September 10, 2021 • 42 mins
Women love true crime. Women make true crime. But why?
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm not going to
stuff I've never told you production of I Heart Radio.
So Annie, I know last year one of your favorite
movies hoppen this to be Knives Out? Am I correct?
(00:26):
So what is it about movies like that that you love?
I I love that movie because it was really fun.
I felt like everyone was having fun, Like the actors
are having fun and the writers are having fun. It
was very almost character churish, but still believable. So it
almost felt like Clue level in terms of the board game,
(00:50):
like the way the design was and the way the
characters where that outfits and everyone had a motive. I
love guessing like, oh could it have been you? Or
it was you? Um, And then you got Daniel Craig's accent,
which was so fun. And then I thought it was
a new take because I'm somebody And as we talked
about you know what actually does extrovert versus introvert mean,
(01:14):
I've come to realize, like for me, that new thing
is really important. So I felt like Knives Out was
a really new take, fresh take for me when it
came to that genre of like the twist in the
middle that you didn't want this person to get caught.
And then you know another twist that that's it wasn't
even that in the first place. But then also that
it's kind and sweet and it kind of revolves around kindness,
(01:41):
which is a big, big thing for me. Something that
I love is when these characters are are kind and
things happened to them that are decent turns out okay, right,
And I think, yeah, it's definitely one of those new takes,
as you said, Ana who Done It? Which I feel
(02:02):
like everybody loves that. I know. That's why my grandparents
love things like Perry Mason those Coombo shows, because it's
all about the who done it? And I think that's
a big part of the genre in general. And yeah,
this one that's kind of like as you were talking
about Clue, you're talking about the game, but in the
movie it's a fun take. It's a it's a hysterical like,
oh my goodness, is a mystery what is this? And yeah,
(02:24):
none of these people are likable, like they literally make
it that way, where nobody's really likable or overly likable,
like it's one of the two. It's kind of like
you all have a motive, but at the same time.
But yeah, I'm asking all of this because one of
the big things about these types of movies are the
fact that it is based on crime. And we're going
(02:45):
to get into it a little bit later about why
we may actually like true crime, and I say we
less more more so than me, I guess than you.
You don't love the true crime stuff as much as like, yeah, mysteries,
but a part of the true crime indulgence, I guess
it's the best word, is that you kind of it
kind of is a mystery that is unfolding and you're
trying to figure it out as well, especially if you
(03:07):
don't know what's going on. Unfortunately, because it is real,
it takes a really dark turn at the very beginning
of the tales, I guess, and that makes it completely different.
And yeah, that's what we're gonna talk about today. And again,
true crime has been around for a very long time
from the beginning, I really want to say, and though
the media and medium has changed quite a bit, true
(03:29):
crime has changed and adapted right along with it. Of course,
if you've listened to our podcast for a while, you
may have heard our past host talk about women's love
for true crime and if you haven't, you should go
and check it out. But we thought we could do
a quick revisit of our love for this and why
it's not slowed down at all. But first let's do
(03:49):
a quick review of the history of true crime. Yes,
so let's start at what some would call the beginning.
But as we continue to like pound upon Oh, also
see our truth Founds episode um in our Female first episodes.
History is always a bit tricky, and though we're talking
about what's first recorded, it doesn't necessarily mean that it
is the actual first. It's just the first that we
(04:11):
we know of. So according to definition dot com, true
crime is literally just quote based on our describing an
actual crime. And to go to what we are going
to look at specifically for this episode, we're going to
use the definition dot net version, which is quote a nonfiction,
literary and film genre in which the author examines an
actual crime and details the actions of real people. The
(04:34):
genre has been described as entertainment and as factional, a
mix of fact and fiction. So yeah, not necessarily as
bad as the based on but they do take a
little bit of narrative and when we come to see
these documentaries, So that's why the blend sometimes, so what
(04:55):
is the history behind the telling a true crime and
of course absorbing all things true crime again according to
written records, So what we have for ourselves of what
we've seen and not necessarily written in stone, so we
may find out more stuff later like actually up, but
for now, one of the things that we know is
that one of the first series of documentations of crime
(05:17):
came from China, written in sixteen seventeen, with a book
a title Book of Swindles, and yeah, you can go
find more information, but apparently it's like overall context of
people taking things or being swindled and manipulated. So there's that.
And within the sixteenth and eighteen centuries we see the
pop up of street literature and Europe that featured crime
(05:37):
stories and even ballads to talk about a perpetrator's motivation,
so poems about it, weirdly enough, and this would eventually
become the penny press that was accessible for everyone, because
before it was only four upper middle class who could
afford getting these stories. But it became such a big
hit they were able to be like, you know what,
everybody should read these. Of course, this led to the
(05:58):
more modern style of true crime I'm in the late
nineteenth century, which was written by William Roughhead, a Scottish
lawyer who wrote about a murder trial he attended. But
To Crime became a more popular in the US in
the nineteen twenties and was written by Edmund Pearson, which
then became a full on true crime novel, with credit
given to Truman Capote, who wrote In Cold Blood, which
(06:20):
started this new trend and was even adapted again not
too long ago with the movie Capote and the interest
quickly grew into TV and viewing, with shows like The
Thin Blue Line, which included re enactments of the actual stories,
and specialized news broadcast that capitalized on interviews like the
Milwaukee serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer interviews with him or about him.
(06:42):
And now I've grown even more so, including through podcast,
which is one of the fastest growing medias, and through
social media like TikTok and Facebook, right and and you
and I used to talk about how he would get
to watch the little clips of the mysteries, and some
of them maybe horror, like the top ten most Horrible
or whatever wh I got because I do like true crime.
(07:04):
I would get snippets of true crime stuff, so it
would give me like a three minute summary and then
of course I would be like wait, I need more
and start like so they get you with those little
small clips. So you know, So who exactly is fueling
this true crime growth that's not decreasing at all? And
we talked about it in our Women who Love serial
(07:26):
Killers as well as in the previous podcast about true crime.
Women make up the larger part of the true crime
audience and most of them, if not all, agree that
women make up at least seventy five percent of the
audience and several say actually eighty five percent of the
audience who consumed this true crime genre specifically when it
comes to podcasts. But it's not just that they're consuming it,
(07:48):
but it's also that we are the ones creating it
as well. With a continued growth of people's true crime obsession,
we see women's spearheading this growth between podcasts that continue
to pick the just of the ever growing listenerships and
the new documentaries that often focus on the citizen of
details and new details that I've never been seen before.
Women are the ones that's voicing, writing, and producing this
(08:11):
new material which my friends are big fans of and
they'll always give me. Today, I got a text from
a friend about one of her true crime podcasts that
she loves, and I was like, alright, cool, cool, cool um.
In one report, they show that within the top twenty
podcast in the country, the country being the US in
this case, at least eleven of them were true crime
(08:31):
and out of that at least seven were hosted by women.
So I was wrong in my assessment and truth hounds,
I guess the most famous ones that I think of
our right other than the one big one which I
know we're going to talk about. And though the amount
of women and men authors for books are about the same,
it is women who dominate true crime podcast even to
the point is brought in new ways of consuming or
(08:53):
crossing over, including makeup tutorials, which we will talk about
more in a little bit. But six are hard to
come by for consumers and creators. What we do know
is that it isn't going away anytime soon, right, And
I'm not really sure why the statistics are so hard
to get to because people are trying to figure it
out themselves. Many want to know, but that is the reason.
(09:15):
I think they want to know the why, and not
necessarily the numbers, just saying and since we are talking
about women and true crime, and we wanted to take
a minute to talk about some of the key women
who have pushed this growth or even started it. And
we're gonna start with and I don't know German, I'm
gonna try my best, so don't yell at me, Angel
Christine vest Fallon, how I do? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay.
(09:39):
We couldn't start this conversation without talking about one of
the first women writers of true crime that we know of.
Once again, putting this every time, We'll say it every time.
So Angel Christine Vestfellin was a German writer who was
not afraid to break through all the rules and all
the ceilings that she could. And as we talked about
in our episodes on women or writers, many felt that
(10:02):
women should stick to certain types of writing and considered
it vulgar when they stepped outside of that preferred realm,
as in fact of as Fellon wrote her true crime story,
or rather a drama that depicted the Charlotte Corday story
of stabbing Jean Paul Murat, and we talked about them
when we were talking about female assassins is. She was
one of them. And once it was discovered that was
(10:23):
written by her, because she was going on to pen
names and she'd been writing different things trying to pretend
to be a man. But it soon came out that, oh,
she's not a man. And when the men found out,
like Johann Wolf Game one Goat, they were not pleased.
