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Epsiode10: True Crime and YouTube Deep Dives I have been procrastinating. It’s the crimes, I started thinking about the boom tenth episode, which is obviously very period prestige crime documentaries are exciting for me. We made it to ten! I experiencing at the moment and what wasn’t sure I was gonna get past three, that says about us as an audience. So, to be honest. Anyway. This excitement without further ado… hasn’t translated into me actually doing anything to make the episode. I did start I’m Alex. This is Pop Culture Boner – the off with a topic but I got side-tracked by podcast edition – and today, I’m thinking the fact that I couldn’t find the film I was about the true crime genre. looking for online. Which set me off on a YouTube rabbit hole, and long story short I should probably preface this by saying – I’ve permanently ruined my algorithm. that I am a person who enjoys true crime. I remember when I was younger… I was looking at my recommended maybe around 10… mum had one of videos, and I can’t even remember what those very cheap reads – the sort of book I clicked or why I clicked it, but I started that you only buy when you’re trying to watching a channel called Nexpo – which like actively carve out time for yourself is short for Nightmare Expo. Nexpo has as a parent, but also you haven’t slept 1.5 million followers, and essentially, he for years, so you don’t want to actually salvages odd pieces of digital ephemera use your brain. Anyway, it was about the from around the internet, usually horror Moors murders, which for the uninitiated, adjacent, and makes videos that explore involved the murder of 5 children aged their meaning, potential explanations between 10 and 17 in Britain in the mid- and personal theories. It’s a little bit like 60s. Their bodies were hidden on the sitting around a campfire listening to Moors, and more than one was never ghost stories, except the person telling recovered. I wasn’t allowed to read it per them has their phone out and is asking if se, but I remember being fascinated by you want to see crime scene photos. the mug shots on the cover and sneaking chapters when mum wasn’t looking. It What I’m trying to tell you is that a) I really cemented a sense of dread in me, don’t know why I clicked it, or why I given that the victims were my age and kept watching, and b) now my YouTube lost forever, but I couldn’t stop reading. recommendations are all like “HAUNTED Which would become something of a MORGUE!” in all caps with 6 exclamation theme when the internet made grim points. But the good news is, I can treasure troves of stories more readily actually classify all this as ‘research’ available. I was a delightful child; in case now, because while I was watching this you were wondering. All this is to say that content, a lot of which draws from actual this podcast is not coming from a place of judgment necessarily. Or at least, any Twitter, the answer seems pretty cut and judgemental tone is very evenly applied dry – it’s a fucked-up thing to use as a to myself. form of entertainment. But like I said, I’m not here to paint with a judgemental True crime as a genre isn’t new, and brush, at least not completely. Generally, neither are the wildly different ways of I think human beings have an interest reporting on it. Compare Truman Capote’s in the grim because we use it as a In Cold Blood to a show like Forensic Files, comparison point for our own lives – for example. Two very different pieces of a sort of proof that we’re going OK, media that ostensibly sit under the true and a note for what to avoid. If you’re crime umbrella. But despite existing as listening to this and going “But Alex, I a genre forever, there’s definitely some hate true crime and horror and gore! This sort of evolutionary boom happening definitely isn’t me!”, ask yourself when now. There’s been a huge increase in the last time you dragged yourself away prestige TV programming in the genre from the 24-hour news cycle was. What’s – true crime is no longer the pulpy read that? Never? You’ve never successfully I picked up as a 10-year-old. It’s not dragged yourself away from the 24-hour necessarily shameful to admit that you news cycle? Congratulations. You’re just spent 5 hours of your life watching content as morbid as the rest of us. about a murder from every angle because it’s kind of in vogue. It’s won awards. It’s kind of tempting to get into a People are talking about it at work. Then discussion on audiences when trying to at the same time, there are strange little think through true crime. Because when pockets of the internet dedicated to crime you look at the audience statistics, it’s in much different ways. They fluctuate a genre that is overwhelmingly popular between devotional, investigative and with women. There’s a 2010 study by morbidly curious; all of which have their staff at the University of Illinois which own degrees of insidious undertone, indicates that some 70% of reviews left depending on who’s doing what and on true crime books on Amazon are left where. So, I thought we could take a by women. Given that women are often look at true crime in mainstream media, more likely to be the victims or survivors vs. true crime on the internet. What’s of violent crime, it feels like there’s a line different and what stays the same? to draw there. Like maybe women want to know what’s possible in the world so that One of the things that hangs over the they have a better chance of surviving it. genre of true crime in the black and Or something. white land of social media discourse is a question of ethics – how ethical is it to But human motivations are complicated, consume the worst moments of someone’s and like I said, the genre is old. Like one life as a form of entertainment? Even of the interesting things I learned while more dubious, how ethical is it to focus researching this episode was that way on the perpetrators of these crimes back in 1897, William Randolph Hearst, themselves? And look, when you lay it in a bid to sell more newspapers than out like that in 140 characters or less on Joseph Pulitzer, formed something called the Murder Squad, who were essentially in failing to hide the grim details behind a roving band of reporters who basically slick production values, at the very least did police work while also operating they manage to keep the audience close outside the law and packaging it up for to the reality of what they’re watching. waiting public. The point is, audience High-brow true crime, she argues, is thirst has been there forever. So, I think engaging in the same story-telling tactics, rather than asking “is this OK?”, it’s but with more real-world consequence. more interesting to interrogate what’s I’ll give you a quick quote – she says: changed in the production values and its impact on audiences. “That is maybe what irks me the most about true crime with highbrow Writing for Vulture in 2018, Alice Bolin, pretensions. It appeals to the same vices author of Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving as traditional true crime, and often trades an American Obsession, explores the in the same melodrama and selective wave of so-called prestige true crime TV storytelling, but its consequences can be and the distinction between high-brow more extreme. Adnan Syed was granted and low-brow true crime. The high-brow a new trial after Serial brought attention she refers to are things like Netflix series to his case; Avery (of Making a Murderer) Making a Murderer, or podcast Serial, was denied his appeal, but people which is often credited with kicking off the involved in his case have nevertheless current wave of true-crime obsession and been doxxed and threatened. I’ve remains the most downloaded podcast of come to believe that addictiveness and all time. Low-brow is the type of thing advocacy are rarely compatible. If they you’ll be familiar with if you’ve ever were, why would the creators of Making clicked past Making a Murderer on your a Murderer have advocated for one white Netflix list – things like Forensic Files for man, when the story of being victimized example, or titles that are even more by a corrupt police force is common to so bluntly descriptive, like Occult Crimes, or many people across the U.S., particularly Nurses Who Kill. people of colour?” I’m something of a connoisseur of these It’s a fair call – audiences are very types of low-brow crime shows – I’m interested in the individual instances not saying it’s a good thing, but I don’t of crime, explored in great detail, but sleep much and they follow the kind of prestige TV is significantly less interested repetitive formula that doesn’t require in the systemic problems these reflect. If you to concentrate to keep up.

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