Glorifying male criminals in TV and film isn’t something we’re unfamiliar with – no matter how big or small the crime.

Some lusted over Ted Bundy when the Netflix docu-series Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes premiered in 2019 resulting in Netflix urging users not to, while many of us You fans will know someone who has romanticised serial killer protagonist Joe – leading Penn Badgley to even call out this behaviour.

And while these are extreme examples and focus on attraction being the key factor, there is something to be said about seeing criminals and choosing to isolate the crime from who they are as an individual – and this is why we end up glorifying people like Leviev who truly don’t deserve it.

It’s easy to forget the power we all collectively have on social media and how memes that go viral and the millions of tweets that we share can literally propel people into stardom – and this is a prime example of it going wrong.

Sure, the Netflix documentary was the main proponent here, but the memeification of Simon Leviev means that something which is very real is then turned into a joke – a fixture of pop culture that turns into a stream of endless tweets, trending topics and Google searches then suddenly becomes a person of focus and a new, lucrative entity.

The real crimes that were committed and the real people that were hurt fade into the background of their very own story as Leviev could make hundreds of thousands if not millions from books, shows and podcasts as a result of their very own pain – and if that’s not a wake-up call to the power of social media and also the way society glorifies and rewards bad behaviour, I don’t know what is.

The Tinder Swindler: Simon Leviev’s rise to fame proves society glorifies bad behaviour – and it’s time to stop