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"True Crime" as a genre is littered with unscrupulous hosts. But not all of it is in the gutter. In fact, some of it produces a public good. I admit I am attrac

"True Crime" as a genre is littered with unscrupulous hosts. But not all of it is in the gutter. In fact, some of it produces a public good. I admit I am attracted to these stories and try to choose carefully. If I may - two recommendations: "My Only Story" - an adult man notices with horror that the man who secretly raped him as a school boy in South Africa is still working as a teacher. He quits his job and starts a podcast about how grooming works and how the school system is letting pupils down. All the while he is trying to expose this man for who he is without being sued - so he has to dance around the man's name. It is riveting. The story unfolds live as he finds more and more fellow students who were victimized willing to go on the record. This leads to naming names. "The Root Of Evil" which features (in part) a retired Los Angeles homicide detective who believes his surgeon father was behind the famous Black Dahlia murder. He brings receipts. An astonishing amount of historical material is unearthed including cassette tape audio from the 70's. Story telling is such an integral part of the social experience. Like everything it can be corrupted by greed and bad incentives. Not every True Crime podcast falls into this trap.

Analemma_ 3y ago
> "True Crime" as a genre is littered with unscrupulous hosts. But not all of it is in the gutter. In fact, some of it produces a public good. True crime has a similar problem to, say, commerical fishing. Some of the early stuff was quite good, because the first shows to do it had their pick of complex and narratively satisfying events to be based on. But once the low-hanging fruit was plucked, subsequent shows had no choice but to begin trawling, in the same way that fishermen do when populations run thin. The demand for true crime has considerably outpaced the supply, and hence why newer shows essentially can't not be bad and dangerous: they have to either invent predators out of thin air or otherwise make mountains out of molehills. There needs to be like a 30-year moratorium on true crime, to let the "fish stocks" replenish.
- teeray 3y ago
  > The demand for true crime has considerably outpaced the supply Soon it will go meta: a serial killer hosts a true crime show to create interesting episodes, and then other true crime shows have an episode on that!
  - PoignardAzur 3y ago
    I always thought that aspect was the creepiest part of the Scream movies. Imagine surviving a serial killer, and knowing there are good odds you're going to die at the hands of another copycat killer before you die of old age.
    - wharvle 3y ago
      To some extent, those sorts of motifs are a dramatization and personification of death itself. A very real threat that's usually rather immaterial and conceptual, cast as something you can see and touch. And that can chase you down an alley. Nothing got you today. But something might have! And something definitely will sooner or later. It's always lurking, it doesn't rest, it's relentless in its mission, and it can strike at any time. If it hasn't taken someone you love, just wait, it will—in fact, it'll take everyone you love, eventually, if you stick around long enough. You see similar use of the unstoppable-killer with marked victims (achieved via copycats and other trickery in Scream, but it's the same idea) for the purpose of representing other fears, traumas, or threats that have a degree of universality and don't tend to entirely go away, as in It Follows. You see this whole thing made perhaps a bit too on-the-nose in works like Final Destination—which is why, I think, you can have endless unstoppable-knife-guy movies and they may retain some appeal, but a little bit of a "cute" very-literal twist on the formula like Final Destination goes a long way; the world only needs so much of that, much as a joke that subverts a particular standard joke-form only works once or twice before it stops being amusing. The fun thing about the Scream series, when the movies remember it, is that the killer's emulating this fictional trope of an unstoppable and possibly-supernatural-but-not-omnipotent killer on purpose, in "real life", which is good fodder for creative narrative, twists, and well-earned winks at the camera. The movies are meta not because they've arbitrarily chosen to be (though they do choose to lean into it, of course) but because they aren't about these kinds of fictional unstoppable-personification-of-death killers directly, but about "real people" doing the unstoppable-personification-of-death thing in "real life", in imitation of film (even in the first one, before the idea of copycats hunting the survivors entered the picture, there's a particular thing done in order to imitate not just a human knife-wielding killer, but specifically this kind of wholly fictional, unkillable death-dealer). Actually, as with Final Destination, this is another thing the world only needs so much of, for similar reasons—I'm not sure the market would support a much greater rate of release for this kind of film than we already see. It's not as immediately-played-out, though, less of a one trick pony.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  As with so many things: the thing itself is not the issue. The problem is the thing started to make money/gain traffic and then everyone and their mother has to jump in and start making derivative versions of it until it's saturated beyond comprehension, none of it makes any money, and they run off to find the next damn thing to rip off.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  There is a huge series covering abducted/missing women. I forget the name right now. They barely scratched the surface. There is no way you could cover them all as the number keeps growing so fast.
- whycome 3y ago
  There's something to be said for advances in storytelling/graphics/quality. The AI reanimation may be too far, but there are other useful storytelling tools.
tropdrop 3y ago
Don't forget Robert Durst of The Jinx – an American real estate heir got away with murder for decades. The Jinx was a true crime documentary for which Durst, for some reason, agreed to be interviewed. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but at some point throughout the interviewing Durst gave himself away and the evidence accrued within the documentary ended up being used to finally put him behind bars for life.
- pests 3y ago
  I was going to comment on this one. I actually just watched the earlier movie about this case. All Good Things Which led Durst into doing his first ever interview with the creator who then went on to create The Jinx which led to his arrest.