He even stated, quote, the worthy author of this tragedy
of Charlotte Corday would have better spent her time knitting
(10:45):
a warm underskirt for the winter than meddling this drama.
So he was very displeased and was like, stick to
your underwear woman, which is like what. But of course
that didn't stop her, and she made a really big
impact and continued on at a writer and won several awards.
So him right, yes, what but winter under skirt? I
(11:10):
don't know about that. And looking in the world of
us true crime, which is a chunk of the content
we couldn't skip over, and Rule one of the first
noted women in the true crime genre. Rule is best
known for her work on serial killer Ted Bundy titled
The Stranger Beside Me, and she was also known as
being a friend of Bundy who worked with her for
(11:32):
her book, but her career, much like ves Flin, was
met with skepticism and disdain, even though her own life
experiences included working in law enforcement and writing. She penned
much of her work under the pen name of Andy
Stack for publications and True Detective, where she was told
that writing true crime was quote no job for a woman.
But she continued and published many true crime novels and books. Right,
(11:55):
So she was really big. And when we say that
she was friends with Bundy, they actually had met in
college before he was free, so she knew him. And
so after this fact, she went and interviews and went
and visited him and got a lot of his story.
So yeah, to say she had a firsthand knowledge. Yeah,
and it keeps growing in different mediums including uh, documentaries
(12:19):
like Making a Murder. Did you ever watch the Sandy
I don't think you did, right, Yeah, of course I
ate it up. So it's a ten part series on
Netflix which was created by Mariar Demos and Laura Richiardi.
So the documentary took ten years to make and it
started in two thousand five, and after its actual initial
release later in eighteen, I believe it had at least
(12:41):
over nineteen million views in the first five weeks, and
not surprisingly this prompted petitions of new trials, new cases,
and outcries of deeper look at the cases and even
like when after all of the prosecutors in law enforcement,
it was not pretty um. And of course it also
came out with a part two which kind of does
(13:03):
where are they now? Kind of situation with a very
inconclusive end because I don't know if there's been a
second trial. I need to go back and look, but
it's been a minute that I haven't heard anything, and
I don't think there's really been new information since then,
just a lot of implications. Documentary is not the only
(13:33):
one we've moved on to our world yes of podcasts,
so Cereal is often credited as one of the first
true crime podcast although Criminal Generation, Why, and Sword and
Skill all proceeded that. I think it's just Serial got
this really big popularity, and it got it started in
the beginning, yeah, of this huge podcast genre. Of course,
(13:55):
all of those other three are very popular still so
that it's not going any where. None of these are
going anywhere. But Seial is credited in its innovative way
of investigative storytelling, originating as a spinoff of This American Life,
which is part of the NPR series Reporter Sarah Kanig
opened up a whole new world of long form audio
(14:17):
story that allowed for the audience to look beyond just
news clips and sad stories to becoming what is now
known as armchair detectives, with narratives of good and bad
guys and possible miscarriage of justice. And it's still talked
about today and criticized. There's a lot of criticism and
arguments based on serial and what they brought out. As
(14:39):
one true crime writer and podcaster stated, quote, Cereal is
the most important because it went viral. It got into
the zeitgeist and introduced many people to podcasts and got
them hooked. Yeah. I want to say that it's one
of the big beginnings of podcasts. Yeah. I agree, it's
one of the first. I listen too, because everyone was
listening to it, everyone was talking about it, and it
(14:59):
was It's interesting because it brought in a lot of
voices and they did like a lot of things that
now seem kind of silly just because it's been parodied.
It's not silly at all, but because so many podcasts
kind of emulated this formula, of you know, I did
the drive and I timed how long it took and
all that stuff, and like it did bring out all
(15:19):
these armchair detectives. And I know people still talking about
that first season of Cereal today, like the real people involved,
and that is something in yeah, my YouTube videos I
watched where they're like this this what's this mystery? And
it's inexplicable and then people are trying to figure out
they want to know. And I do think Cereal was
(15:41):
a big part of that because it would always end.
I remember the music so well. It would always end
and it'd be like, well, that's the question for the
next episode, and he'd be like, did so, well they did. So.
If we let's talk about this question of why, which
(16:03):
we've kind of been discussing some reasons of why do
people and especially women love true crime. If we're looking
at the depth of true crime and how long it's
been around, it's not surprising that women were ready to
fall in love with every form of true crime, especially podcast.
But again why. There are so many reasons people give
(16:23):
to answer that question to the reason why women find
it so enticing, but the research is fairly slim. Not
for the lack of trying, as we mentioned, but more
so that getting information hasn't been really that easy. Pew
Research and others have used the typical methods of questionnaires
and surveys, but with the fact that listeners vary, as
(16:44):
well as the fact some may not even know outside
of the you know, I just like it, Um, maybe
I've never really asked the question. They just like it.
The reasons are everywhere right, and there is a lot
of stuff that people talk about with different reasons why
they like it. Well, I saw I've seen a lot
of personal blogs about their explanations or people trying to
find out and so they talk about the ones that
(17:06):
resonate with them, and many vary. But again, yeah, these
are the common ones, I would say, and one is
one of the big ones. To learn how not to
be a victim? Say, I do not want to be
caught up in this. How do I stop this from happening? Um?
And many women state they want to learn what went
wrong and how not to be that victim. One report
(17:26):
states women quote have claimed that consuming true crime content
led to conscious change and behavior to ensure safety, for instance,
double checking door locks and carrying maize and pepper sprays, which, yeah,
these sales went up the more they like we see
the consuming of um and then that women are preparing
to know how to get out of dangerous situations like
(17:48):
kidnapping by learning defensive tactics from the past crimes. Yeah,
I'm very aware about trunk safety, how to kick out lights.
I have like those things ready to go, how to
hold your keys. Of course, this is also just being
in general and knowing that dangers await them, and by
consuming such horrific stories it might help them to analyze
and be aware of the psychopaths out in the world.
(18:10):
It's a way of learning motives and learning psychological factors
to avoid. So kind of that's just that, Oh, this
is the type of guy. Oh yeah, definitely the white
dude who seems too clean, a little bit off. Don't go,
don't go right, And that reminds me of what we
talked about in our kind of Science of Fear episode.
And why do women like horror movies where it's a
(18:33):
similar thing. It's like you're learning in your mind what
to avoid. And I like there was a comparison from
one paper I read that was it's like gossip in
a way, like gossip functions in a similar manner where
you're like, Okay, I'm learning based on this gossip that
I will get gossiped about if I do this thing.
(18:54):
And interestingly enough, horror and true crime falls under that
as well, where we do feel like, Okay, I am
learning from this what not to do or what to
do um to keep myself safe. And unfortunately, a lot
of times the victims and needs are women. I that's
(19:18):
from my anecdotal understanding, but I think it is true
just from crime statistics we have. Yeah, yeah, Well, honestly,
the facts of the matter, women are very unlikely to
be killed, Like we talked about the fact that how
how they will be killed and who will kill them,
and typically it's the men who die violently essentially, that's
why all the statistics have shown. So it's kind of surprising,
(19:40):
but these fears come out of the way women die.
