The Bizarre Content Twitter account has only been around since December, 2022, but it’s already making waves on the internet thanks to its strange nature. The page has amassed over 38k followers in only 4 months, and it has managed to find weirder and more confusing content every day. From creative photoshops to the most bizarre real-life moments that happened to be caught on camera, this page has it all. And we just can’t help but be fascinated by and drawn towards these oddities.
What you consider to be bizarre is subjective to a certain degree. Certain behaviors, clothing choices, meals, and more might be extremely odd to you but perfectly normal to someone living on the other side of the globe. But when we do consider something strange, we tend to be curious about why or how someone could possibly do that. The behavior does not align with what we know to be “normal” and acceptable, so we just want to know more. And that’s why, although you may feel a range of emotions from disgust to intrigue when looking at these pics, you will probably also want to just keep scrolling through.
To learn more about this topic, we reached out to an expert on all things odd, the host of Bizarre Podcast, David McDonell. David was kind enough to have a chat with us about what inspired him to start the Bizarre Podcast in the first place. “I started listening to podcasts about 20 years ago, and I became a real big fan,” he told Bored Panda. “I always had the urge to do my own podcast but never thought I had what it took to sit in front of my phone and just talk.”
“So for years, I just listened to other people's podcasts and admired them,” David went on to explain. “I liked listening to a lot of mysterious stories and stories about hauntings and bizarre things that have happened in history, but it was actually a podcast called Fatman on Batman (because I'm also a Batman fan) that got me thinking that I could actually start my own.”
“The host of [Fatman on Batman] is Kevin Smith, and every now and again he would say to his audience, ‘Anybody can make a podcast if you've got a voice and you've got something to say,’” David added.
“I decided on bizarre, strange, mysterious tales because I always had an interest in them,” the host continued. “As a child I was never really into sports, so instead you would generally find me around the library or in book shops looking for books on hauntings, mysteries and dark stories.”
And when it comes to why people are so drawn to strange and weird content like this, David says, “It's because everyone holds a fascination for the mysterious and unexplained. And even if you can't prove if something mysterious and strange was real, whether that be the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, aliens or ghosts, you always find yourself searching for more stories and asking yourself that one question: what if?”
“When I first started out, I had a lot of bizarre stories I was itching to tell, stories that I have known the majority of my life, and a few new ones that I've heard of recently,” David went on to share. “I had many interesting stories in my mind, ready-to-go stories that I'd heard of when I was a child for example. I used to watch this paranormal TV show which was on just before I went to bed, and one night they did an episode on the Enfield poltergeist. This was actually made into a movie a couple of years back (The Conjuring 2).”
“Ever since I was a kid, I was absolutely fascinated and terrified by that story, so that was a no-brainer for me, to do an episode on that,” David told Bored Panda. “Then I always wanted to retell the Travis Walton UFO experience, which is also a film, Fire in the Sky.” David noted that the film is not particularly accurate to the real-life events, but he always enjoyed watching it as a kid.
“I've done stories on terrible serial killers such as Albert Fish and HH Holmes, which I'm very proud of, and sometimes I cover stories that my listeners request.”
And when it comes to why it’s important to explore these bizarre topics, David says, “I could say the stereotypical, obvious answer and that is ‘to try and find the truth, the truth is out there’, as Mulder would say. But if I'm being totally honest, it's just a load of fun to listen to the stories and to learn about them. Each story is a little bit of history, and there's nothing I like to do more than listen to a podcast whilst on my commute to work or when I'm just chilling out around the house or walking the dog. For half an hour or so, I step back into time, and I hope that is what my listeners get from my stories as well."
If you’d like to check out the Bizarre Podcast, be sure to visit the show's website right here!
Our brains love trying to solve a mystery and being exposed to new information that we just can’t quite understand, so that’s why you might find yourself binging documentaries about cults, serial killers, or communities that are much different than yours. We just want to understand what’s going on in these people’s minds, and we’re so shocked to see unexpected things. One way our appetite for absurdity manifests is how fascinated many of us are with true crime.
The average person would never commit murder or swindle their customers out of millions of dollars, but we just eat up stories about the people who actually do. “We want some insight into the psychology of a killer, partly so we can learn how to protect our families and ourselves," author Caitlin Rother told Hopes & Fears. “But also because we are simply fascinated by aberrant behavior and the many paths that twisted perceptions can take.”
And just like you might have a hard time looking away from the oddities you’re presented with on this list, most of us have a hard time turning a blind eye when we see or hear about something horrific. “Serial killers tantalize people much like traffic accidents, train wrecks, or natural disasters," Scott Bonn, professor of criminology at Drew University and author of Why We Love Serial Killers, wrote for TIME. "The public’s fascination with them can be seen as a specific manifestation of its more general fixation on violence and calamity. In other words, the actions of a serial killer may be horrible to behold, but much of the public simply cannot look away due to the spectacle.”
