Sometimes I wonder why so many people listen to stories about the worst things humans have ever done.
And then I wonder what it says about me that I’m one of the people telling them.
I was a strange child and I’ve always been fascinated by true crime. Before the internet, my friends would get me encyclopedias about serial killers and a party trick of mine was that I’d always have a morbid fun fact to horrify everyone with.
True crime has always lived in a strange moral space. It’s part history, part psychology, and part warning. But lately, in an age that feels increasingly lawless and unstable, I feel the weight of it differently. It's heavier. It’s dizzying.
It’s a complete mindfuck.
When I talk about “the worst of humanity,” it’d feel better if it were as simple as telling a story about good vs. evil, but the truth is more uncomfortable and less neat.
True crime stories are built from PAIN. The kind of pain that doesn’t end when the headlines stop or when court dates pass. Every case leaves ripples with the families, communities, and the systems that failed quietly and moved on.
They’re also about HUMANS. The beautiful and terrifying spectrum of feelings, behaviors, and decisions we make.
The fact is, it’s become increasingly difficult to decide which horrific stories to tell because I don’t know the best way to report on criminal behavior when some of the most disturbing violations aren’t framed as “crime” at all, but as power, policy, or collateral damage.
This isn’t about politics.
I want to be clear, this isn’t a political argument so much as a moral and cultural one about what it means to document harm when accountability feels uneven.
I’m not a political commentator, and there are people far more qualified than I am to offer policy analysis or engage in ideological debates.
However, true crime is rooted in the law, or more precisely, in the decision to break it. They’re also rooted in survival.
Laws exist to draw lines around anti-social behaviors that threaten life, autonomy, and safety. (violence, predation, coercion, exploitation, etc.)
And I personally believe that true crime stories offer growth, learning opportunities, and serve as cautionary tales to help us know which roads to take and which to avoid so others aren’t doomed to a similar and tragic fate.
That’s the foundation of this genre. So I’m left wondering:
Has true crime become political simply by documenting the law as we once understood it?
Where is the line and who gets to draw it?
For centuries, societies relied on institutions such as law, religion, and cultural norms to define right from wrong and uphold a universal code of conduct. Systems like the U.S. Criminal Code were designed to formalize this in America, to put into writing what we, as a collective, deemed unacceptable behavior.
So, let’s take a moment to talk about the U.S. Criminal Code.
What is it?
The federal government created the U.S. Criminal Code.
It’s a comprehensive set of federal laws that define criminal offenses and outline the punishments for those who break them.
Formally codified in 1948, it serves as a legal framework for maintaining order and protecting individual rights and falls under Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which is the primary body of federal criminal law in the United States and upholds justice nationwide.
It also serves as a legal and moral compass, a codified standard for distinguishing right from wrong in criminal behavior. It’s often regarded as a universal benchmark of justice, meant to uphold societal order and protect individual freedoms.
Ironically, while true crime storytelling frequently centers on individuals who defy this system, it rarely confronts the more profound truth: that the federal government itself has repeatedly violated the very laws it claims to enforce.
The Irony I Can’t Shake.
There’s deeper cognitive dissonance I carry as a true crime storyteller. I report on individual crimes and the consequences of breaking the law, while, at the same time, watching leaders violate those same laws with impunity.
I analyze accountability in case files and courtrooms while witnessing its absence in real time on a national stage.
It creates a wide psychological gap and I find myself asking these questions:
How do we explain justice to a society when justice itself feels selectively applied?
How do we ask listeners to care about systems, responsibility, and ethics when the systems themselves appear compromised?
We’ve lived through an era where the very people charged with upholding the law have openly violated it. And these aren’t fringe accusations; these are matters of public record, litigated in real time, happening before our own eyes.
So, where are the consequences? Lawbreaking is occurring at the highest levels and is not being met with accountability, but with a manipulative tactic often associated with narcissism: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender (D.A.R.V.O).
We’ve seen it time and time again, and it’s reshaped what we come to accept as “normal.”
And that matters, especially for those of us who spend our time examining crime through a moral lens and believe in a humane society.
The moral goalposts have moved. Not forward, but backward.
Behaviors that once would have ended careers are now brushed off as noise. Ethical breaches are reframed as a strategy. Lies are called “alternate facts”, and unfavorable information is “fake news.” It’s fucking chaos.
What used to shock us now barely slows the news cycle, which now moves at lightning speed.
Remember Nixon and the Watergate scandal? BORING.
Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky? YAWN.
In that erosion, something dangerous happens: the collective moral and ethical standard for right and wrong becomes negotiable.
Is this a double standard of the highest order? FUCK YES.
Am I going to keep telling true crime stories? DOUBLE FUCK YES. Because I believe these stories deserve to be heard.
Great. Everything is Terrible. So, What Now?
I get it. That is a lot.
It’s heavy and disorienting and hard to know what we’re supposed to do with all of it. How to make a difference when the scale feels so much larger than our individual reach.
We live in an age where we know everything, all at once. Every injustice, every failure, every abuse of power, and we’re conditioned to feel powerless to make positive change. It’s a combination that calls for despair.
But this is where I think we get something wrong.
A common self-regulation technique teaches that we can’t change other people; we can only change how we react.
With that in mind, here's a slight adjustment to change your entire perspective on true crime. Next time you hear a story, from me or any true crime storytellers:
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDon't question why we look into the darkness. Question how.
I personally don’t tell true crime stories with the sole intent to shock or numb or harden people. I tell them because being a “good person” isn't a fixed identity; it’s a constant practice.
Growth, compassion, and self-examination are choices we have to make every day, again and again, especially when it would be easier to divide, judge, blame, or project.
Choosing growth and empathy in this climate isn’t passive. It’s resistance. And approaching these stories with care about how we listen, how we hold them, how we let them change us for the better, is one small way we refuse to become what we’re studying.
I’ll leave you with this:
True crime, at its most ethical, isn’t about glorifying violence. It’s about bearing witness and also refusing to look carelessly. It’s about holding space for grief, complexity, and accountability simultaneously.
In an age that feels increasingly unanchored, that kind of careful attention is a demonstration of growth and moving forward, even if it feels small.
If the darkest stories can still teach us empathy, if they can sharpen our sense of justice instead of dulling it, then maybe listening isn’t an act of voyeurism after all.
Maybe it’s an act of responsibility.
