00:00:53.240and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:58.760I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:02.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:09.920These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:13.740Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:21.360If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:01:27.080Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:35.740Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:05:12.640You know, I'm not really a big consumer of true crime content myself.
00:05:16.780And I know that you've been really vocal about some of the problems with the genre on TikTok.
00:05:21.340And I guess I just feel like it exploits a very real anxiety that women have that tragedy is lurking around every corner.
00:05:29.200And I always really take issue with content that exploits and plays on our anxieties when it can also spark real-world behavior like amplifying conspiracy theories or mobilizing internet sleuths who try to solve crimes without necessarily stopping to ask if it's actually a useful precedent.
00:05:44.020So I guess my first question is, what are your thoughts on all of this? What are your thoughts on true crime and why do you make videos trying to amplify the ways that true crime can be really unethical?
00:05:54.000Yeah, so I think it's important, like right off the bat, to save myself a little bit of headache later, that I want to be clear that not all true crime content is the same, especially on TikTok.
00:06:03.860There are some creators of true crime content that I find make at least what I would consider more palatable and what I think is more genuine content.
00:06:12.120But a lot of my videos I had made in the past were kind of hyper fixating and really shining a light on some of the rougher stuff that you can definitely find out there.
00:06:22.040And so like with that out of the way, I think it's probably important we talk about some of the more problematic, popular stuff that definitely goes viral.
00:06:31.780I find things ranging from true crime accounts that are dedicated to like frosting cookies.
00:06:37.180Like, I think they're a professional baker and they'll be frosting cookies while they talk about some poor woman that was brutally murdered by her boyfriend.
00:06:43.560And they kind of make it I don't want to say lighthearted, but it definitely has a very lighthearted atmosphere about it.
00:06:48.440Like, oh, look at me decorating this cute little cookie of a puppy.
00:06:51.400And it feels to really take away from the seriousness of the situation.
00:06:54.500I've also found accounts that are dedicated to somebody you can find on Amazon.
00:06:59.180Somebody published like a coloring book all dedicated to different types of serial killers.
00:07:03.100and I think they tried to advertise it as some sort of like educational material because I think
00:07:08.100it gives like a little blurb of each serial killer on every page but it's also still a coloring book
00:07:13.080so it feels a little morbid and oftentimes these people who are making these videos they'll have
00:07:20.080themselves talking over these videos and it the attitude about it just seems very off they've got
00:07:25.340this very light-hearted almost fun haha crazy how this happened 10 years ago kind of attitude about
00:07:31.620it. And it's always been driving me really crazy because not to get into too many specifics about
00:07:35.960it, but as somebody who is actually pretty close to a very high profile case, if I saw somebody
00:07:42.280making content about that specific high profile case, I could not be disgusted. So I can't imagine
00:07:48.800that people who had an even closer connection to these high profile cases they're covering
00:07:53.040might come across this content and how they might react or how that might make them feel.
00:16:01.160that I've been trying to get across on my TikTok.
00:16:03.360So, like you said, just to make sure that we're all clear, like we are very happy that Gabby was able to get the social media attention that she did get.
00:16:11.820And I think it can, to an extent, it can highlight the power of social media because there were so many posts out there being like, hey, this young girl is missing.
00:16:21.060Here is her name. Here is her face. Here's a couple of identifying markers. And this is where she was last seen.
00:16:25.780That's such critical information, especially if you're in that area.
00:16:28.860this is a little bit more unique because it kind of had like a transnational, like it was
00:16:32.800two states very far away from each other. But especially if you're local, that can be really
00:16:37.860useful. Somebody who happens to see a TikTok about this girl, who happens to see a piece
00:16:42.060of critical evidence, like how we actually experienced with this case, that is so crucial.
00:16:46.420And it's so important. I never want to downplay how important that is. But at the same time,
00:16:52.000it has this, it's such an intense boomerang effect that it starts to come back around.
