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"True Crime" + Dr. Phil did more damage to American minds than lead poisoning could ever have hoped to.

Added with "Missing White Woman Syndrome" and you got crakkkers convinced they ass is in danger 24/7.

All my mom watches is all of those Murder shows on cable like Forensic Files and the like.

My mom spent a good chunk of my childhood binge watching Judge Judy and I think it had a similar yet also different brain rotting effect. She was a really paranoid cynic who believed everyone was constantly trying to fuck everyone else over. She instilled a fear in me and my sister that we couldn't trust anyone, everyone was just waiting for an opportunity to sue us for some BS. Made us both really maladjusted kids for most of our youth.

It pisses me off how so many of the stories are basically "and the killer escaped once again, because the cops were too busy smoking crack and jacking off to CP," and then act all congratulatory and grateful for the police when they finally get their shit together enough to solve the problem they could have solved three murders ago.

They don't know their neighbors and they treat anyone who they don't know as threats.

How old are the crimes?

My understanding is that everyone being alienated from all their neighbors is a relatively new phenomenon. In the 80s or whatever, they might have known a lot of the people around them.

Used to listen to it all the time before it blew up to what it is today. It was out of a morbid fascination and an intrigue into the lowest levels of human depravity.

Funny thing is I’m still as carefree as ever even though the town I live in is a lot more dangerous than where I was living when I first got into it.

Edit: I do know someone exactly as the type of people you described. One of my older American relatives. Lives in a very nice neighborhood with a nonexistent crime rate but is convinced everyone else is out to get her. Locks all the doors to her house and checks them twice, terrified of the city because she constantly watches news channels that tell her it’s a place where you will get shot, afraid of damn near anything that’s not some place she can drive to within five minutes.

Stayed with her as a kid briefly and I couldn’t go to sleepover parties because she listened to a radio news show that mentioned some people dying during one. She consumed early True Crime shows like 20/20, Dateline, 60 minutes, etc. all the time and it made her increasingly paranoid.

It's kind of a red flag when I meet people if they are really too into this shit.

Too many people are talking about True Crime and not enough about spending Time with their Crew.

The only good true crime podcast is

The exploits of capital certainly are boundless

Rather than individual killings etc real ones obsess over shit like the Brabant Killings that are connected to the intelligence community and then come across as completely unhinged in conversations with friends and family.

For real though there is always something off about True Crime, even more so when it's current/unsolved crimes being exploited for Patreon money or whatever.

When I was a kid we'd watch America's Most Wanted because we had like 5 channels because cable TV was so expensive. It would make me terrified watching these "real life monsters." Then around that time we also lived sorta near where the DC Sniper was active and it just was terrifying to think about as a kid especially with the news talking nonstop about them. Then our house got burglarized and now I just have a paranoia that can get extremely intrusive. It's taken a while for me to really get control over it and know how to manage it without severe anxiety. Dumb stuff like having a set hand motion every time I lock my car so I don't question myself and return to double check.

That's interesting. I never really thought about it, but it makes sense, it's a damn effective way of further individualizing people based on pure fear.

There's a similar problem here in Brasil, but it's with the glorification of the police, of police brutality and glorification of violence in general. There's a bunch of famous "journalistic" programs in here, like Cidade Alerta (Alert City, or something like that in english), where these things are heavily glorified, like, daily.

There's this incredible video by Chavoso da USP (CW: SA of a minor being mentioned in the video), where he talks about this in detail, if you can, watch it, it's incredibly well done, the auto translation of the subtitles to english is fairly good.

And well, this isn't just a problem in television anymore. For years now, police action and brutality have been recorded, livestreamed and posted online, specially on youtube. Hell, I opened youtube on incognito mode just now, and this was one of the thumbnails in the front page:

spoiler

Yeah, it's a whole video of police going after people on motorcycles. Not only that, but my brother and his friends watch this stuff regurlarly.

Chavoso also talks about it in this other video, which is sort of a continuation of the other one I linked above.

I was gonna mention something else to show how media molds what is accepted or not on society, in turn also molding what is accepted to be shown in media, but it was so fucked up I got sick to my stomach just thinking about it. I think everything I said above provides a good picture of this same effect happening in a different way here in Brasil, shaping the collective imaginary of the masses through the media we consume and are exposed to.

I watch some tc videos on youtube at night every week and I've never felt like this and I don't know anybody that has, then again check this out, I'm in portugal and as with many other things when watching american media, even if it's about real things, it has that feeling of not actually being real and that it could only happen in america and not here with me. It's like disneyland