So as we talked about whether it's horrific abuse or
all of those things, rape as a big fear factor
in most of our conversations, and we've seen this, but
that's also that intrigue of when we see crimes against
women is usually typically horrifically violent and therefore publicized. In
(20:01):
such a bigger manner than just drive by shootings and
or yeah, accidental deaths like car accidents and stuff. It
is typically that level. So the statistics show that men
should be more afraid of being killed, but they're not,
oddly enough. But again, like I said, the violence in
crime against women and then the violence when it comes
(20:22):
to serial killers who they've picked for victims, which are
the ones that are more publicized and highlighted, is what
causes that fear. And we'll talk about it in the
second right now, But watching those horrific stories, yeah, and
that can kind of go to morbid fascination. And I
think probably everyone listening this can relate to if something
happens in your city that catches a bunch of attention,
(20:45):
all of a sudden, you're getting um text and from
everybody that's like, do you have pepper stray, don't wear
your hair in a pony saale, don't do this at
a certain time, And it kind of it makes sense,
but it's also like, compared to the ways that I
could die, it's just that it's so horrifying and it
(21:05):
catches the attention we did our women in Revenge episode,
I read a really beautiful essay, painful essay written by
somebody whose family I believe had been murdered, and she
was just saying like she hated it, but she couldn't
deny it was intimate, like that was it felt like
this was such a an act, like we're forever impacted
my life, this person forever impacted and changed my life,
(21:29):
and I can't. It's really hard to separate yourself out
from that, and it's hard to not feel like you
were chosen or something, which we've talked about that with
victim blaming, and that's just part of human nature. Another
reason people give for their love of true crime and
women in specific is warriorism. Um. And yeah, that's just
(21:49):
again human nature, just kind of being nosy. That's like
a really big morbid bit of like like oh, I
don't want to say this, but I'm very intrigued and
I need to know what happened, right, um And yeah,
that's it's obviously oversimplifying things, but yes, for both men
and women alike, there is that sort of train wreck
factor that is deeply rooted in so many of us,
(22:11):
just needing to know and not being able to turn away,
like I gotta know how this ends, or like you
you can't, it's almost like a freeze thing. Or you're
just like I can't. I can't. If you and you
get a small tipita that information, you're like, wait, wait,
well I need to know more, and for me, like
I will watch something and I need to know where
(22:32):
they are today? Are they in prison? Are they? If
it doesn't conclusively it just ends with an arrest and
maybe a trial, I need to know, well, are they
rotting in jail or what has happening? Are they sorry?
Have they admitted it? Like there's a mini of moments
where I have to like finish it out of course, yes,
without watching and inabilities just to turn away. There is
(22:52):
that level of fear that's what intrigues people. Yes, fear
of the unknown or the possibility of having something violent
happened in your life. And I actually just had a
really horrible dream and I told you about it a
little earlier, and I'm not gonna go into it, maybe
because we are researching this and so it's in my brain,
(23:13):
but yes, stuff that just made me wake up and
it feels so nauseous and shaken by it, like it's
the worst thing that I can think of possibly happening,
but not because of anything other than my dog was involved,
I will say that, and so my dog is very
precious to me, and it was horrifying some of the
things that just came into my head. But it is
(23:34):
that fear. Some research state that is out of fear
that women listen and want to know about the situation again,
which could relate to how to care for themselves, but
that it's also a way of getting second hand relief
and not being a victim. So being able to say
that's I've never experienced that makes you feel okay, And
I think that's kind of that level of So. We
(23:55):
just had recently had a really horrific death in Atlanta
that happened in one of our more popular parks, and
I don't know where the case is gone, but it
definitely brought out all of the oh my god, there's
a serial killer text and notes and message boards like
it's it's been happening. And the first thing I thought
was because I believe the woman was white. I was like,
(24:17):
I'm not a white woman. I'm good. Like there was
this little fear like moment of relief, which I shouldn't be.
There should not be, but knowing like the history of
what serial killers their patterns are. You know that there's
like race is a big factor typically typically in all
of this, and that's that part, but still want to know.
(24:38):
But there is that second hand of relief, which is
awful because someone died and this needs to be told
and we need to get justice for this woman. But
there is not fear, like a moment of like glad
that didn't happen to me. Yeah, you know, yeah, And
we talked about that a little also in our Fear
episode Why women Love Horrmonies, which is something that's just
(24:59):
fast me And I've thought about this idea of you stress,
which is a type of stress that is like good,
but I think for a lot of women because we
do live with these fears. We do live with when
I go outside, you know, I'm thinking about, um, the
people on the street you did, where where are my keys?
And what are my exits and all those things. Um,
(25:20):
So I think there is something about watching something and
being able to relate but also be separate and like
kind of release some of that stress that's just built
up in you and you don't realize how much is
built up in you. I do think that's part of
it of like you were already feeling these nerves around
(25:43):
this and the fear around this every day, and to
watch something is like a way to release all of
that built upright fear, and it'll it will still build
up again, but it's like kind of just a method
of not ignoring it, but also being able to be
distant from it and experience it and release some of it. Right.
(26:05):
I think another reason, uh sympathy for the devil, and
this would be more related to our past episode on
women who love serial killers um, and that some people
are women are intrigued by the perpetrators background and how
they were created, the origin story. Um. I think that's
also part of few nature is how could someone do this?
(26:27):
Like asking that question? And there are some that believe
because women are thought to have more empathy than men,
that women connect on a different level, especially for the victim,
which makes the stories more relevant and personal for women
right in a lot of the way, they wanted to
see that that justice has happened, so instead of having
(26:48):
like I think Cereal was a little different because it
questioned things, but there was so many other true crime
like things with Ted Bundy and things with the Nice Stalker,
there was endings. There, there was a conclusive this happened.
So to have that is also a different level like
oh my god, thank goodness, we are so glad these
(27:08):
victims you know, had justice or hopefully they do get justice.
But that's also part of that um and yeah, and
with that again, the puzzles or the detective work behind
the series. Some experts state it involves a level of
working out the mystery, stating quote, women like to untangle things.
They think a lot. I'm not saying women don't, but
they like to work things out often think about things
(27:31):
quite deeply. And obviously there's a big aspect of that
and true crime, especially in unsolved cold case type documentaries
or podcasts. So there's a lot to think about and
to talk about, right And I know that's what a
lot of the different podcasts hosts are able to do, like,
especially when there's more than one host and they kind
of work it out together and talk it through with
(27:52):
each other. There's a lot of that trying to unravel
this mystery. And for me, yeah, there's a lot of
income fleet and unsolved cases, and I like going down
that rabbit hole as well. I will start researching individuals.
Of course, I don't go down like journalists, investigative journalists
who create who are able to unsolve mysteries themselves and
do the I'm gonna drive here to hear I'm not
(28:15):
that guy hard, but I will start looking and be like,
I wonder what this person was doing. I wonder what
that person is up to now, Like there's a lot
of questions that I'm like, I wonder if I can
And I'm also the same person in horror movies, like
the whole who done it? Or who's the killer type
of thing that I'm like, I know so and so
or this is the twist. Of course, this is the twist.
(28:36):
I'm that person feeling like I need to know that's
just me though, of course there's so many other reasons noted,
but like we said earlier, there are a lot of
speculation about the why, with a lot of answers and
some assumptions behind it. But there's tons and for yourself
and maybe a completely different reason, and even to the
point that they've yet said things like escapism as one
(28:59):
of the things and yeah, kind of like horror movies,
you're like, why would you torture yourself with this for
your able to remove yourself a little bit from the
horrors of your own horrors by other people's horrors, which
is kind of sad. That's it feels weird to say
out loud. Yeah, yeah, um, but yeah. There's just so
(29:20):
many things we talked about that I feel like are
parts of human nature, and they might be parts we
don't like thinking about too deeply, right it is? And yeah,
I have been, as Samantha knows, everyone knows, I've been
on a fan fiction kick for that there was a mystery.
There was a mystery involved that there was somebody it
(29:40):
was guilty, and I was telling everybody, I'm like, it's
this person and this is what should happen. And then
we got a text when she found out Yeah, I
was right. But it's kind of that same thing of
like Okay, I want to learn to pick up on
these clues of like Okay, this person is not trustworthy
and avoid them. For myself, I think they a lot
(30:00):
of things going on in our love for like trying
to figure out who did it. Who's the worst types
of people? I know, I know it was him. We've
(30:23):
talked about several forms of true crime content and as
our access in different forms of media continue to grow,
so does the amount of content obviously, so from the
beginning of true crime there have been several different forms
and it does continue to grow, and in fact, since
the origins of Cereal, there are hundreds, if not thousands
of true crime types of content. Are are types of
(30:46):
media out there to consume, and yes, many of those
are on our own network. In the last two years alone,
it has grown substantially. Podcasting has become one of the
biggest formats for true crime, and maybe as something to
you with the fact that it is in this genre
that women have some level of control. According to one report,
(31:07):
over the host in the genre are women, and these
podcasts are more likely to be produced by women as well.
And as we've talked about and several episodes, that's pretty
different and the rest of well, and a lot of
the podcasting community where it does look like it's it
sounds I guess mostly men, mostly men. Yeah, And to
(31:29):
be fair, according to some past research, again it's all fluctuating.
The people who listen to most are men, not necessarily
about true crime, but in any podcasts in general, the
listenership is typically leaning towards men, not too much. It's
not huge. It's almost like maybe six most are men.