00:16:56.060And we did see so many videos of people with just outright the wrong attitude, very, like
00:17:05.000you said, gleeful, almost giddy, very excited whenever they could be the first one to break
00:17:09.160the next piece of information, which was usually just purely speculation with nothing to back
00:20:48.480I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:20:52.000I survived, and I've spent my life exploring
00:20:54.700how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:20:58.280I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:21:01.920I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear
00:21:06.800saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable
00:21:13.920i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started feeling that there was
00:21:21.760someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted stalked controlled
00:21:29.240and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them they're stories
00:21:34.860about what it takes to make it out alive listen to the survivor files with elizabeth smart
00:21:40.600on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
00:21:45.780and we're back yeah i saw one of the videos where um somebody was uh referencing ell woods you know
00:21:57.220that scene at the end of legally blonde where ell is able to be like oh because of her you know her
00:22:03.540perm she couldn't have been in the shower because her curls are intact and it was in reference to a1.00
00:22:08.260instagram picture of gabby with uh blonde hair with like her her roots had been done so her0.78
00:22:14.260roots were not dark and again i think that referencing i i love legally blonde i think
00:22:21.540like referencing yourself as an l woods type or any reference to that to like a comedy when we're
00:22:28.080talking about a missing person i think is just not good it's just not it's just in bad taste
00:22:35.020you know exactly and i think like i remember back during the boston bombing at that time i was like
00:22:42.140very active on reddit and redditors were so convinced they had found they had like solved
00:22:47.540the boston bombing uh they thought it was this guy who had gone who had gone missing his family
00:22:53.400was looking for him and they were like oh the pictures are the same and it turns out it was
00:22:57.220not true like it was just they got the wrong guy this family who was already suffering from their
00:23:03.320you know their family member being missing had to go through this process of being like he's not the
00:23:09.100boston bomber he is missing but he's not the boston bomber and it was just a case of like they got the
00:23:14.380wrong person they they you know internet sleuths just didn't know what they were doing and so
00:23:19.000part of me i mean this is where it gets kind of complicated and i don't necessarily have this is
00:23:24.540is my opinion and i don't necessarily have the like right answer i'm just i just have a lot of
00:23:30.080questions i saw on twitter someone saying like oh well there's too much emphasis on some of the
00:23:37.460unsavory aspects of the true crime tiktok community but they're over they're they're glossing over the
00:23:43.060fact that like gen z tiktoker like young women and girls broke this case open and you know that0.51
00:23:50.040You know, they really cracked this case. And part of me is thinking like, A, I'm not sure if that's true. B, when you glorify Internet sleuths, you also have to take into account that Internet sleuths have like ruined people's lives, got the wrong person, you know, just gotten it wrong because they're not actual, you know, investigators.
00:24:13.200There's people on social media or on the internet.
00:24:16.940And I also, I mean, I don't know how I felt about that.
00:24:21.880She basically said that the reason why people are being so hard on these TikTokers is because they're mostly women, young women and girls, and that we don't like young women and girls.
00:24:39.680I just think that, like, it's unsavory, and I don't find it unsavory because it's women and girls doing it.1.00
00:24:44.380I find it unsavory because it's not a good thing to be doing, I guess.0.99
00:24:48.460That was a pretty big reaction that I've been seeing online, is TikTok cracked this case.
00:24:52.880These internet sleuths were the ones who did it.0.96
00:24:55.240It had a very similar air to, I hate to be referencing a Netflix show in this specific situation, but it's terrifyingly accurate, is the show Don't Fuck With Cats.
00:25:05.460It was this case of this woman who had zero experience, had no idea really what she was doing, but fell down this rabbit hole and ended up actually solving a very complicated, pretty much dead end series of murders.
00:25:19.200And that was very impressive. And it's kind of scary because even that woman has come out and said like, hey, this was purely coincidental.
00:25:27.660Please don't try to mimic what I was doing. Like, I didn't know what I was doing. I could have gotten really hurt. I could have accused the wrong person.
00:25:33.900This just happened to work out perfectly.
00:25:36.040And so it's really frustrating to see the people on TikTok who are now, I don't want
00:25:40.820to say taking credit, but are definitely patting themselves on the back for having cracked
00:25:44.340this case in which, as far as I understand, at least when we're recording right now, what
00:25:49.440the case was is that the biggest piece of evidence they received to help find this poor
00:25:54.360girl's remains a few days ago, just yesterday.
