Shut Up Kristyn! | Misc

60 | the ethics of true crime content

+ Content warning: This chapter will discuss aspects of true crime, such as murder, kidnapping, cannibalism, the glorification of serial killers, victim blaming, etc. If you find any of these topics triggering, feel free to skip this chapter.

So. True Crime content has always been pretty popular, but there has definitely been a resurgence of it lately. Throughout the years, it has graced every new form of media— newspapers, magazines, books, radio, film/TV, social media, and now, most recently, podcasts. It's become so normalized in some of our lives that we as a society have started to become desensitized to it.

This has only become more obvious with the premiere of the Jeffrey Dahmer series on Netflix starring Evan Peters. I will get to that in a minute.

One of the most central debates about the community is: Is there an ethical way to consume/create true crime content? Can you do it respectfully, or are you always going to be a bad person for discussing these topics?

MY EXPERIENCE WITH TRUE CRIME, AND WHY AM I GUILTY OF CONSUMING THIS CONTENT?

I'm going to share something personal. Without giving too many details, a family member of mine was murdered when I had just become a teenager. It was one of the most horrifying, traumatic experiences of my life because I was very close to this person, and it has changed the way I look at life forever.

I feel like there is a level of understanding TC content that you cannot reach unless you've experienced something like this yourself. The victims' families are often forgotten in the conversation surrounding the creation of content. Like I said, it's such a life-altering, gut-wrenching experience that, even if you try to imagine what it's like from an outside perspective, you'll never truly comprehend it. The pain, the horror, the grief and the fear, it's all indescribable.

I was fourteen or fifteen when I started thinking about becoming a forensic scientist. I was very interested in how science can help solve crimes, and, due to my personal experience with such a horrific event, I desperately wanted to help families. The not-knowing is the worst part. The point where you're just waiting for answers, begging to know why and how and who, is agonizing. I know how that feels, so I wanted to enter a career where, not only was I interested in the work itself, I had a personal connection with why I would be doing it.

Alas, that path didn't work out because STEM kicked my ass. But I'm still very interested in forensic science (Forensic Files is one of my favorite shows) and true crime in general.

I'm not a hundred percent sure when my interest in true crime began. I feel like it was when I was in high school because I was desperate for answers. I wanted to know why people resort to such cruelty and violence, what kind of person they are, and how the system can be better for the families of victims (and also victims who survive). I took a criminology course and found it fascinating (plus I scored a 99% in the course, so *flips hair*).

It was around that time in my last year of high school (12th grade) when Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes was released on Netflix, shortly followed by Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile starring Zac Efron as Bundy. I didn't know too much about the dude aside from how people were convinced of his innocence because he was conventionally attractive, so I watched both.

I've seen many TC documentaries between then and now. I prefer the ones who involve the actual investigators and/or the families/victims because it helps me know that at least some people involved were consulted in the creation of the content. For example, Jan Broberg, the victim from Abducted in Plain Sight (2017), is an activist who frequently tells her story and wants it out there to warn other people of the dangers she faced.