A victim of a stabbing thinks our true crime obsession is creepy

[Richard_Kirk]

@wrybread

@Doctor_Faustus

Sorry if that sounds harsh and moralistic. I’m not trying to shame anybody, I just really can’t understand how that is entertainment.

I hear you, but I have the same qualms about people watching tens of thousands of mock murders throughout their lives. That just can’t be good for the psyche, or for people’s trust levels. And to me at least it seems far worse than watching, say, a police interrogation of someone who committed a crime. Sure that’s real suffering and it’s terrible that it happened, but at a minimum it shows the real consequences of violent crime unlike often glorified fictional renditions.

There is a redemptive element to some classic whodunnit crime fiction. Wouldn’t it be nice if there always was a Sherlock Holmes or Lord Peter Wimsey who can make sense of it all, rescue the innocent, and determine the truth? And, to temper justice with mercy, even if it means going outside the law? Conan Doyle was heavily into spiritualism. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote heavyweight books on Christianity. There may be others.

I can’t take horror, cruelty, and violence, myself.