He tried to warn us about true-crime brain rot in 2007, but we didn't listen.
Very surprised and happy the editors didn't cut my part where I make a dig at that grotesque "True Crime Obsessed" podcast
I won't lie and say I find true-crime and stuff of that ilk completely uninteresting, but, like I said in the article, said interest doesn't come without a certain level of reverence and understanding of the brutal, serious nature of the topic. It really does irk me when people treat it like a puzzle or some trivial interest/hobby, since it's not - it's real events that effected real people. In the end, I think I find it engaging in the same way I do history/politics: as events worth studying to see how they are symptomatic of the issues and problems in the capitalist culture we face, or of the time they were born out of. I think there's a lot we can learn from historic crime cases, like what they say about our broken social structure and institution of law enforcement, but studying something in that light is a hell of a lot different than treating it like watching a fucking marvel movie.
Glad you enjoyed the piece. And yes, please tell me the typos so I can get the article updated (I swear that i don't even know what the editors do. It's basically up to me to catch stuff, despite the fact that I'm not being payed for that extra task)
well that sounds like they're structuring it like a classic murder mystery fiction which begs the question why not just read out a murder mystery book or create their own
The answer I usually receive for that is that women primarily watch true crime because it teaches them the warning signs of domestic violence, which is a line of argumentation I don't even want to begin to get into.
Can fantasy crime not do this? You could easily have true crime that completely glosses it over too.
Do they cover domestic abusers as true crime because it doesn't lend itself well to a narrative story structure. And it's not really much of a mystery
Ok here's what to do take a murder mystery book one in the public domain just read it and lie and say it happened. This may require editing choices
I found the whole, people claim they discovered the Zodiac killer's identity thing very weird. Like this is a dead guy who has no way of proving he didn't do it, but now everyone just latched on to the idea he did. Obviously, he doesn't care cause he's dead but like how would his family feel?
It just seems like you said, people are treating real life events like some sort of entertainment they can create fan theories about.
Had to stop reading for a sec at the mention of the podcast, and had the hangups on true crime media laid out bare to me that it’s media LITERALLY BUILT ON THR SUFFERING OF PEOPLE.
Damn.
Funny that he went on to make Mindhunter, which basically plays right into the whole true crime craze in a lot of ways
Zodiac kinda sucks because Fincher decided for no reason to take literal grifter bullshit as fact(Richard Graysmith is a hack who literally makes up evidence out of thin air) then also made up a few facts of his own. The whole story of Paul Avery having his life and health ruined is essentially all made up, the guy did have health issues but he wasnt a washed up wreck.
If you make a huge deal out of recreating the tiniest details like having 3 different actors play out the Zodiac killings based on 3 different witness accounts, then just make up stuff like changing dates so an alleged phone call was made on ALAs birthday, you're basically just producing misinformation. The movie is only has an "ambigous ending" because of obligation, any reasonable person who watched it without external knowledge of the case would think "Oh Graysmith solved it, it was Arthur Leigh Allen and they just didnt piece it together in time".
