True Crime Fans: Community or Cult?
Spoiler alert: I don't like any of those terms!
An article by perennial fave Rachel Monroe in last week’s New Yorker (sigh, paywall, but I’ll be quoting the relevant bits) has been making the rounds of my must-reads ever since its publication.1 The subhead reads “How an amateur diver became a true-crime sensation,” so obviously my interest was piqued! The story follows Jared Leisek, a man who parlayed his diving (and social media) skills into investigating cold cases by searching for human remains in lakes and rivers.
Leisek’s own past resurfaces in ways that question his moral authority to work with victims, but what intrigues me even more is how Monroe describes the true crime “fans” who discover the accusations against him. She explains, “The Internet has added a new dimension to the persistent fascination with crime stories: it has made the genre participatory,” and offers this label:
These days, the patchwork group of Facebook detectives, crime commentators, self-trained DNA analysts, and curious onlookers has come to be known as the true-crime community.
I bumped on that last word, because it seemed to be productively frictive with another designation to describe this group that I’d been thinking about a lot lately: cult.
A plugged-in and culturally savvy Friend of the Stack alerted me to the Sounds Like a Cult podcast, in particular their episode entitled “The Cult of True Crime.” In it, the hosts discuss the different levels of true crime fandom, from those who enjoy interacting with the stories analytically (how I’d like to characterize myself), to those who, like Monroe describes, actively engage with each other and the case itself online. The “culty” elements—the power of belonging to a privileged in-group, the collective endeavor to compulsively compensate for and replace broken institutions—are largely attributed to the latter type of true crime consumer by cult expert Amanda Montell.
The episode’s guest, one of my favorite true crime historians and journalists Sarah Weinman, makes the point that true crime (which is as old as the hills) tends to have a new “moment” when there’s some sort of technological advancement.2 In the case of the current boom, that advancement is podcasting. The 2014 release of the first season of Serial introduced a participatory intimacy to the genre that was dramatically novel, strikingly influential, and compulsively compelling. The thought, or even more crucial, the feeling, that we, the audience, could solve a case, right an institutional wrong, save a life, can produce the sort of obsessive behaviors that lead internet “sleuths” to, yes, find missing people and give peace to families (as Jared Leisek has on more than one occasion), but also to misidentify suspects, harass innocent people, and just do more harm than good.
So true crime fans: community or cult? For me, I don’t think either designation is quite right. There are too many ways of engaging with the material, too much ideological heterogeneity, and too many centers of authority for the fandom to be truly cult-like.3
As for “community,” when watching the second episode of the excellent docuseries Last Call, I was reminded of how authentic communities operate. In it, a friend of one of the victims of a serial killer who was targeting gay men described how the community of sex workers in New York in the ‘90s provided food, shelter, and welcoming companionship for each other. Ceyenne Doroshow remembers:
That is food for your soul. When there’s somebody there to say, “I may not know you well, but my home is your home.” We are sisters and brothers without asking.
There is no reason that people who share an affinity for true crime cannot also provide such succor for each other,4 but its an important reminder that “communities” are based on action: what members are willing and eager to do for each other, not just what they do in the larger world.
Do y’all have favorite newsletters that collect the buzziest articles of the week? I like Pocket, Longreads, and The Browser, along with this platform’s own Substack Reads!
I find this point fascinating, and really want to think through it more. It also terrifies me that the latest technological “advancement” we’re all coping with is AI. What sort of leap would true crime make when aided by artificial intelligence? Is it basically just I, Robot all over again?
Though I certainly think the argument could be made that within the larger umbrella of true crime consumers, these elements are present in some groups of fans: I mean, you don’t have to take my word for it.
And in fact I know of at least one active Facebook group where fans of a particular true crime property provide, among other things, legal advice, pet sitting services, and companionship for each other.