The Psychology of Joe Goldberg (NETFLIX’s You): The Perfect Boyfriend

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Don’t you just love teen romance movies? Don’t you just love how unhealthy obsession gets portrayed as the height of romance? Don’t you love it how we are expected to coo and awww when two people who might be considered psychotic villains in any other setting because of how needy, manipulative and obsessive they are finally find each other!

Okay so I might be jaded and cynical, and my ramblings may have gotten me kicked out of many weddings. But thanks to Netflix I no longer have to shout this at the top of lungs when I see happy couples, instead I can just tell them to go and watch ‘You’ instead.

“You” revolves around Joe Goldberg a quiet sophisticated bookseller, who in his own words is a hopeless romantic who’s just not that lucky in love instead of the crazy violent stalker with an underwear fetish and a messiah complex that he actually is.

Now don’t get me wrong, the show makes it clear that he is bat shit crazy really early on in the story and no one is supposed to root for him. And yet in certain moments, we do. We find ourselves siding with someone  who is essentially a deranged serial killer. So let’s take a look at why?

And yeah, Spoilers!

Joe is just like you (To the Extreme!)

Joe is a serial stalker. He clones his girlfriend’s phone, he uses social media to figure out where the object of his obsession is, He literally kills people who he feels are in the way of his ‘True Love’.

And therefore is nothing like you! Or is he…

I mean you’d never clone your SO’s phone, but you do get a bit curious when they get multiple texts that makes them giggle and they don’t tell you exactly what’s so funny.

And while not as obsessive, you’ve probably stalked your crush on social media, to maybe just get to know what they’re like, maybe some of you even frequent the clubs they go to in hopes of running into them.

And while you would never kill someone, you too may have felt the jealousy of wanting to punch the face of someone who got a bit too flirty with your crush or SO.