True crime is everywhere: should we really be treating tragedies as entertainment?

True crime makeup YouTubers – original photo by Kate Owen

THE RISE OF ONLINE TRUE CRIME

You’re getting ready for bed, setting up a podcast as you drift off to sleep. A soothing voice is right in your ear… but it’s talking about murder. This gruesome tool used by some of us to relax is not as uncommon as we think. But why is true crime becoming entertainment?

Jonathon Grimm is a podcast writer from America. He is “pushing forty”, but he started consuming true crime from a young age. Jon now writes Corked with his best friend and former roommate, Giancarlo Fiorentini.

“I do think the casual [podcast] listener is desensitized to the fact that real people have lost their lives. It’s almost forgetting there’s a human element involved," he warns.

Despite creating true crime content, Jon doesn’t see true crime as something to be flippant about.

“True crime, I wouldn’t even say is my favourite genre, but, it has been omnipresent in my life,” he says.

“My father used to put on Unsolved Mysteries for me when I was a kid, and it would terrify me. That was my first foray into true crime, and I was like, eight.”

“I probably shouldn’t have been watching those episodes,” he adds with a laugh.

With social media giving us content at the click of a button, true crime is becoming more commonplace online.

But this could be a problem.

TikTok has a thriving true crime scene: the hashtag ‘true crime’ has over 21 billion views.

True crime TikTok search results. Screenshot by Kate Owen via TikTok

“True crime… has been omnipresent in my life.”

Videos on the for-you-page not separated by genre, so the TikTok algorithm may group true crime with other, more light-hearted clips, meaning there is no clarification for the viewer between what should or shouldn’t be considered entertainment.

CRIME IS TRENDING

After ‘Dahmer, the Monster Inside’ was released on Netflix earlier this year, fans of the show took to TikTok to make parody videos of the killer, and ‘thirst-trap’ edits of either Evan Peters (who played Jeffery Dahmer), or the real man.

Their videos were often set to the backing track of the song ‘Pyscho Killer’ by the Talking Heads.

Perverse accounts with usernames like ‘Jeffrey Dahmer fan” surfaced, with people commenting how they “binged” the series and weren’t affected by the horrors that the show depicted.

One video proudly stated they didn’t find the show “too gruesome” and could eat meals during it.

“I think that’s appalling,” condemns Jon. “It’s desensitizing the masses to these crimes that occurred. I think it’s kind of gross, actually.”

Although Jon admits that he isn’t well-versed in TikTok, learning about these trends in “real time” is horrifying.

Giancarlo, podcast co-writer and “connoisseur of the horror genre”, adds, “it’s kind of making money off the backs of victims, but I don’t pay much attention to what a teenager is doing for shock value.”

“Their frontal lobes are still developing; it’s just immaturity.”

Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

He then jumps to the partial defence of social media for its role in the behaviour of true crime ‘fans’.

“Social media isn’t the inherent cause,” he says.

“It predates that. There were people who wrote Richard Ramirez love letters in prison.

“We do this thing where we idolize people who have committed these atrocities, and I think that’s disgusting.”

Amelia Denton,[1] is a 19-year-old from the UK. She describes her life as a “cesspool” of true crime, and says she watches it frequently.

They know more about TikTok than Jon and see first-hand the way that Gen-Z reacts to true crime.

“It’s not just TikTok trends,” Amelia says, “some of us are starting to settle down and have kids, but, dressing the kids up as killers for Halloween?”

“A part of me thinks: how is that going to affect the kids? I think my first Halloween costume was a pumpkin.”

An online search pulls up items like ‘Jeffery Dahmer glasses’ for Halloween costumes, and a Christmas card with an illustration of Dahmer in a Santa hat, reading “Merry Christmas. I hope your freezer is full of tasty treats” - a crude nod to the cannibalisation of some of Dahmer's victims.

“We do this thing where we idolise these people who have committed atrocities.”

These are examples of making criminals into punchlines, often disrespecting the real victims of the crimes.

“You can talk about [killers] for educational reasons,” says Amelia, “but then there has to be a line. You don’t need to re-release the same story multiple times, because at that point, it’s like, we’re just doing this for money.”

IS THIS ALL BAD NEWS?

Not all true crime content online is seen as entertaining; it can be educational, or even a protection. An independent survey revealed that people who watch true crime use it to know what “red flags” to be aware of.

According to Civic Science, 35% of women sometimes watch true crime, and studies have shown women are more fearful of crime than men. So, is it any wonder they want to be prepared for a worst-case scenario?

“I feel like, even subconsciously, I have picked up how to be safe while watching it,” Amelia admits. “It’s like, ‘oh, you see that’s where I would have done something differently, because that might have been better’.”

Recent Office for National Statistics (ONS) data revealed nearly half of adult female homicide victims were at the hands of domestic violence. This is where true crime comes in useful: there is an opportunity for women to be educated by absorbing real life content, so they know what to be aware of.

It’s not just girl talk, either. For Jon, the genre is just as horrifying now as it always has been.

“Giancarlo and I were roommates for a while. We used to watch a horror movie every day in October, we’re connoisseurs of the horror genre,” he says, “but nothing scares me like a true crime story. I still skip the intro to Unsolved Mysteries because it freaks me out.”

True Crime consumption statistics. Taken from original survey by Kate Owen

“It puts it on the same level as reality TV.”

BUT WHAT WILL WATCHING IT DO TO US?

It is not uncommon to watch true crime. The genre, which was once taboo – as described by Matthew Kassoria in his 2021 article – is integrating itself more and more into our day-to-day life.

“Probably the intro to Unsolved Mysteries was shocking then, but the pure onslaught of true crime on social media is like, one hundred times higher, so it takes a lot more to shock people,” Giancarlo says.

However, the way that documentaries on platforms like Netflix intertwine fact and fiction make horrifying crime content dangerously bingeable and easily absorbable, meaning we might be seeing it as too entertaining.

“True crime was, like, almost a traditional guilty pleasure, I guess,” Amelia says. “But now, I would feel totally comfortable saying ‘oh, I love watching true crime. I love hearing it.”

“And I feel like that’s a bit weird. I feel like it shouldn’t be so normalised because it’s not, it’s not normal. I feel like it kind of puts it on the same level as reality TV.”

Although the content is so dark, there’s nothing wrong with people who love true crime. It’s a genre that isn’t going away, but there is always room to be mindful about how it’s consumed – real tragedies should not be made entertaining.

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash