My parents watch Criminal Minds and similar shows all the time, two friends of mine bought a book about a serial killer and my Twitter timeline is full of people talking about a new true crime podcast. It's just my bubble or is it a broad cultural phenomenon?
It does seem like it's bigger than ever, like half the podcasts I hear about are some sort of true crime thing. Some people get really creepy about it, like fantasizing about the Columbine shooters. But sometimes it can be good like the true crime author who figured out who the Nightstalker was.
On the other hand sometimes it's interesting when you unknowingly have some sort of connection to the crimes. Like when I realized a really bad Danny Phantom fanimation me and my friends would watch was made by a mass murderer.
Yee it was Randy Stair, here's the video I saw first. But there's a whole bunch of them he made, apparently he thought this character was real and he was trying to reach the ghost world to be with her,
Because lots of people have an appetite for violence but also have no imagination at all. They think a duel between knights or samurai is too outlandish and can't relate to it. space battles or wizard fights are just flashy nonsense to them. So they have to watch the boring mundane violence we see in real life. They also either want to be the criminal breaking the rules and finally living the way they want to "without society holding them back" or some garbage like that, or they want to be the cop punishing bad people and keeping order. The serial killer is just the most "big brain time" variant of the cop show. It's another symptom of a sick society, people hate their lives so much, but they think the only way they could change it would be by becoming monsters and killing. Then other people watch just because all their friends watch it.
Definitely! I think you're onto something. Thanks for your insight, comrade.
Just my take, any particular portion you disagree with? I'm interested in other opinions,
I don’t think most people are trying to live vicariously through a serial killer, I think it’s mostly a morbid/macabre curiosity
A lot of people are also living vicariously through the cops in the stories. Anyway, morbid curiosity should also draw them to stories of poisoners and assassins or bizarre happenings. Instead they zero on those who corrupt the rules of our society for their own pleasure.
People either connect to the cops or the serial killer. Either way, they feel above the public.
I think that they don't really have to connect with either to enjoy a macabre voyeurism from it all.
I think people only really get into a piece of media if they can relate or connect to one of the characters.
I think people have a tendency to align themselves with or root for a side or character in a story, especially over time, but I definitely don't think they have to imagine themselves as one of the roles. Also, within your framework, you've left out people imagining themselves as the victims or would-be victims.
relating or connecting is not the same as projecting. I've played a little fast and lose with that so far, so I'll take some of the blame. However, you have raised an interesting point about the victims I've failed to consider. edit: forgot what the last thing I commented was, you make a good point.
These are interesting insights! Watching Criminal Minds I got this feeling of "big brain time" that would appeal to a large audience. Vicariously feeling "smart" get people going, I guess. About the first thing you said, "the cultural obssesion with death" that started on the 70s. Do you thing it's connected to the reactionary backlash after the 60s? That got me interested, with you have some recommendations, I'd be thankful.
Matlock and Columbo didn't deal as much with serial killer stuff. They were still mostly about mystery solving. I think Law and Order would be the earliest example for that. I also think that saturation of slasher movies through the 80s led to a going darker and grittier or 'classy and psychological' version of those killers became the replacements when inexplicable slasher villains went stale. If you want your scary killers to be more deep and real you look into real killers and then you just start selling the real stories.
I dated a woman who had a hardcore fetish of this
No I am not a serial killer, she broke up with me because I was way too vanilla
I've noticed it too but I'm not sure. I like this kind of content from time to time, some of the better things I've seen go into detail about how badly the police fuck up the investigation. But it's a double edged sword because you can turn around and use these stories as justification for a police state.
It's definitely a double-edged sword. Recently, in Brazil, a podcast about a child murder (The Evandro case) got popular and a television series will be made about it. The podcast emphasize all the bad decisions that the police took during the case and the satanic panic that reitereited popular distrust on African rooted religions in the country. That would be a good exemple, I guess. But the sheer amount of content that idealize police action is... weird? frightening?
But the sheer amount of content that idealize police action is… weird? frightening?
Yeah it is bad. Sadly the core of most of these stories are that the police are good, faults and all, and that regular people simply cannot police themselves and solve crime. But copganda has been in the cultural zeitgeist for decades now in the USA. Not sure how it is in other countries but the overall attitude toward the police in the states is good but bad apples sometimes spoil the bunch.
