Jens Secret Diary

21.12.23 / Sort Of True Crime

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What You’re Missing: “... Distance may make the heart grow fonder when it comes to love, but when it comes to murder it seems to make the heart shrink ...”

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I’ve been thinking a bit about “true crime” recently. Not specific “true” crimes, but more “true crime” as a genre of entertainment. Like a lot of people, I do have a morbid interest in it myself and am certainly not above it in any way - like, I get why it’s interesting. I sometimes watch Youtube videos of interrogation videos, convinced that I can read body language to weed out a killer. We only naturally want to be aware of, and learn as much as is knowable about the psychology of people who cross the boundaries of social taboo and commit horrible crimes - especially if we’re in a vulnerable class or minority ourselves, because a part of us wants to think that we can prepare ourselves for possible future encounters. But I’m definitely starting to have reservations about just how much of it there is now, and how quickly the machine seems to churn out true crime “entertainment”, sometimes during an ongoing investigation or trial.