Hartastic t1_j9mqomw wrote on February 23, 2023 at 2:06 AM

I feel like this take misses what a lot of people find compelling about true crime: not its gore or faux intimacy but its cultural weight as a modern day cautionary tale, like an urban legend with some amount of reality behind it. This woman got killed, what red flags might she have missed or what mistakes might she have made that I, the reader/listener, can learn to avoid so that I also avoid her outcome? This person survived a dangerous situation, what good choices did they make that I can put in my own tool box to also survive a similar situation?

That is to say, for a wide swath of its audience the emotion is not lust or even bloodlust but fear. Fear tamed or made smaller by the acquisition or feeling of acquisition of knowledge.

PartyPorpoise t1_j9ngjr0 wrote on February 23, 2023 at 5:43 AM

Yeah, people are often too quick to dismiss a fascination with dark and taboo subjects as just being in it for the shock value. Shock value is often part of the appeal but there can be more to it than that.

Asylumrunner t1_j9qglzz wrote on February 23, 2023 at 9:00 PM

Yeah, but like, that's also pretty fucked up, ain't it? Both as a sort of gawking at strangers and blaming them for not seeing something which is obvious in hindsight, and also a perceived need to equip oneself with a constant paranoia against an incredibly uncommon risk.

Also, if I got murdered and some true crime huckster tried to make a buck pawning me off as a cautionary tale for scared suburbanites, I'd haunt the fuck outta them

VanillaPeppermintTea t1_j9o43bd wrote on February 23, 2023 at 10:48 AM

I think there are a lot of reasons why people like true crime- using it as a guide of what not to do is definitely one of them, but I think there’s more to it than just that. I don’t think you can ignore morbid curiosity and how this curiosity is often at the expense of victims.