00:25:59.340It was just yesterday that she, there were some like van life YouTubers who made very similar content to Gabby who had seen all these stories online about how Gabby was missing and then realized they happened to be in the same national park as her at roughly the same time.
00:26:16.680And they had a bunch of unedited raw footage from their trip that they were going to put up on YouTube.
00:26:21.020So they scrubbed through all this unedited footage and realized that they actually found like a clear shot of what was Gabby's van.
00:26:27.360And they sent that to the FBI. They had posted online about it, too. The FBI followed up on that, went back to the same exact spot. And that's how they ended up finding her remains. So that's one of those instances of like the the story being on social media and blowing up as big as it did truly did help in that specific instance.
00:26:46.020at least bring that tip to the proper authorities who were then able to look into it and identify
00:26:50.660what had actually happened. But that doesn't negate the insane amount of problems that come
00:26:59.060with those same exact internet sleuths. And it's truly frustrating to see the same people
00:27:03.020that two days ago were conspiring that Gabby was actually a serial killer and that she was
00:27:09.640murdering other people and is now on the run. Or another conspiracy I'd seen is that she was just
00:27:14.700doing this all for attention are now very quick to jump in the pool of people who magically cracked
00:27:20.920this case yes and that's so ungodly frustrating i i cannot put into words how angry that makes me
00:27:30.620that the same exact people who were claiming she was doing it for attention are ready to say that
00:27:35.240they're the ones who found her remains that's i mean i can only imagine how frustrating that is
00:27:42.260And yeah, the short list of completely baseless conspiracy theories, I saw people saying on TikTok, doing it for attention.
00:28:10.320And, you know, just I feel like when you traffic in just like baseless conjecture to then be doing a bit of a victory lap, it just seems very incongruous to me.
00:28:25.980Like, I've seen the same thing that you're talking about where people are now kind of like, I don't want to say taking credit, but really being like, wow, my video is just wildly speculating.
00:28:39.060And I'm not I'm not sure if that's the right takeaway here.
00:28:42.160Exactly. There's I don't want to name drop anybody on a podcast because I don't want this person receiving a ton of hate.
00:28:48.380But there was one individual on TikTok who had made over 40 videos about Gabby in less than six days and was very quick to boost any of these random theories.
00:29:01.960Anytime anybody threw speculation her way, she would immediately boost it, make a video about it.
00:29:06.600And a lot of her videos were getting hundreds of thousands of views.
00:29:09.060and she is now, the impression I'm getting is she's like, we did it, guys. We got Gabby Justice.
00:29:16.060Now let's go after the next person. Like, let's just keep going down the list of missing persons.
00:29:19.920And I was like, this is not a healthy way to go about, like, helping. Like, there's nothing wrong
00:29:25.280with being like, I want to help bring awareness to missing persons, especially kind of circling
00:29:28.760back how you said there were a lot of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people that do not get the
00:29:31.840same level of attention. That can be a really well-intentioned attitude about how you present
00:29:37.920yourself online. But you were very lucky about how this Gabby situation played out. Because like you
00:29:45.260said, with the Reddit situation, all these Boston bomber conspiracy theories that they had going on,
00:29:50.100it did not end well. And it's not unreasonable to assume that we could have a very similar
00:29:56.120situation on our hands if the internet through mob justice, vigilante justice, whatever you want
00:30:01.980to call it, starts to all jointly come to the conclusion that somebody who's potentially
00:30:06.520innocent in a situation is then so aggressively harassed online that they're possibly driven to
00:30:12.140do something unthinkable. It's, it's rough to think about that that could happen and how ready
00:30:17.440and how excited people, especially on TikTok are right now to do exactly that. Yeah, that's a really
00:30:23.140good reminder. And I think part of me, like the part of me that's interested in why humans do the
00:30:29.200things they do. I can understand why people almost seem excited to piece together what happened in
00:30:39.800this situation. It almost seems like it's like a puzzle or a game. And I can understand why it
00:30:46.340makes people feel very validated to be like, oh, we are crusading for justice for this young woman
00:31:23.640you know the bigger picture can get missed and you can sort of like miss exactly what you're
00:31:29.340talking about what happens if somebody's wrongly accused what happens if you're actually making
00:31:32.880you know an investigation work like what if you're actually impeding an investigation by
00:31:38.100whipping up so much social media frenzy so i'm happy that in this case it seems like
00:31:43.940it might have gone okay but i don't want that to make it seem like oh it's it's good to have a
00:31:51.780social media fueled, you know, mob justice style, internet sleuth frenzy, it's always going to end
00:31:58.260up okay. I feel like that's a really dangerous precedent. Exactly. And especially talking about
00:32:05.080just like the possible implications of something going this viral, like the OJ Simpson case,
00:32:11.060that was one of like the most iconic high profile cases. And because it was covered on literally
00:32:17.580every inch of the news, every magazine, every newspaper. It was absolutely everywhere.