But again that may absolutely have everything to do with
(31:51):
children in the car and or when we are, yeah,
doing childcare versus you know, stuff like that makes a
lot of affecting and who's work and who's doing commuting
and what. But yeah, and also the fact that yeah,
most of the format it shows more men are hosts
than they are there are women, but yeah, not necessarily
(32:12):
with this one. Yeah. Interesting And also shout out to
the show Morbid Um for shouting us out right. Thank you.
My one of my best friends, Katie, who's been on
this show. She listens to that show and I got
a very excited text from her and she's like, oh
my gosh, this shout at out stuff. I ever told
you all my favorite true crime podcast. I was like,
(32:33):
so cool, and I meant I had to start it. Yeah.
They are very fun. Yes, um, yeah, so thank you.
But all of this to say that doesn't mean books
are going anywhere. Um, But there's just multiple avenues of
entertainment and that extends to true crime now and yeah
it does. It has extended into so much more than books, right,
(32:57):
There are new forms, including social media forums like TikTok
and Facebook, which I just talked about Facebook and like
my own exploration and now I get it. Often it
pops up with like look at this. I'm like, yep,
there it is. And there are a lot more to that.
Many are sharing snippets of horrific crimes and two minute
clips or past clips or past crimes. Uh, and they're
(33:18):
gaining traction for it. So essentially having a person having
the green screen of TikTok and like plastering all these articles.
Why they're talking about it in two minute scripts and
saying click to like and the first part two like
they are doing it um and it was working and
as in fact, there was a specific post in which
a woman posted about her sister's murder and disappearance which
(33:40):
led to the arrest of our stepfather and this case
is ongoing and this happened on TikTok. I actually saw it.
I was like, is this is this real? To the
pot down, like is this scripted or is this real?
She actually has a post where she's walking down the
woods and she had a little written blurb about essentially
if you know much about TikTok, they said, uh, they
(34:02):
do a little video. They do a little clips and
they do they maybe they have a song or audio,
but essentially it sinuated, Uh, your stepfather acting like he
doesn't know what happened to my sister, but knowing that
he murdered her or something or he was the cause
of it. And then there It's to me so erie
when I see things like that. But and then hurdly,
if you go onto our post later on, it pops
(34:24):
up with y'all did it, We did it? Thank you
so much. My stepfather has been arrested, and I'm like,
what So to the point that things like that have
been happening, of course, there's a lot of backlash with that,
and we'll kind of talk about it a little bit later.
But it's showing things like TikTok and new forms that
(34:44):
are jumping onto this type of genre and content that
it works, and it's gaining lots of traction still. But again,
what does that mean for this genre in general? Yeah? Well,
one thing you were telling about, I've never heard of this.
Um A different type of avenue for true crime is
(35:05):
the true crime makeup tutorial, which I thought was like
addressing yourself like a zombie or something. But I was
way off. So um Bailey Serian and I hope I'm
pronouncing that correctly has been accredited with this new content.
So she has a sub series within all of the
(35:28):
content she makes called Murder, Mystery and Makeup, and she
talks about different cases while as she puts it, quote
do my makeup? Um, and it's worked. After she began
this new segment, she went from one hundred thousand YouTube
subscribers to almost five million. Of course this was after
two years, but still very very rapid growth, huge growth.
(35:51):
Um and began a new trend in the YouTube makeup
tutorial world. And why does that work? Well? One do
year said quote learning about these awful time So watching
someone do their makeup makes it a little bit more
palatable as opposed to the regular true crime documentary. Right,
and researchers agree for many, especially with the younger audience,
(36:11):
which is the tutorial has really hit that youthful and
I say youth becaus I'm like, what is this, what
is happening? What what are you kids doing? Um? But
having makeup being a buffer, having someone doing their makeup
being a buffer of retelling of some horrible crime has
made it more palatable now don't get me wrong. Apparently
(36:31):
in the series, they're not necessarily talking about brands, are
not telling you anything other than telling you the story
while they're putting their makeup on, so you can kind
of see their technique without hearing what they're doing specifically
about makeup, but here the story at the same time,
so you can kind of concentrate on what's they're putting
on their face. Um and yeah, and it's grown and
crossed over into the world of TikTok as well, just
(36:53):
again in shorter versions. It seems more like clickbay to me,
but you know, I don't know much about this, which
helps to dire the audience to the YouTube channel to
give the full story. But it's a whole interesting tactic
and it's been around and there's been many people and
many a YouTubers and social media stars who have jumped
(37:13):
on board and doing this as a part of their
niche I guess um and again it's worked to the
point that there are some that do requests. So there
was one star who will give Google I guess access
Google forms for people to fill out and it could
be requests to talk about this horrific crime, or it
(37:35):
can be requests from the victims families to highlight unsolved cases.
So you know, some of these things are like okay, cool, cool,
but it does kind of come back to the problem
like ideas like is this helping or hurting? I don't understand,
And that kind of comes down to the problems of
true crime, and I think that's partially a bigger conversation
(37:58):
of why people are rec you, why are women doing this?
Are women okay? Essentially cling the question, um, and yes, again,
there are some problems within this genre and this decensitizing
of these horrific crimes, which include some say that part
of these are kind of coppaganda essentially a compaganda for
(38:18):
those who may not know that term is propaganda for
enhancing cops or police and hero making them heroes and
idolizing them essentially. Of course, I'm not saying there's anything
wrong with law enforcement necessarily. There We've had conversations about
you know, police and reformation and or abolishment before, and
(38:39):
if you want to listen to that, that's a whole
different episode. But there's a conversation about whether or not, uh,
these stories actually elevate cops in a really too good
of a manner. Or maybe in a bad manner. It's
kind of both of those things, is according to which
one you look at. If you look at the night stalker,
there's a lot of big conversations of the fact that
(39:00):
how the police were heroes and and don't get me wrong,
we need police to solve crimes like that, please please,
please know that. But there's a conversation of who is
being fetishized in here are the heroes getting more credit
than you know, the lawyers, sold whatever whatnot. So there's
a big competition about that and again complicated as a
whole different conversation that we can have. But then there's
(39:22):
also the conversation of our way of doing it, and
we're we're demonizing cops as well. So you see things
like making a murderer did not shine a good light
on those investigators. Don't get me wrong. Once again, I
would also agree justice is meaning to get the right
person and to ask the right questions and to not
violate someone's constitutional rights. Obviously, and maybe we need to
(39:44):
have a conversation about what the conversation looks like today
and compared to when it was created. Again, a different conversation.
But all of that to say is They're like, there's
a little bit of problematic background for both of those things,
like who is doing what and what is the message
being said? So with these true crime genres, it is
disproportionately based on white victims and typically white women, and
(40:07):
kind of has that whole level of who is being
a victimized, who's seen as a victim versus who's seen
as a lesser case. I guess a lot of the
conversation about why is it that white women are the
ones who are focused on and most likely to be
seen when it comes to crimes, and we see people
of women of color are dismissed typically their crimes are
(40:28):
not as seen. And again, who is it focusing on?
And yet again we talked about this before, the romanticizing
of perpetrators and how they became infatuations such as the
Ted Bundy story. It becomes such a weird, fintish sizing
horrible man, same way as a night soccer, same way
as Jeffrey Dahmer. They ended up all having groupies. This
(40:49):
is kind of this level of like, oh, what are
we doing with this narrative? And then yeah, what are
we doing to the victims families? Are we actually holding
any kind of real justice to telling their story or
read traumatizing and honestly feeding off of their trauma. So
there's definitely a lot of conversation of what is this
(41:11):
But the one thing we know, it's not going away, no, no,
And I think there's so much we can pick apart here,
And it's just interesting how many aspects of humanity and
and sexism and racism that you can kind of see
in this one genre where you can talk about like, well,
(41:31):
why are women empathizing or perhaps fromanticizing perpetrators and why
are women making up a big chunk of the audience. Like,
I think there's a lot to be teased apart and
all of this, and we've touched on, touched on it,
but you know, as always, more research is needed. Also,
(41:54):
we would love to hear from you listeners. If you
like true cry, we want to know why. You can
emails at stuff d your mom Stuff at I heeart
media dot com. You can find us on Twitter at
mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram at stuff I've Never
Told You. Thanks, it's always you're a super producer, Christina,
Thank you, and thanks to you for listening Stuff One
Never Told You Protection I High Radio For more podcast
(42:14):
from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple
podcast or where you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm not going to
stuff I've never told you production of I Heart Radio.
