Since 2020, dark romance has exploded in popularity across TikTok, Wattpad, and bookstores, but not without any issues. While fans praise the genre for its emotional depth and complex characters, I find the genre often crosses into troubling scenarios by glamorizing toxic relationships and abusive behavior. 

Dark romance often focuses on messy, twisted, and often morally questionable love stories that often explore themes of abuse, violence, and trauma. Many stories in these novels blur the line between love and manipulation, presenting violence, obsession, and control as romantic ideas rather than red flags. 

While it’s understandable that fiction will often explore dark themes, these narratives are often idealized when they shouldn’t be, especially to a younger audience. 

While this genre is filled with this triggering content, their readers, often women, find comfort in the stories. Moreover, every reader knows that books are an escape from reality. Yet, where is the line drawn from escapism to toxic ideals? 

Some supporters of the genre, such as Ana Huan, a bestselling author of the “Twisted” series, argued that “fiction is a safe way to explore those fantasies and experience these visceral emotions without them actually being in danger.” However, studies also reveal that repeated exposure to violence through entertainment, specifically electronic media, increases the risk of violent behavior from viewers. 

Moreover, continuously experiencing negative emotions due to violent or gory scenes through the media can lead to reactions like “desensitization.” While some readers believe it doesn’t affect their minds, it really does impact one’s perception of the world and shapes their behavior. 

Being one of the most popular novels in this genre, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is a popular example of the harm of dark romance. The book is considered to be the bestseller of the decade while it depicts a suite of characteristics between Anastasia and Christian, like stalking, intimidation, and isolation, as a form of love. Furthermore, despite the book having multiple explicit and intense themes throughout the story, the book is often purchased by teens. 

Such books mold young women’s perception of what a relationship should be, and overall can have negative influences, despite how much the reader consciously separates truth from reality. 

As much as these books are romanticized, it’s not only happening in the pages of a book, but also in many TV series. One of the most popular series on Netflix, “You,” is a show about a dangerously obsessive stalker, Joe Goldberg, who uses social media and technology to manipulate and insert himself into the lives of women he becomes infatuated with, resorting to murder. Despite these strange ideals, social media has become, in a way, infatuated with the character himself. 

While it’s already strange to obsess so crazily over situations that most people would find terrifying, being so consumed by these ideas that you find the characters in media who portray these specific characteristics to be ideal is more or less both astonishing and uncanny. 

Moreover, the question “what if it were to actually happen to me?” comes up, while the situation is scary enough, and I don’t think most readers would want these situations to fall upon them despite enjoying the scenarios. Rather, I believe making these unsafe situations romantic make us as readers feel more in control of the narrative. Dark romance enjoyers aren’t faced with a real killer—rather a horrific story that’s all in our heads. When someone knows something is fiction, it makes it easy to explore these terrifying things in a controlled environment. 

So, even while this horrific but idolized genre is all fiction, the themes of violence remain prominent in reality. People today are still victims of sexual abuse, stalking, and more; and while I don’t think getting rid of the genre is necessary, it can very well fall into the wrong hands of a teenager, or trigger someone. 

Dark romance is a rather complex subject which makes it so difficult to advertise, as it affects your mind without realizing it. However, I believe it’s something young adults and teens are insensitive to, which made it so popular in the first place. Whether it’s good or not, dark romance remains popular today despite the dangerous nature it holds.