In Amelia Tait’s article, “The Psychological Impact of Consuming True Crime”, she begins discussing Netflix’s new show detailing the story and murders of Jeffrey Dahmer. The show is one of the newest true crime documentaries, yet quickly became one of Netflix’s most popular. Tait explains how we got to shows like Dahmer’s coming out, starting back with the podcast Serial, released in 2014. Serial started with telling the true story of Hae Min Lee’s murder in 1999, debating the likelihood of her ex-boyfriend being her killer. Many people joined a subreddit after the podcast’s debut, a subreddit that now has over 75,000 members. Tait goes on the discuss interviews she had with several both current and ex-members of the subreddit, telling the impacts the true crime community has. Stories ranging from risen blood sugar to someone being doxxed and called by strangers due to this subreddit. Tait brings to light the negative impacts, both mentally and physically, of interests in true crime.
Tait’s article helped bring to light other impacts of true crime that I hadn’t originally thought of, like people being obsessed with the topics, physical effects on health, and the danger of arguing the cases with others online. As someone who used to be an avid fan of true crime like the people Tait interviewed, I thought back to think of positives of the true crime wave that the interviewees mentioned. Someone interviewed brought up one of my strongest beliefs about the true crime wave, and that’s that the listeners and watchers forget the victims in these cases are real people. It’s much easier to listen to these stories as if they are just stories, things that could ave happened but were avoided. It makes me wonder why podcasts, books, and shows telling fake stories about crimes can’t grab our attention the same way. Is it the way the true stories remind us of the risks in life? Is it just easier to talk about something that happened already rather than write an entire story?
Tait, Amelia. “The Psychological Impact of Consuming True Crime.” Wired, 5 Oct. 2022, www.wired.com/story/serial-dahmer-monster-impact-true-crime/.