YouDunnit: Interrogating an Internet phenomenon

When a creative is forced to make their content stand out in an ever-growing landscape, they can forgo the sensitivity this genre deserves.

Image Credit: JCS Criminal Psychology

On my way to work, I like to listen to podcasts. One that I recently finished is Father Wants Us Dead, which covers the story of how John List murdered his family. It’s well-produced, with great research and editing, but there was something off-putting about its tone that I couldn’t identify until the final episode. Hosts Jessica Remo and Rebecca Everett reflect on the lasting impact the story had on those who knew the List family. Their conclusion caught me off guard: the List case, they reflect, “no longer feels like a true crime story.”

How could that be the case? How could a crime having lasting impacts on victims make it less like a true crime story? Yet, Remo and Everett came to a conclusion reflected in much coverage of this genre: there is a difference between true crime and True Crime. 

True Crime has entertained us for decades; urban legends like Jack the Ripper are, arguably, an early example. The genre has, however, experienced an upswing in recent years. Podcasts like Serial and docuseries like Making a Murderer have received widespread acclaim. The increasing accessibility of media production means that now, True Crime can be produced by anyone with a YouTube or Spotify account. 

In most cases, the expansion and democratisation of a genre is a good thing. It allows for innovative productions, driven by market forces and individual creativity, that can lead to the creation of breathtaking media. But True Crime, for me, is different to most entertainment genres. The characters and narrative beats are drawn from real people — real perpetrators and real victims. It covers real experiences of things that are violent and devastating, and, just like the List case, have echoes that continue to sound years after the crime was committed. When a creative is forced to make their content stand out in an ever-growing landscape, either by being more novel or sensational than their predecessors, they can forgo the sensitivity this genre deserves.

I have noticed this most acutely on YouTube. I fell down the True Crime video rabbit hole when a friend introduced me to JCS Criminal Psychology — longform analysis of police interrogations — and I was hooked. It’s not hard to see why his channel, and others like it, have experienced a popularity boom in the last few years. The production quality is high and the subject matter is gripping, often being well-researched despite the small scale of the team behind it. However, the production scale and lack of industry regulations like those imposed on mainstream media can cause issues with this content.

As well as becoming more accessible, the genre’s exponential growth on YouTube has led to an evolution of the types of True Crime media being produced. Some creators have blended True Crime with other video formats as a way of capturing wider audiences. YouTubers like angel ASMR and The Empress ASMR create videos discussing true crime cases in an ASMR format, channels like Bailey Sarian and Danielle Kirsty recount crimes while doing makeup tutorials, and some creators, like Stephanie Soo, do True Crime mukbangs. This is where the gap between true crime and True Crime is most insidious. 

I would argue that there is disrespect inherent in reducing the real-life trauma that someone has suffered to a topic of conversation while reviewing makeup or eating fried chicken. There is also an incentive for the creator to be flippant in their delivery: to build rapport with an audience, which is necessary to hold their continued attention and subscription, a YouTuber must be personable. This could look like cracking jokes, noting the killers’ zodiac signs as an ongoing gimmick, as True Crime makeup channel Hailey Elizabeth does, or interjecting with personal opinions at inappropriate times.

This leads to another problem: desensitisation. I have caught myself watching videos about serial killers and being almost unimpressed when they ‘only’ had ten victims. If a creator is talking about something dismissively, you, too, are likely to dismiss it. A weak claim here would be to say that this makes viewers more likely to commit violent crimes. I don’t think this is true, in the same way that violent games or movies don’t make people more violent; content that simply describes crimes without glorifying them isn’t likely to radicalise someone.

A better concern is that desensitisation to crime makes viewers condemn violent actions less. There is an alarming amount of empathy for perpetrators like Ted Bundy and the Menendez brothers on platforms like TikTok. Creator @bundyswifey makes fan edits begging Bundy to spit in her mouth,describing him as “the love of [her] life,” with only the phrase “don’t condone” in her bio to suggest any sort of condemnation of the many violent murders he perpetrated. This is an extreme example, but fostering any degree of empathy for violent criminals is dangerous. This empathy is especially pernicious when it is used to diminish the culpability of perpetrators, disproportionately favouring those who are young, white and conventionally attractive. It is the dangerous kind of empathy that asks us to forgive people in our own lives for their actions when they fit those same criteria.

This is not to say that no good has come of the democratisation of True Crime. True Crime has always been disproportionately popular with women, who have historically faced higher barriers to entry into traditional media production. Making content more accessible to previously disprivileged creators is important, especially when that content is meaningful to them, both as a form of entertainment, and outlet for telling stories that are more likely to impact them. True Crime media can empower survivors of crimes by celebrating their perseverance. It can educate viewers, to an extent, about behaviours that may keep them safe from falling victims of similar crimes. It can even help solve crimes: the List case was only resolved when somebody recognised List from a segment on America’s Most Wanted. True Crime can be a legitimate and important form of entertainment.

However, this legitimacy is contingent on respectful and informative coverage. When means of production are decentralised, this is harder to police. The most powerful mechanism that consumers have at their disposal is the capacity to hold creators to account. Call creators out when they are irreverent or too sympathetic to vile people. Don’t engage with content you find morally nebulous, and remember that at the heart of True Crime is true crime.

There are survivors who will never recover from the trauma they endured. There are victims whose losses have left irreparable holes in the lives of their loved ones. And there are people who are evil and desperate for attention, who watch people praise killers like Bundy, and see violence as their only path to recognition. True Crime as a genre has rapidly evolved, but don’t let it mutate beyond a point that we can control.