If you’re anything like me, you love to listen to true crime podcasts. They’re pretty interesting and have always helped me pass the time at work. But let’s talk about some dos and don’ts of the true crime world.
DO be an active true crime listener! Yes, they are entertaining, and often very informative. But these are real people who had real feelings, dreams, and families. Listening to them as if they were not, is insensitive and a dishonor to them as people. One person can obviously not solve the case or fix the problems of the justice system, but something as simple as signing a petition or emailing an attorney’s office can go a long way.
Imagine being a family member of a victim of murder and hearing someone talk about your relative or their case as if it was another episode of a reality TV show. It’s sad and a lot of true crime listeners are often guilty of doing this.
DON’T shame the victims for how they behaved in a situation. People who have never been in a dangerous situation like that have NO idea how they would react. I know I don’t! Stop talking about these victims like they are movie characters. Again, they are real people who were probably in shock and reacted in the best way they could.
I have been seeing this a lot around the case of the college students who were killed in Idaho. So many people are shaming the roommate who was not killed for how she reacted in the situation. Nobody except the people in that house that night knows how they would react. Saying anything bad about her is very distasteful.
DO listen to Kendall Rae on YouTube and Spotify! She is one of the best true crime youtubers out there. She is incredibly respectful and often includes the families of the victims in her videos. She donates lots of money to different amazing organizations and has a lot of obvious remorse for the victims.
I think the most important thing she does that not all other youtubers do, is humanize the victims. Sometimes people who talk about true crime skip right to the case and only talk about that. Kendall Rae talks about the people before the tragedy happened and emphasizes that they were good people with big futures before they were victims of these tragedies.
DON’T watch documentaries on streaming services that disrespect the victims or their families. Some streaming services will make documentaries on cases without any permission or insight from the families and disrespect the person that was lost in the process.
A good example of a documentary to avoid is “Dead Asleep” on Hulu. The family did NOT approve this being made and have asked Hulu to remove it from their site. Kendall Rae made a video on this called “The Murder of Brooke Preston & the Truth About Hulu’s ‘Dead Asleep’” which goes more into detail about the case and the family’s problems with the documentary.
The most important thing I want you to get from this, is to be sensitive! You genuinely have no idea what anyone has gone through or what has happened to the people close to them, so be careful with what you say. And be an active true crime listener!