So Annie, I know last year one of your favorite
movies hoppen this to be Knives Out? Am I correct?
(00:26):
So what is it about movies like that that you love?
I I love that movie because it was really fun.
I felt like everyone was having fun, Like the actors
are having fun and the writers are having fun. It
was very almost character churish, but still believable. So it
almost felt like Clue level in terms of the board game,
(00:50):
like the way the design was and the way the
characters where that outfits and everyone had a motive. I
love guessing like, oh could it have been you? Or
it was you? Um, And then you got Daniel Craig's accent,
which was so fun. And then I thought it was
a new take because I'm somebody And as we talked
about you know what actually does extrovert versus introvert mean,
(01:14):
I've come to realize, like for me, that new thing
is really important. So I felt like Knives Out was
a really new take, fresh take for me when it
came to that genre of like the twist in the
middle that you didn't want this person to get caught.
And then you know another twist that that's it wasn't
even that in the first place. But then also that
it's kind and sweet and it kind of revolves around kindness,
(01:41):
which is a big, big thing for me. Something that
I love is when these characters are are kind and
things happened to them that are decent turns out okay, right,
And I think, yeah, it's definitely one of those new takes,
as you said, Ana who Done It? Which I feel
(02:02):
like everybody loves that. I know. That's why my grandparents
love things like Perry Mason those Coombo shows, because it's
all about the who done it? And I think that's
a big part of the genre in general. And yeah,
this one that's kind of like as you were talking
about Clue, you're talking about the game, but in the
movie it's a fun take. It's a it's a hysterical like,
oh my goodness, is a mystery what is this? And yeah,
(02:24):
none of these people are likable, like they literally make
it that way, where nobody's really likable or overly likable,
like it's one of the two. It's kind of like
you all have a motive, but at the same time.
But yeah, I'm asking all of this because one of
the big things about these types of movies are the
fact that it is based on crime. And we're going
(02:45):
to get into it a little bit later about why
we may actually like true crime, and I say we
less more more so than me, I guess than you.
You don't love the true crime stuff as much as like, yeah, mysteries,
but a part of the true crime indulgence, I guess
it's the best word, is that you kind of it
kind of is a mystery that is unfolding and you're
trying to figure it out as well, especially if you
(03:07):
don't know what's going on. Unfortunately, because it is real,
it takes a really dark turn at the very beginning
of the tales, I guess, and that makes it completely different.
And yeah, that's what we're gonna talk about today. And again,
true crime has been around for a very long time
from the beginning, I really want to say, and though
the media and medium has changed quite a bit, true
(03:29):
crime has changed and adapted right along with it. Of course,
if you've listened to our podcast for a while, you
may have heard our past host talk about women's love
for true crime and if you haven't, you should go
and check it out. But we thought we could do
a quick revisit of our love for this and why
it's not slowed down at all. But first let's do
(03:49):
a quick review of the history of true crime. Yes,
so let's start at what some would call the beginning.
But as we continue to like pound upon Oh, also
see our truth Founds episode um in our Female first episodes.
History is always a bit tricky, and though we're talking
about what's first recorded, it doesn't necessarily mean that it
is the actual first. It's just the first that we
(04:11):
we know of. So according to definition dot com, true
crime is literally just quote based on our describing an
actual crime. And to go to what we are going
to look at specifically for this episode, we're going to
use the definition dot net version, which is quote a nonfiction,
literary and film genre in which the author examines an
actual crime and details the actions of real people. The
(04:34):
genre has been described as entertainment and as factional, a
mix of fact and fiction. So yeah, not necessarily as
bad as the based on but they do take a
little bit of narrative and when we come to see
these documentaries, So that's why the blend sometimes, so what
(04:55):
is the history behind the telling a true crime and
of course absorbing all things true crime again according to
written records, So what we have for ourselves of what
we've seen and not necessarily written in stone, so we
may find out more stuff later like actually up, but
for now, one of the things that we know is
that one of the first series of documentations of crime
(05:17):
came from China, written in sixteen seventeen, with a book
a title Book of Swindles, and yeah, you can go
find more information, but apparently it's like overall context of
people taking things or being swindled and manipulated. So there's that.
And within the sixteenth and eighteen centuries we see the
pop up of street literature and Europe that featured crime
(05:37):
stories and even ballads to talk about a perpetrator's motivation,
so poems about it, weirdly enough, and this would eventually
become the penny press that was accessible for everyone, because
before it was only four upper middle class who could
afford getting these stories. But it became such a big
hit they were able to be like, you know what,
everybody should read these. Of course, this led to the
(05:58):
more modern style of true crime I'm in the late
nineteenth century, which was written by William Roughhead, a Scottish
lawyer who wrote about a murder trial he attended. But
To Crime became a more popular in the US in
the nineteen twenties and was written by Edmund Pearson, which
then became a full on true crime novel, with credit
given to Truman Capote, who wrote In Cold Blood, which
(06:20):
started this new trend and was even adapted again not
too long ago with the movie Capote and the interest
quickly grew into TV and viewing, with shows like The
Thin Blue Line, which included re enactments of the actual stories,
and specialized news broadcast that capitalized on interviews like the
Milwaukee serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer interviews with him or about him.
(06:42):
And now I've grown even more so, including through podcast,
which is one of the fastest growing medias, and through
social media like TikTok and Facebook, right and and you
and I used to talk about how he would get
to watch the little clips of the mysteries, and some
of them maybe horror, like the top ten most Horrible
or whatever wh I got because I do like true crime.
(07:04):
I would get snippets of true crime stuff, so it
would give me like a three minute summary and then
of course I would be like wait, I need more
and start like so they get you with those little
small clips. So you know, So who exactly is fueling
this true crime growth that's not decreasing at all? And
we talked about it in our Women who Love serial
(07:26):
Killers as well as in the previous podcast about true crime.
Women make up the larger part of the true crime
audience and most of them, if not all, agree that
women make up at least seventy five percent of the
audience and several say actually eighty five percent of the
audience who consumed this true crime genre specifically when it
comes to podcasts. But it's not just that they're consuming it,
(07:48):
but it's also that we are the ones creating it
as well. With a continued growth of people's true crime obsession,
we see women's spearheading this growth between podcasts that continue
to pick the just of the ever growing listenerships and
the new documentaries that often focus on the citizen of
details and new details that I've never been seen before.
Women are the ones that's voicing, writing, and producing this
(08:11):
new material which my friends are big fans of and
they'll always give me. Today, I got a text from
a friend about one of her true crime podcasts that
she loves, and I was like, alright, cool, cool, cool um.
In one report, they show that within the top twenty
podcast in the country, the country being the US in
this case, at least eleven of them were true crime
(08:31):
and out of that at least seven were hosted by women.
So I was wrong in my assessment and truth hounds,
I guess the most famous ones that I think of
our right other than the one big one which I
know we're going to talk about. And though the amount
of women and men authors for books are about the same,
it is women who dominate true crime podcast even to
the point is brought in new ways of consuming or
(08:53):
crossing over, including makeup tutorials, which we will talk about
more in a little bit. But six are hard to
come by for consumers and creators. What we do know
is that it isn't going away anytime soon, right, And
I'm not really sure why the statistics are so hard
to get to because people are trying to figure it
out themselves. Many want to know, but that is the reason.
(09:15):
I think they want to know the why, and not
necessarily the numbers, just saying and since we are talking
about women and true crime, and we wanted to take
a minute to talk about some of the key women
who have pushed this growth or even started it. And
we're gonna start with and I don't know German, I'm
gonna try my best, so don't yell at me, Angel
Christine vest Fallon, how I do? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay.
(09:39):
We couldn't start this conversation without talking about one of
the first women writers of true crime that we know of.
Once again, putting this every time, We'll say it every time.
So Angel Christine Vestfellin was a German writer who was
not afraid to break through all the rules and all
the ceilings that she could. And as we talked about
in our episodes on women or writers, many felt that
(10:02):
women should stick to certain types of writing and considered
it vulgar when they stepped outside of that preferred realm,
as in fact of as Fellon wrote her true crime story,
or rather a drama that depicted the Charlotte Corday story
of stabbing Jean Paul Murat, and we talked about them
when we were talking about female assassins is. She was
one of them. And once it was discovered that was
(10:23):
written by her, because she was going on to pen
names and she'd been writing different things trying to pretend
to be a man. But it soon came out that, oh,
she's not a man. And when the men found out,
like Johann Wolf Game one Goat, they were not pleased.