00:32:24.000That actually dramatically impacted how the courtroom played out, because how can you find
00:32:29.360a jury of impartial jurors when every single person has heard about this story and every
00:32:35.020single person has come to their own conclusion? So I can imagine that if I pray that Gabby finds
00:32:42.160justice and we figure out exactly what happened, and this potentially leads to somebody being
00:32:45.600tried in court. The more viral this story is, and the more conspiracies that are popular,
00:32:52.100the harder it's going to be to find a group of 12 people that don't already have their own opinions.
00:32:57.440Absolutely. I have to show you something that so I don't know what your Facebook feeds look like,
00:33:04.140but I know that mine has just been any little update on this case, a new story. And so I'm
00:33:10.000i'm in washington dc right um i'm not anywhere near where this happened on my local fox affiliate
00:33:16.520fox 5 dc i'm going to show you this picture i don't know if you can see it through the camera
00:33:20.460and the rainbow yeah and the headline says rainbow appears where authorities discovered
00:33:26.360body believed to be gabby petito a rainbow appeared in the area where authorities earlier
00:33:30.300sunday discovered what they believe to be the body of gabby petito in the grand teton national park
00:33:35.020And part of me just thought, like, it's very clear to me that any new angle, they are going to get as much eyeballs and they're going to use this story to get as much eyeballs and clicks as possible.
00:33:49.240Like, if it's an actual update on the case or an actual update in her disappearance or, you know, something like that, sure.
00:33:56.220But part of me was like, you're writing an article about a rainbow appearing, making it... I just really had a problem with that story. And I was like, wow, they really are any new angle. They are wasting no time to make sure that gets in our feeds because it's almost like they're... It felt like they were feeding this frenzy or this appetite for new content about this case.
00:34:22.740And it didn't matter if it was actually a breaking update. It didn't matter if it was actually like relevant to the case. Personally, I don't think a rainbow appearing in the sky is necessarily going to be relevant to this case or even like timely local information from my local news source here in D.C.
00:34:38.000but the fact that they were like surfacing this to me I was like well they really
00:34:41.200are just trying to have a steady stream of content related to this what not not just
00:34:47.520important breaking you know information about it but just like anything like oh here's what
00:34:52.760the weather was like when they found her body yeah that's that's a rough one and then even
00:34:58.160marches kind of back into the territory of a lot of people who say how are these online internet
00:35:02.700sleuths who just report every five seconds on the newest update whether it's true or not
00:35:06.820any different than local news stations. And there is an argument to be had for like,
00:35:12.820news stations tend to have this problem too. They tend to milk stories for everything they're
00:35:17.180absolutely worth. But that criticism of them is out there and public. And maybe it's not getting
00:35:23.840enough attention and it's not getting enough people talking about it as it deserves. But that
00:35:27.900doesn't make the people online who don't even have remotely any professional experience in this
00:35:33.520free from that same amount of criticism. To say like, oh, he did it too, is not get out of jail
00:35:40.440free card from you also being held liable for some of the content some random person on the
00:35:44.820street might make. And I tend to get a lot of criticism in the game of like, hey, this isn't
00:35:51.200my day job. I'm just making random videos on the internet. Why are you mad at me? And I totally get
00:35:56.820that. I'm somebody who makes random videos on the internet too. I didn't plan on having a quarter
00:36:01.280million followers uh i still have a day job and it's i i get it but if you're gonna keep that
00:36:09.180platform prepare for the criticism that's just that's what's gonna come with it yeah right that's
00:36:15.560such a good point and i think like it reminds me of something else i learned from your video from
00:36:18.940your um tiktok about this is that like sometimes particularly on youtube but i do know on tiktok
00:36:24.160as well you know your tiktok can be monetized your youtube can certainly be monetized part of
00:36:29.160was like is this just people kind of like making money off of someone else's trauma and someone
00:36:35.880else's pain and someone else's tragedy like you know i can understand the incentive to like
00:36:40.960report on every little thing be the first time to report on a breaking thing no matter if it's true
