this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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It's not (mostly, I can't speak for the weirdos out there) murder porn, though? For a while, it was a movement of almost solidarity with other women, because these stories could easily happen to us. So it was almost like listening to survival tips, as well as paying respects to those lost by trying to learn from their experiences. It probably wasn't a coincedence that the 'true crime wave' happened around the time of Me Too.
And to soothe your mind, true crime as a 'fad' is dying quite a bit. People realized that, hey having a frivolous show where you clown and make cocktails or some shit while talking about real victims just isn't okay.
Source: am a woman who was (and is) interested in true crime, and have spoken to many other women from different circles—and even states/cities—who were also interested in the topic.
It's not exclusive to woman either -- guys (especially young guys) watch police bodycams of shootings, combat footage, and gore-porn TV shows or movies. There were entire subreddits dedicated to actual videos/pictures of people dying -- and I'll give you one guess as to what the demographics of their user bases were.
It's almost as if a lot of people are morbidly curious about death and violence.
True crime has been popular since the 50s and has no signs of winding down.
That's not what I said, is it? I was talking specifically about the more recent spike in popularity.
Edit: Not sure why I'm being down voted for pointing out what I said. I very specifically was talking about the spike in popularity around 2016. I'm not talking about the topic being popular before that, because there is a specific difference in the two time frames, where interest in the topic reached a fever pitch. And yes, it is 'slowing down' compared to said fever pitch ~2016. But 'slowing down' mostly means returning to baseline.