual gansta stuff. Most of the things they do are not even remotely funny or cute, yet somehow they amass thousands of fans. I remember that time when this “famous” Youtuber got arrested for using and trading illegal substances, and his fan flocked on social media planning to go on the street to demand his freedom!—That Youtuber was the first person to draw people’s attention on “gansta” Youtubers and the media had a debate on how those Youtubers got so popular.

I don’t know for sure how some kids are attracted to badly behaved people, but I think it has a lot to do with their mentality growing up. Teenagers are at the age when they start thinking for themselves and test their boundary, but they haven’t got enough brainpower to really understand the adult world and morality. They see in those criminals something their “safe” and boring world doesn’t provide them: a new, cool world with so much to explore. They also desire to be like those people, to have autonomy over the adults in their life, and isn’t picking fight and sticking it to the man something those criminals do?

Most of the time kids grow up and understand that there is nothing cool about those criminals, thus become grossed out by them. Those who don’t grow out of them either have developmental problems, or are sociopaths.

I wouldn’t use the word “drawn to”.

I think that most kids are brought up to be “good” in some way or another. So they are naturally curious about the “bad” because it’s different and not what they have been taught. That doesn’t mean that they’ll be bad, just that it’s new and different.

The reactions to this question tell me that I should approach this from an alternate direction.