00:36:45.440you know every little speculation make a new video about it if you are trying to you know
00:36:51.020gamify that to get more eyeballs because it leads to more money i mean that's definitely
00:36:56.460we know that is how some of these platforms work. Absolutely. And comparing, not to do this for a
00:37:04.300second, but to compare the amount of money that you can get between platforms, TikTok is one of
00:37:07.900the lowest paid social media platforms. So as far as like raking in the cash, TikTok's not necessarily
00:37:15.500the best way to do it. But that doesn't mean that you can't make money on TikTok. I am no longer
00:37:22.260monetizing my content. But when I did have monetized content, anytime I broke a million
00:37:28.560views on a video, I could get anywhere from like 50 to 200 bucks, depending on how many comments,
00:37:33.040how many likes, how many times it got shared. So if you go back to like what I was saying,
00:37:37.220there was a girl with over 40 videos and all of them had hundreds of thousands of views. You start
00:37:40.740doing the math that can add up really quickly. And that's not to say that people's content doesn't
00:37:45.320have value and you shouldn't be paid for your work. But especially if you are being paid for
00:37:51.460your work, you should be held to higher criticism. Because now, hey, you're making money off of this.
00:37:58.340If you want to just report on exactly what happened, I can't fault you for doing that.
00:38:03.520And I'm not necessarily mad that you're making money. But as soon as you start getting into
00:38:07.760the conspiratorial, the speculative, the outright wrong information, then, hey, I'm going to remind
00:38:13.540you you're making money on this. You should probably try to be ethical about it. There was
00:38:17.240one girl in particular who she's since taken her video down and she has apologized. So we'll give
00:38:21.100her credit for that there the girl who popularized the theory that uh gabby was actually a serial
00:38:26.520killer uh that's horrifying and i cannot imagine her family seeing that i feel bad even mentioning
00:38:32.840it on a podcast but that that happened they spread that conspiracy theory and she took her video down
00:38:38.500but it's still all over twitter it got millions of views she probably made a decent amount of money
00:38:45.340on that and it's like okay i understand you're sorry in hindsight you feel bad especially after
00:38:50.280they found her remains, but you still made money on that. It'd be kind of nice if you donated it.
00:38:56.380I don't know. That's just me. More after a quick break.
00:39:09.080Behind every night spent making the kids lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat
00:39:14.180the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full,
00:40:08.980When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:40:14.220I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed
00:40:20.200them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low taunting
00:40:27.740voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything. Every week I'm with survivors who
00:40:35.360live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me. I
00:40:42.160I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:40:49.520They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:40:53.500But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:40:56.940They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:41:00.580Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:41:08.360If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:41:15.260This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:41:27.420I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:41:34.560I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:41:37.720From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:41:44.100It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:41:52.020Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:42:01.180Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:42:14.860I'm on this kick lately of like, if you have a platform, even if it's a platform where you're not expecting to go viral, maybe you don't have that many followers and you just you say something and you're like, oh, now I've gone viral.
00:42:24.980platforms come with responsibility and like it is your responsibility to be a good steward of
00:42:30.940your platform and not just use it to spread baseless conspiracy theories particularly that
00:42:37.100are that harmful to the family of someone who has gone missing like i just like it's just
00:42:43.100completely irresponsible exactly and it's it's really sad and it kind of ties back into before
00:42:49.280this whole gabby situation happened because i don't want to linger on that too much because
00:42:52.640is kind of a larger conversation about true crime.
