With Halloween right around the corner, people often look for media to consume with a thrill, such as a horror movie or a chilling book. But did you know that people’s biggest fears could realistically occur? Therefore, many people will turn to the true crime genre.
True crime is the term used to describe actual cases of, you guessed it, crime. Oftentimes, these cases are told through various media outlets: podcasts, TikTok creators, narrative nonfiction, or even movie depictions. In fact, many have gained quite a bit of popularity, including Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s anthology Monster, which aired on Netflix. The four-season show has already covered the cases of Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, Ed Gein, and most recently Lizzie Borden. Additionally, Netflix has several true-crime docuseries such as American Murder: Gabby Petito and Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a true crime junkie, the odds are you’ve stumbled across a TikTok about a case, turned on Lifetime to a true-crime movie (which probably featured Katie Douglas), or even clicked on a shocking news headline. Without knowing it, you probably fell down the rabbit hole.
Why do people have such an obsession with learning about these real-life cases?
The primary reason for this obsession can be boiled down to one simple word: curiosity. Mainly, a curiosity about what drives people to do things so terrible. Often, people aren’t as obsessed with the crime’s dark nature; instead, they are more interested in the culprit than the victim. Many aim to understand the psychological workings of these culprits. What factors led them to commit the crime? Do they feel remorse? Could this have been predicted, or did the culprit snap?
Similarly, people feel a sense of morbid curiosity. When an extreme headline appears, many people want to know what could be so heinous. We tend to be drawn to the extremes of human nature, which tends to have a direct correlation to true crime stories.
Danger! Danger!
Curiosity is not the stand-alone reason, however. In fact, many people tend to consume true crime as a “survival guide.” This, I mean quite literally. From an evolutionary standpoint, humans have always tried to identify danger. Think about it: many major historical events have occurred because humans have tried to pinpoint dangerous things, even if they weren’t dangerous to begin with. Take the Salem Witch Trials, when many girls died due to a town accusing them of practicing witchcraft, something they classified as a threat.
When it comes to true crime, some tend to consume it to analyze threats and better prepare for them should they arise. Particularly, this reason arises primarily in women, the largest demographic of true crime consumers. Since women are the majority targets of crime, especially in well-known true crime cases, they may tend to consume the media to prepare. Knowing how certain crimes have occurred in the past, along with attempting to understand a criminal’s mindset, tends to put people at ease, at least in case they were to end up in a dangerous situation.
Justice…?
The final reason is one that is optimistic in comparison to the genre: justice. Some individuals who indulge in true crime view it from a moral standpoint. A bad guy does something bad; they (sometimes) get caught, and justice is served. In a world where everything is morally ambiguous, the narrative of many of these stories follows this simple arc—despite how complex each case truly is. If people can believe there is hope in the world despite the wretchedness that can occur, then isn’t there a reason for them to keep on pushing? That the basis of action-and-consequence is still upheld? That at least some criminals are still lying in the beds they made?
Maybe the obsession with true crime stems from one reason, all three, or another whatsoever. Regardless, it’s safe to say that the craze around true crime is not dying down anytime soon. Our natural inclination towards the dark and morbid, safety and preservation, and a hope for justice will prevail.