Analemma_ 3y ago

> "True Crime" as a genre is littered with unscrupulous hosts. But not all of it is in the gutter. In fact, some of it produces a public good. True crime has a similar problem to, say, commerical fishing. Some of the early stuff was quite good, because the first shows to do it had their pick of complex and narratively satisfying events to be based on. But once the low-hanging fruit was plucked, subsequent shows had no choice but to begin trawling, in the same way that fishermen do when populations run thin. The demand for true crime has considerably outpaced the supply, and hence why newer shows essentially can't not be bad and dangerous: they have to either invent predators out of thin air or otherwise make mountains out of molehills. There needs to be like a 30-year moratorium on true crime, to let the "fish stocks" replenish.

teeray 3y ago
> The demand for true crime has considerably outpaced the supply Soon it will go meta: a serial killer hosts a true crime show to create interesting episodes, and then other true crime shows have an episode on that!
- PoignardAzur 3y ago
  I always thought that aspect was the creepiest part of the Scream movies. Imagine surviving a serial killer, and knowing there are good odds you're going to die at the hands of another copycat killer before you die of old age.
  - wharvle 3y ago
    To some extent, those sorts of motifs are a dramatization and personification of death itself. A very real threat that's usually rather immaterial and conceptual, cast as something you can see and touch. And that can chase you down an alley. Nothing got you today. But something might have! And something definitely will sooner or later. It's always lurking, it doesn't rest, it's relentless in its mission, and it can strike at any time. If it hasn't taken someone you love, just wait, it will—in fact, it'll take everyone you love, eventually, if you stick around long enough. You see similar use of the unstoppable-killer with marked victims (achieved via copycats and other trickery in Scream, but it's the same idea) for the purpose of representing other fears, traumas, or threats that have a degree of universality and don't tend to entirely go away, as in It Follows. You see this whole thing made perhaps a bit too on-the-nose in works like Final Destination—which is why, I think, you can have endless unstoppable-knife-guy movies and they may retain some appeal, but a little bit of a "cute" very-literal twist on the formula like Final Destination goes a long way; the world only needs so much of that, much as a joke that subverts a particular standard joke-form only works once or twice before it stops being amusing. The fun thing about the Scream series, when the movies remember it, is that the killer's emulating this fictional trope of an unstoppable and possibly-supernatural-but-not-omnipotent killer on purpose, in "real life", which is good fodder for creative narrative, twists, and well-earned winks at the camera. The movies are meta not because they've arbitrarily chosen to be (though they do choose to lean into it, of course) but because they aren't about these kinds of fictional unstoppable-personification-of-death killers directly, but about "real people" doing the unstoppable-personification-of-death thing in "real life", in imitation of film (even in the first one, before the idea of copycats hunting the survivors entered the picture, there's a particular thing done in order to imitate not just a human knife-wielding killer, but specifically this kind of wholly fictional, unkillable death-dealer). Actually, as with Final Destination, this is another thing the world only needs so much of, for similar reasons—I'm not sure the market would support a much greater rate of release for this kind of film than we already see. It's not as immediately-played-out, though, less of a one trick pony.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
As with so many things: the thing itself is not the issue. The problem is the thing started to make money/gain traffic and then everyone and their mother has to jump in and start making derivative versions of it until it's saturated beyond comprehension, none of it makes any money, and they run off to find the next damn thing to rip off.
datavirtue 3y ago
There is a huge series covering abducted/missing women. I forget the name right now. They barely scratched the surface. There is no way you could cover them all as the number keeps growing so fast.
whycome 3y ago
There's something to be said for advances in storytelling/graphics/quality. The AI reanimation may be too far, but there are other useful storytelling tools.

tropdrop 3y ago

Don't forget Robert Durst of The Jinx – an American real estate heir got away with murder for decades. The Jinx was a true crime documentary for which Durst, for some reason, agreed to be interviewed. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but at some point throughout the interviewing Durst gave himself away and the evidence accrued within the documentary ended up being used to finally put him behind bars for life.

pests 3y ago
I was going to comment on this one. I actually just watched the earlier movie about this case. All Good Things Which led Durst into doing his first ever interview with the creator who then went on to create The Jinx which led to his arrest.