00:42:54.660But I was making a couple of videos that, like you had said,
00:42:59.840before this had all happened a few months ago,
00:43:01.820talking about like just some terrible things
00:43:04.840in the true crime community I was finding on the internet.
00:43:07.540And kind of going back to like, oh, the Jeffrey Dahmer t-shirts
00:43:10.820or like the serial killer merchandise, these coloring books.
00:43:15.280These people are outright making money off of people's tragedies.
00:43:18.780And I think that's a lot more black and white, ethically irresponsible than somebody who's making content that kind of just talks about an active case in an active situation.
00:43:30.560So I like criticizing them for how they make their money more because it's a lot more like, hey, maybe we shouldn't make a coloring book of a child predator.1.00
00:43:38.960Yeah, I mean, I am just going to say, if you're making coloring books glorifying a child predator, you're an asshole. Like, I'm not going to say it should be illegal, but you're an asshole. Like, the jury is not still out. If you're selling shirts that say cutesy little slogans about Jeffrey Dahmer, you're not my kind of people.1.00
00:44:01.960So completely agree with you there. And I do think it is much clearer. Like if you are using your platform to make content about true crime and you're monetizing them. OK, like I have questions, but all right. But it's so clear when you're like, oh, yeah, I mass produce coloring books. I produce T-shirts. It's such a clearer. I'm glad that you compared the two because it's such a clearer example of like harm, I guess, like making money off of someone else's tragedy.
00:44:30.120so in your take you know if you are someone who wants to make true crime content or like just
00:44:37.560generally like content that raises awareness how can you be sure that you're doing that in a way
00:44:42.580that is respectful and ethical so i think that was a question i had for myself for the longest time
00:44:49.560especially because when i started putting out criticisms it wasn't necessarily like the most
00:44:53.480poignant criticisms it was honestly kind of me rambling like this is kind of messed up uh why
00:44:59.300does this exist? And then I had a lot of people asking me like, oh, well, if this isn't ethical,
00:45:04.680what do you consider to be ethical? Is there a way to ethically consumer produce true crime content?
00:45:10.580So I've spent a ton of time mulling that over. And it's actually been kind of helpful because
00:45:16.180there have been various true crime creators who have reached out to me and been like, hey,
00:45:20.160I've seen your content. I 110% agree with you. I don't like that kind of stuff either.
00:45:24.040I'm trying to change it. Can I get your support? And I've been very hesitant to boost any one
00:45:31.520specific true crime content creator on my own platform. But I have seen people who I think are
00:45:37.520doing it in a slightly better way. I've seen a lot of like the most common form of true crime content
00:45:42.740is through a podcast. We've got things like My Favorite Murder, Last Podcast and Left, all those
00:45:46.420incredibly popular podcasts. And there's a lot of smaller ones out there that right now they're
00:45:50.780really trying to break through that focus entirely on victim advocacy. They talk about police reform,
00:45:57.460they talk about prison reform, like they're truly not just talking about like, hey, it's crazy how
00:46:01.560Jeffrey Dahmer like murdered a bunch of people a couple decades ago. That's not the entire episode
00:46:06.660they're talking about. Hey, Jeffrey Dahmer did murder a lot of people a few decades ago. Let's
00:46:11.800talk about why that happened, what failings happened with the police and why none of that
00:46:18.080has changed yet and why Milwaukee really needs to get their stuff together. And I think that angle
00:46:23.500of the content of what systemically allowed this to happen, what created this environment where
00:46:29.720these things occurred and what is still occurring in our society today and how can we fundamentally
00:46:35.580change things so that these things do not continue, I think is some of the best true crime
00:46:40.180content out there. And I think it does have a genuine aim to produce change. So I genuinely
00:46:47.580love that kind of content. And I have overwhelmingly seen that that content is predominantly produced
00:46:53.120by people of color because they have that much more detailed in-depth perspective. So pretty
00:46:59.320much any true crime content creator within reason who is a person of color, I've immediately felt0.99
00:47:05.360a stronger attraction to the content they make because they tend to have that heavier focus on
00:47:09.220that aspect. I am so glad that you said that because, you know, in thinking about it, I know