Where I live people call the cops because the neighbors music is too loud. People involves the police even in the simplest conflicts, they act like rich people nannies.
Oh we have that in the states too. I remember either it was on here or back on the sub, someone shared a story about a US town where the police where called for everything. Shit you not, one of the calls was for squirrels fighting in someone's front yard.
My big paranoid brain wants to say there's some psyop/social engineering element to it. Ever since I read McGowan's Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder * I've had a lot of mixed feelings about serial killers and the whole true crime media system. It's been a while since I read the book but I think McGown speculates at some point that the Phoenix Program played a role in creating the massive increase and popularization of serial killers during their heyday. Perhaps there's some modern, domestic Phoenix Program that incorporates this type of media in order to nudge people in a desired direction.
This idea just occurred to me, but I might as well throw it out there too: maybe this media serves - in part - to disseminate emotionally charged retellings of traumatic experiences. Intelligence services are very familiar with how trauma can be used to manipulate people. That same principle can be applied by private entities to entire populations. But in this case you don't have to physically torture someone - you just cause enough anxiety/unease/discomfort in them that they become more susceptible to your suggestions.
* Btw massive CW for that book; for basically any awful thing you can imagine
I too try no to go too tinfoil about this, but considering the reputation of the american intelligent services it isn't too far fetched to thing they have some influence on these questions, they probably do some social engineering. I searched about the McGowan Book, it seems really interesting, I'll definitely put on my list! Thanks comrade!
A true crime podcast is the most popular podcast in Canada, I'm pretty sure. It always worries me that it will somehow unintentionally cause a reactionary turn in our criminal system. It occasionally highlights how "light" the sentences are if the person is not deemed a dangerous offender. Which seems crazy to me, isn't that what you want out of a criminal justice system? To not be overly punitive to people who aren't a danger to society?
I always thought of it more like a twisted murder mystery. Only instead of trying to figure out "who did it" the audience spends its time trying to figure out "why they did it".
For some its probably entertainment from a very dark place, for others its trying to find a "scientific" explanation for why a human being did something that is so horrible that it breaks their brains to think that it all happened "for the lulz."
Because Agatha Christie mysteries aren't dark or gritty enough for people
Well... I there's a difference between a work of fiction and something that happened in real life.
Like, how does a person just decide, "Hey, I'm going to dress as a clown, kill people, and bury them in a crawlspace?"
Is this just a thing that can happen (which is terrifying as it means everybody around you is a monster waiting to kill and eat you) or was there some series of events that turned a person into this or at the very least can we find some "signs" that somebody was going to do something monstrous?
I suppose I sort of understand it as a control thing but to be honest if you're worried a person in your life might seriously be a serial killer then for whatever reason that lack of trust should be enough of a red flag.
And if it's a worry about being killed by some random person you should probably prioritise the statistically more likely threat of dying by almost anything else
Maybe I'm doing a terrible job of explaining whats in my head.
I haven't followed any of this type of thing in the last 15 years or so but when I used to frequent more conspiratorially themed sites there was a TON of time spent psycho analyzing "bad" people. It wasn't always for the purpose of self defense but obsessing over what caused the terrible incident. Its the same shit that I used to go down rabbit holes for. Like why did 9/11 happen the way it did, or why did the response to Hurricane Katrina happen the way it did, etc.
Its like, there's this event that shakes your faith in society, the world, maybe even reality, and you're desperately trying to wrap your feeble human mind around the truth that the cosmos is uncaring, unfathomable, and apathetically cruel. Its some real HP Lovecraft vibes for some of us, after having stared into the abyss and lost a bit of sanity, there's a desperate clawing to try to go back to a reality that no longer exists.
For some sure but for others there is an impulse to "fix" things that gets triggered when there is an event like this.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I do relate to this curiosity, I hope I didn't sounded like a snob on this post. I am morbidly curious about crime. One of my favorite true crime content is a mini documentary about a hostage situation with an ex-boyfriend (the Eloá case) and how the media downplayed the violence of the situation and portrayed the ex as a sort of "confused and heartbroken young men". I find really interesting on how some podcasts and documentaries can help us see a different angle on the case.
It just clicked to me that true crime or police procedural isn't a niche genre. I guess I'm always trying to understand why something went mainstream.