He even stated, quote, the worthy author of this tragedy
of Charlotte Corday would have better spent her time knitting
(10:45):
a warm underskirt for the winter than meddling this drama.
So he was very displeased and was like, stick to
your underwear woman, which is like what. But of course
that didn't stop her, and she made a really big
impact and continued on at a writer and won several awards.
So him right, yes, what but winter under skirt? I
(11:10):
don't know about that. And looking in the world of
us true crime, which is a chunk of the content
we couldn't skip over, and Rule one of the first
noted women in the true crime genre. Rule is best
known for her work on serial killer Ted Bundy titled
The Stranger Beside Me, and she was also known as
being a friend of Bundy who worked with her for
(11:32):
her book, but her career, much like ves Flin, was
met with skepticism and disdain, even though her own life
experiences included working in law enforcement and writing. She penned
much of her work under the pen name of Andy
Stack for publications and True Detective, where she was told
that writing true crime was quote no job for a woman.
But she continued and published many true crime novels and books. Right,
(11:55):
So she was really big. And when we say that
she was friends with Bundy, they actually had met in
college before he was free, so she knew him. And
so after this fact, she went and interviews and went
and visited him and got a lot of his story.
So yeah, to say she had a firsthand knowledge. Yeah,
and it keeps growing in different mediums including uh, documentaries
(12:19):
like Making a Murder. Did you ever watch the Sandy
I don't think you did, right, Yeah, of course I
ate it up. So it's a ten part series on
Netflix which was created by Mariar Demos and Laura Richiardi.
So the documentary took ten years to make and it
started in two thousand five, and after its actual initial
release later in eighteen, I believe it had at least
(12:41):
over nineteen million views in the first five weeks, and
not surprisingly this prompted petitions of new trials, new cases,
and outcries of deeper look at the cases and even
like when after all of the prosecutors in law enforcement,
it was not pretty um. And of course it also
came out with a part two which kind of does
(13:03):
where are they now? Kind of situation with a very
inconclusive end because I don't know if there's been a
second trial. I need to go back and look, but
it's been a minute that I haven't heard anything, and
I don't think there's really been new information since then,
just a lot of implications. Documentary is not the only
(13:33):
one we've moved on to our world yes of podcasts,
so Cereal is often credited as one of the first
true crime podcast although Criminal Generation, Why, and Sword and
Skill all proceeded that. I think it's just Serial got
this really big popularity, and it got it started in
the beginning, yeah, of this huge podcast genre. Of course,
(13:55):
all of those other three are very popular still so
that it's not going any where. None of these are
going anywhere. But Seial is credited in its innovative way
of investigative storytelling, originating as a spinoff of This American Life,
which is part of the NPR series Reporter Sarah Kanig
opened up a whole new world of long form audio
(14:17):
story that allowed for the audience to look beyond just
news clips and sad stories to becoming what is now
known as armchair detectives, with narratives of good and bad
guys and possible miscarriage of justice. And it's still talked
about today and criticized. There's a lot of criticism and
arguments based on serial and what they brought out. As
(14:39):
one true crime writer and podcaster stated, quote, Cereal is
the most important because it went viral. It got into
the zeitgeist and introduced many people to podcasts and got
them hooked. Yeah. I want to say that it's one
of the big beginnings of podcasts. Yeah. I agree, it's
one of the first. I listen too, because everyone was
listening to it, everyone was talking about it, and it
(14:59):
was It's interesting because it brought in a lot of
voices and they did like a lot of things that
now seem kind of silly just because it's been parodied.
It's not silly at all, but because so many podcasts
kind of emulated this formula, of you know, I did
the drive and I timed how long it took and
all that stuff, and like it did bring out all
(15:19):
these armchair detectives. And I know people still talking about
that first season of Cereal today, like the real people involved,
and that is something in yeah, my YouTube videos I
watched where they're like this this what's this mystery? And
it's inexplicable and then people are trying to figure out
they want to know. And I do think Cereal was
(15:41):
a big part of that because it would always end.
I remember the music so well. It would always end
and it'd be like, well, that's the question for the
next episode, and he'd be like, did so, well they did. So.
If we let's talk about this question of why, which
(16:03):
we've kind of been discussing some reasons of why do
people and especially women love true crime. If we're looking
at the depth of true crime and how long it's
been around, it's not surprising that women were ready to
fall in love with every form of true crime, especially podcast.
But again why. There are so many reasons people give
(16:23):
to answer that question to the reason why women find
it so enticing, but the research is fairly slim. Not
for the lack of trying, as we mentioned, but more
so that getting information hasn't been really that easy. Pew
Research and others have used the typical methods of questionnaires
and surveys, but with the fact that listeners vary, as
(16:44):
well as the fact some may not even know outside
of the you know, I just like it, Um, maybe
I've never really asked the question. They just like it.
The reasons are everywhere right, and there is a lot
of stuff that people talk about with different reasons why
they like it. Well, I saw I've seen a lot
of personal blogs about their explanations or people trying to
find out and so they talk about the ones that
(17:06):
resonate with them, and many vary. But again, yeah, these
are the common ones, I would say, and one is
one of the big ones. To learn how not to
be a victim? Say, I do not want to be
caught up in this. How do I stop this from happening? Um?
And many women state they want to learn what went
wrong and how not to be that victim. One report
(17:26):
states women quote have claimed that consuming true crime content
led to conscious change and behavior to ensure safety, for instance,
double checking door locks and carrying maize and pepper sprays, which, yeah,
these sales went up the more they like we see
the consuming of um and then that women are preparing
to know how to get out of dangerous situations like
(17:48):
kidnapping by learning defensive tactics from the past crimes. Yeah,
I'm very aware about trunk safety, how to kick out lights.
I have like those things ready to go, how to
hold your keys. Of course, this is also just being
in general and knowing that dangers await them, and by
consuming such horrific stories it might help them to analyze
and be aware of the psychopaths out in the world.
(18:10):
It's a way of learning motives and learning psychological factors
to avoid. So kind of that's just that, Oh, this
is the type of guy. Oh yeah, definitely the white
dude who seems too clean, a little bit off. Don't go,
don't go right, And that reminds me of what we
talked about in our kind of Science of Fear episode.
And why do women like horror movies where it's a
(18:33):
similar thing. It's like you're learning in your mind what
to avoid. And I like there was a comparison from
one paper I read that was it's like gossip in
a way, like gossip functions in a similar manner where
you're like, Okay, I'm learning based on this gossip that
I will get gossiped about if I do this thing.
(18:54):
And interestingly enough, horror and true crime falls under that
as well, where we do feel like, Okay, I am
learning from this what not to do or what to
do um to keep myself safe. And unfortunately, a lot
of times the victims and needs are women. I that's
(19:18):
from my anecdotal understanding, but I think it is true
just from crime statistics we have. Yeah, yeah, Well, honestly,
the facts of the matter, women are very unlikely to
be killed, Like we talked about the fact that how
how they will be killed and who will kill them,
and typically it's the men who die violently essentially, that's
why all the statistics have shown. So it's kind of surprising,
(19:40):
but these fears come out of the way women die.
