As the Lindsay Clancy trial continues to draw attention on social media, I’ve noticed how detached people have become when discussing mainstream crime cases. Hundreds have taken to social media to share their perspective, and the majority are delivered in a pretty inconsiderate manner. People are forgetting that these things they speak of involve real people. The lack of separation of fantasy and reality in the true crime community has many negative outcomes, and the out-of-touch manner that is surrounding the fascination is completely disrespectful.
Human nature
For all of history, people have been fascinated with atrocities committed on humans by other humans. Is the modern-day crime documentary not the equivalent of witnessing public executions, or watching a fight to the death in a Colosseum? Humans have a need to make a spectacle of tragedy. The curiosity–I think- stems from a need to dehumanize the act altogether. People do anything to separate themselves from reality. Instead of treating a homicide like real life, they isolate themselves by looking for any differences—in an attempt to tell themselves that it could never be them. I think that humans have to create this separation in order to keep that false illusion that they could never be susceptible to such a heinous act. Yet, by partaking in this, other things are lost as well. People often forget that the people involved in these tragedies are in fact very real. Their lives are discussed like campfire stories, and their killers are given villain nicknames while their victims are forgotten.
Glorification of killers
Everyone knows Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, The BTK killer. But how many of their victims could you name? Could you describe facts about their lives as effortlessly as their killer’s? Why don’t they get entire movies made about their lives with their name blaring on the title and Hollywood’s most famous actor to play them? It’s disgusting, the way that people can simply be okay with treating killers–whose only defining feature is that they committed atrocities on other people– as if they are fascinating and complex.Â
The Lindsay Clancy Trial- separating real life from fantasy
I understand that people are always going to be interested to hear details and follow along on the whodunnit chase, but why not read Nancy Drew? Why must the tragedy of someone’s life be your Friday night entertainment? Three innocent children lost their lives and their justice is being overshadowed by personal narratives of so-called TikTok detectives. The entire trial has been made a mockery of. There shouldn’t be memes about a murder trial, and there certainly shouldn’t be millions of people attempting to interfere with something they have no part in.