00:47:14.180that I'm not a huge consumer of true crime, but the content that I do consume, I think it's got
00:47:19.520to be content that is comfortable critiquing systems and particularly systems of power and
00:47:24.060asking questions about how these systems fail victims and survivors. I know that so many true
00:47:29.180crime podcasts will just repeat what police officers say or just repeat police reports
00:47:34.020verbatim. And it can kind of become this kind of copaganda where they're just like, oh, well,
00:47:38.400the police said this, so that's got to be true. And I think good true crime content really has
00:47:44.100this opportunity to not just take the police at their word, not just take these systems at their
00:47:49.560word, but instead critique these systems and ask questions about how they really do fail victims
00:47:54.780and survivors every day. And so I want to be asking questions like, what systems works to fail Gabby
00:48:01.560and all the other missing and murdered women and girls out there? Like, how are we supporting
00:48:06.160victims and survivors of domestic abuse and violence? How are we making sure that they're
00:48:09.980protected and actually do have support? Are we creating a climate that leads to folks like this
00:48:14.840to be more vulnerable in these kinds of situations? Like, I want to know, what systems
00:48:19.860failed these victims and survivors of violence and crime so that it's not repeated and we can
00:48:24.680actually learn something to make systemic change that leads to less tragedy and less harm overall?
00:48:30.140Exactly. And I think another aspect from the racial issue that I think doesn't get highlighted
00:48:34.920enough, at least in the white spaces that I tend to find myself in a lot, is that content creators
00:48:42.540that tend to have an incredibly heavy focus on white victims is something that needs to be
00:48:49.000seriously re-evaluated, especially when we're talking about national news coverage. I know that
00:48:53.900a lot of people will make the argument that in Gabby's situation, she was a social media influencer,
00:48:57.540so that had a bit of an effect on how discussed her situation was. But we cannot ignore the fact
00:49:03.640that people of color, men, or LGBT individuals do not get this kind of coverage. People who
00:49:09.480aren't conventionally attractive do not get this kind of coverage. And podcasts that go out of
00:49:14.820their way to highlight instances like that, or just not necessarily podcasts, but content in
00:49:19.700general, that goes out of the way to highlight those who are less likely to get coverage in the
00:49:24.260first place. I hate to say it, but just about everybody knows about Jeffrey Dahmer. Just about
00:49:28.600everybody knows about Ted Bundy. They may not know the finer specifics, but is it necessarily worth
00:49:32.620your time to go into that kind of content over a 10 part series when you could be spending that
00:49:39.020time possibly talking about an active missing person who could really use a bolster in voice
00:49:44.960and a fresh reminder to their local police department that people still care and people
00:49:49.020are still watching and just giving the facts of what's up making sure that people are aware like
00:49:53.980hey this is the individual looks like this is where they were last seen it'd be really awesome
00:49:57.580if people didn't forget that this is still a problem
00:49:59.860because those marginalized individuals
00:51:59.760And it's so frustrating that the only time they get the microphone, even if it's for
00:52:04.400a short period of time, is when something tragic and horrific happens to a white woman.
00:52:10.140Like nobody, nobody deserves to happen.0.84
00:52:12.540Nobody deserves to have happened to them what happened to Gabby.
00:52:16.500And it's frustrating that the consequence of that is this is the only time that people
00:52:20.460who've been focusing on that issue this whole time finally get to speak because they
00:52:23.760will be immediately shot down as a why are you making this about race and it's like i it's it's
00:52:29.380been about race this whole time uh i've been talking about it this whole time a white woman
00:52:33.560passing away tragically doesn't change what i've been saying jessica i thank you so much for your
00:52:39.140work and your perspective like i wasn't really sure what to expect from our conversation because
00:52:44.660i just had a lot of thoughts and like feelings and having trouble just even like processing them
00:52:49.960But, you know, I find that your work really helps me articulate my own thoughts and helps me process, you know, in highly charged times, helps me like process and reconnect to like what I'm actually thinking.