So as we talked about whether it's horrific abuse or
all of those things, rape as a big fear factor
in most of our conversations, and we've seen this, but
that's also that intrigue of when we see crimes against
women is usually typically horrifically violent and therefore publicized. In
(20:01):
such a bigger manner than just drive by shootings and
or yeah, accidental deaths like car accidents and stuff. It
is typically that level. So the statistics show that men
should be more afraid of being killed, but they're not,
oddly enough. But again, like I said, the violence in
crime against women and then the violence when it comes
(20:22):
to serial killers who they've picked for victims, which are
the ones that are more publicized and highlighted, is what
causes that fear. And we'll talk about it in the
second right now, But watching those horrific stories, yeah, and
that can kind of go to morbid fascination. And I
think probably everyone listening this can relate to if something
happens in your city that catches a bunch of attention,
(20:45):
all of a sudden, you're getting um text and from
everybody that's like, do you have pepper stray, don't wear
your hair in a pony saale, don't do this at
a certain time, And it kind of it makes sense,
but it's also like, compared to the ways that I
could die, it's just that it's so horrifying and it
(21:05):
catches the attention we did our women in Revenge episode,
I read a really beautiful essay, painful essay written by
somebody whose family I believe had been murdered, and she
was just saying like she hated it, but she couldn't
deny it was intimate, like that was it felt like
this was such a an act, like we're forever impacted
my life, this person forever impacted and changed my life,
(21:29):
and I can't. It's really hard to separate yourself out
from that, and it's hard to not feel like you
were chosen or something, which we've talked about that with
victim blaming, and that's just part of human nature. Another
reason people give for their love of true crime and
women in specific is warriorism. Um. And yeah, that's just
(21:49):
again human nature, just kind of being nosy. That's like
a really big morbid bit of like like oh, I
don't want to say this, but I'm very intrigued and
I need to know what happened, right, um And yeah,
that's it's obviously oversimplifying things, but yes, for both men
and women alike, there is that sort of train wreck
factor that is deeply rooted in so many of us,
(22:11):
just needing to know and not being able to turn away,
like I gotta know how this ends, or like you
you can't, it's almost like a freeze thing. Or you're
just like I can't. I can't. If you and you
get a small tipita that information, you're like, wait, wait,
well I need to know more, and for me, like
I will watch something and I need to know where
(22:32):
they are today? Are they in prison? Are they? If
it doesn't conclusively it just ends with an arrest and
maybe a trial, I need to know, well, are they
rotting in jail or what has happening? Are they sorry?
Have they admitted it? Like there's a mini of moments
where I have to like finish it out of course, yes,
without watching and inabilities just to turn away. There is
(22:52):
that level of fear that's what intrigues people. Yes, fear
of the unknown or the possibility of having something violent
happened in your life. And I actually just had a
really horrible dream and I told you about it a
little earlier, and I'm not gonna go into it, maybe
because we are researching this and so it's in my brain,
(23:13):
but yes, stuff that just made me wake up and
it feels so nauseous and shaken by it, like it's
the worst thing that I can think of possibly happening,
but not because of anything other than my dog was involved,
I will say that, and so my dog is very
precious to me, and it was horrifying some of the
things that just came into my head. But it is
(23:34):
that fear. Some research state that is out of fear
that women listen and want to know about the situation again,
which could relate to how to care for themselves, but
that it's also a way of getting second hand relief
and not being a victim. So being able to say
that's I've never experienced that makes you feel okay, And
I think that's kind of that level of So. We
(23:55):
just had recently had a really horrific death in Atlanta
that happened in one of our more popular parks, and
I don't know where the case is gone, but it
definitely brought out all of the oh my god, there's
a serial killer text and notes and message boards like
it's it's been happening. And the first thing I thought
was because I believe the woman was white. I was like,
(24:17):
I'm not a white woman. I'm good. Like there was
this little fear like moment of relief, which I shouldn't be.
There should not be, but knowing like the history of
what serial killers their patterns are. You know that there's
like race is a big factor typically typically in all
of this, and that's that part, but still want to know.
(24:38):
But there is that second hand of relief, which is
awful because someone died and this needs to be told
and we need to get justice for this woman. But
there is not fear, like a moment of like glad
that didn't happen to me. Yeah, you know, yeah, And
we talked about that a little also in our Fear
episode Why women Love Horrmonies, which is something that's just
(24:59):
fast me And I've thought about this idea of you stress,
which is a type of stress that is like good,
but I think for a lot of women because we
do live with these fears. We do live with when
I go outside, you know, I'm thinking about, um, the
people on the street you did, where where are my keys?
And what are my exits and all those things. Um,
(25:20):
So I think there is something about watching something and
being able to relate but also be separate and like
kind of release some of that stress that's just built
up in you and you don't realize how much is
built up in you. I do think that's part of
it of like you were already feeling these nerves around
(25:43):
this and the fear around this every day, and to
watch something is like a way to release all of
that built upright fear, and it'll it will still build
up again, but it's like kind of just a method
of not ignoring it, but also being able to be
distant from it and experience it and release some of it. Right.
(26:05):
I think another reason, uh sympathy for the devil, and
this would be more related to our past episode on
women who love serial killers um, and that some people
are women are intrigued by the perpetrators background and how
they were created, the origin story. Um. I think that's
also part of few nature is how could someone do this?
(26:27):
Like asking that question? And there are some that believe
because women are thought to have more empathy than men,
that women connect on a different level, especially for the victim,
which makes the stories more relevant and personal for women
right in a lot of the way, they wanted to
see that that justice has happened, so instead of having
(26:48):
like I think Cereal was a little different because it
questioned things, but there was so many other true crime
like things with Ted Bundy and things with the Nice Stalker,
there was endings. There, there was a conclusive this happened.
So to have that is also a different level like
oh my god, thank goodness, we are so glad these
(27:08):
victims you know, had justice or hopefully they do get justice.
But that's also part of that um and yeah, and
with that again, the puzzles or the detective work behind
the series. Some experts state it involves a level of
working out the mystery, stating quote, women like to untangle things.
They think a lot. I'm not saying women don't, but
they like to work things out often think about things
(27:31):
quite deeply. And obviously there's a big aspect of that
and true crime, especially in unsolved cold case type documentaries
or podcasts. So there's a lot to think about and
to talk about, right And I know that's what a
lot of the different podcasts hosts are able to do, like,
especially when there's more than one host and they kind
of work it out together and talk it through with
(27:52):
each other. There's a lot of that trying to unravel
this mystery. And for me, yeah, there's a lot of
income fleet and unsolved cases, and I like going down
that rabbit hole as well. I will start researching individuals.
Of course, I don't go down like journalists, investigative journalists
who create who are able to unsolve mysteries themselves and
do the I'm gonna drive here to hear I'm not
(28:15):
that guy hard, but I will start looking and be like,
I wonder what this person was doing. I wonder what
that person is up to now, Like there's a lot
of questions that I'm like, I wonder if I can
And I'm also the same person in horror movies, like
the whole who done it? Or who's the killer type
of thing that I'm like, I know so and so
or this is the twist. Of course, this is the twist.
(28:36):
I'm that person feeling like I need to know that's
just me though, of course there's so many other reasons noted,
but like we said earlier, there are a lot of
speculation about the why, with a lot of answers and
some assumptions behind it. But there's tons and for yourself
and maybe a completely different reason, and even to the
point that they've yet said things like escapism as one
(28:59):
of the things and yeah, kind of like horror movies,
you're like, why would you torture yourself with this for
your able to remove yourself a little bit from the
horrors of your own horrors by other people's horrors, which
is kind of sad. That's it feels weird to say
out loud. Yeah, yeah, um, but yeah. There's just so
(29:20):
many things we talked about that I feel like are
parts of human nature, and they might be parts we
don't like thinking about too deeply, right it is? And yeah,
I have been, as Samantha knows, everyone knows, I've been
on a fan fiction kick for that there was a mystery.
There was a mystery involved that there was somebody it
(29:40):
was guilty, and I was telling everybody, I'm like, it's
this person and this is what should happen. And then
we got a text when she found out Yeah, I
was right. But it's kind of that same thing of
like Okay, I want to learn to pick up on
these clues of like Okay, this person is not trustworthy
and avoid them. For myself, I think they a lot
(30:00):
of things going on in our love for like trying
to figure out who did it. Who's the worst types
of people? I know, I know it was him. We've
(30:23):
talked about several forms of true crime content and as
our access in different forms of media continue to grow,
so does the amount of content obviously, so from the
beginning of true crime there have been several different forms
and it does continue to grow, and in fact, since
the origins of Cereal, there are hundreds, if not thousands
of true crime types of content. Are are types of
(30:46):
media out there to consume, and yes, many of those
are on our own network. In the last two years alone,
it has grown substantially. Podcasting has become one of the
biggest formats for true crime, and maybe as something to
you with the fact that it is in this genre
that women have some level of control. According to one report,
(31:07):
over the host in the genre are women, and these
podcasts are more likely to be produced by women as well.
And as we've talked about and several episodes, that's pretty
different and the rest of well, and a lot of
the podcasting community where it does look like it's it
sounds I guess mostly men, mostly men. Yeah, And to
(31:29):
be fair, according to some past research, again it's all fluctuating.
The people who listen to most are men, not necessarily
about true crime, but in any podcasts in general, the
listenership is typically leaning towards men, not too much. It's
not huge. It's almost like maybe six most are men.
But again that may absolutely have everything to do with
(31:51):
children in the car and or when we are, yeah,
doing childcare versus you know, stuff like that makes a
lot of affecting and who's work and who's doing commuting
and what. But yeah, and also the fact that yeah,
most of the format it shows more men are hosts
than they are there are women, but yeah, not necessarily
(32:12):
with this one. Yeah. Interesting And also shout out to
the show Morbid Um for shouting us out right. Thank you.
My one of my best friends, Katie, who's been on
this show. She listens to that show and I got
a very excited text from her and she's like, oh
my gosh, this shout at out stuff. I ever told
you all my favorite true crime podcast. I was like,
(32:33):
so cool, and I meant I had to start it. Yeah.
They are very fun. Yes, um, yeah, so thank you.
But all of this to say that doesn't mean books
are going anywhere. Um, But there's just multiple avenues of
entertainment and that extends to true crime now and yeah
it does. It has extended into so much more than books, right,
(32:57):
There are new forms, including social media forums like TikTok
and Facebook, which I just talked about Facebook and like
my own exploration and now I get it. Often it
pops up with like look at this. I'm like, yep,
there it is. And there are a lot more to that.
Many are sharing snippets of horrific crimes and two minute
clips or past clips or past crimes. Uh, and they're
(33:18):
gaining traction for it. So essentially having a person having
the green screen of TikTok and like plastering all these articles.
Why they're talking about it in two minute scripts and
saying click to like and the first part two like
they are doing it um and it was working and
as in fact, there was a specific post in which
a woman posted about her sister's murder and disappearance which
(33:40):
led to the arrest of our stepfather and this case
is ongoing and this happened on TikTok. I actually saw it.
I was like, is this is this real? To the
pot down, like is this scripted or is this real?
She actually has a post where she's walking down the
woods and she had a little written blurb about essentially
if you know much about TikTok, they said, uh, they
(34:02):
do a little video. They do a little clips and
they do they maybe they have a song or audio,
but essentially it sinuated, Uh, your stepfather acting like he
doesn't know what happened to my sister, but knowing that
he murdered her or something or he was the cause
of it. And then there It's to me so erie
when I see things like that. But and then hurdly,
if you go onto our post later on, it pops
(34:24):
up with y'all did it, We did it? Thank you
so much. My stepfather has been arrested, and I'm like,
what So to the point that things like that have
been happening, of course, there's a lot of backlash with that,
and we'll kind of talk about it a little bit later.
But it's showing things like TikTok and new forms that
(34:44):
are jumping onto this type of genre and content that
it works, and it's gaining lots of traction still. But again,
what does that mean for this genre in general? Yeah? Well,
one thing you were telling about, I've never heard of this.
Um A different type of avenue for true crime is
(35:05):
the true crime makeup tutorial, which I thought was like
addressing yourself like a zombie or something. But I was
way off. So um Bailey Serian and I hope I'm
pronouncing that correctly has been accredited with this new content.
So she has a sub series within all of the
(35:28):
content she makes called Murder, Mystery and Makeup, and she
talks about different cases while as she puts it, quote
do my makeup? Um, and it's worked. After she began
this new segment, she went from one hundred thousand YouTube
subscribers to almost five million. Of course this was after
two years, but still very very rapid growth, huge growth.
(35:51):
Um and began a new trend in the YouTube makeup
tutorial world. And why does that work? Well? One do
year said quote learning about these awful time So watching
someone do their makeup makes it a little bit more
palatable as opposed to the regular true crime documentary. Right,
and researchers agree for many, especially with the younger audience,
(36:11):
which is the tutorial has really hit that youthful and
I say youth becaus I'm like, what is this, what
is happening? What what are you kids doing? Um? But
having makeup being a buffer, having someone doing their makeup
being a buffer of retelling of some horrible crime has
made it more palatable now don't get me wrong. Apparently
(36:31):
in the series, they're not necessarily talking about brands, are
not telling you anything other than telling you the story
while they're putting their makeup on, so you can kind
of see their technique without hearing what they're doing specifically
about makeup, but here the story at the same time,
so you can kind of concentrate on what's they're putting
on their face. Um and yeah, and it's grown and
crossed over into the world of TikTok as well, just
(36:53):
again in shorter versions. It seems more like clickbay to me,
but you know, I don't know much about this, which
helps to dire the audience to the YouTube channel to
give the full story. But it's a whole interesting tactic
and it's been around and there's been many people and
many a YouTubers and social media stars who have jumped
(37:13):
on board and doing this as a part of their
niche I guess um and again it's worked to the
point that there are some that do requests. So there
was one star who will give Google I guess access
Google forms for people to fill out and it could
be requests to talk about this horrific crime, or it
(37:35):
can be requests from the victims families to highlight unsolved cases.
So you know, some of these things are like okay, cool, cool,
but it does kind of come back to the problem
like ideas like is this helping or hurting? I don't understand,
And that kind of comes down to the problems of
true crime, and I think that's partially a bigger conversation
(37:58):
of why people are rec you, why are women doing this?
Are women okay? Essentially cling the question, um, and yes, again,
there are some problems within this genre and this decensitizing
of these horrific crimes, which include some say that part
of these are kind of coppaganda essentially a compaganda for
(38:18):
those who may not know that term is propaganda for
enhancing cops or police and hero making them heroes and
idolizing them essentially. Of course, I'm not saying there's anything
wrong with law enforcement necessarily. There We've had conversations about
you know, police and reformation and or abolishment before, and
(38:39):
if you want to listen to that, that's a whole
different episode. But there's a conversation about whether or not, uh,
these stories actually elevate cops in a really too good
of a manner. Or maybe in a bad manner. It's
kind of both of those things, is according to which
one you look at. If you look at the night stalker,
there's a lot of big conversations of the fact that
(39:00):
how the police were heroes and and don't get me wrong,
we need police to solve crimes like that, please please,
please know that. But there's a conversation of who is
being fetishized in here are the heroes getting more credit
than you know, the lawyers, sold whatever whatnot. So there's
a big competition about that and again complicated as a
whole different conversation that we can have. But then there's
(39:22):
also the conversation of our way of doing it, and
we're we're demonizing cops as well. So you see things
like making a murderer did not shine a good light
on those investigators. Don't get me wrong. Once again, I
would also agree justice is meaning to get the right
person and to ask the right questions and to not
violate someone's constitutional rights. Obviously, and maybe we need to
(39:44):
have a conversation about what the conversation looks like today
and compared to when it was created. Again, a different conversation.
But all of that to say is They're like, there's
a little bit of problematic background for both of those things,
like who is doing what and what is the message
being said? So with these true crime genres, it is
disproportionately based on white victims and typically white women, and
(40:07):
kind of has that whole level of who is being
a victimized, who's seen as a victim versus who's seen
as a lesser case. I guess a lot of the
conversation about why is it that white women are the
ones who are focused on and most likely to be
seen when it comes to crimes, and we see people
of women of color are dismissed typically their crimes are
(40:28):
not as seen. And again, who is it focusing on?
And yet again we talked about this before, the romanticizing
of perpetrators and how they became infatuations such as the
Ted Bundy story. It becomes such a weird, fintish sizing
horrible man, same way as a night soccer, same way
as Jeffrey Dahmer. They ended up all having groupies. This
(40:49):
is kind of this level of like, oh, what are
we doing with this narrative? And then yeah, what are
we doing to the victims families? Are we actually holding
any kind of real justice to telling their story or
read traumatizing and honestly feeding off of their trauma. So
there's definitely a lot of conversation of what is this
(41:11):
But the one thing we know, it's not going away, no, no,
And I think there's so much we can pick apart here,
And it's just interesting how many aspects of humanity and
and sexism and racism that you can kind of see
in this one genre where you can talk about like, well,
(41:31):
why are women empathizing or perhaps fromanticizing perpetrators and why
are women making up a big chunk of the audience. Like,
I think there's a lot to be teased apart and
all of this, and we've touched on, touched on it,
but you know, as always, more research is needed. Also,
(41:54):
we would love to hear from you listeners. If you
like true cry, we want to know why. You can
emails at stuff d your mom Stuff at I heeart
media dot com. You can find us on Twitter at
mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram at stuff I've Never
Told You. Thanks, it's always you're a super producer, Christina,
Thank you, and thanks to you for listening Stuff One
Never Told You Protection I High Radio For more podcast
(42:14):
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