True Crime and the Surge in American Violence

Damn.

It’s been a minute.

Nope a month.

And some change.

Didn’t mean to go that long between writing posts.

Sure, I was dealing with some pretty heavy stuff, but that doesn’t matter. If you’re not producing, you’re a loser. That’s the American way. It’s not a wrong way to think in our world, but it’s certainly the wrong way to live. It reminds me of the best writing advice I ever heard. “Write every day at the same time.” It’s impossible to miss deadlines by writing every day at the same time. If only I was a better American.

Now you know what I haven’t been doing. But here’s what I have been doing… pondering.

Like what’s up with everyone wanting to be a detective these days? If it ain’t some Marvel crap it’s true crime content. Podcasts, videos, articles, movies, series … it’s everywhere. Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, the Girls Gone Wild guy, and on and on. Murders, rapists, modern-day corporate villains, and the mentally disturbed are studied, glorified, and even given superhero names – like the Midnight Stalker. Sounds pretty cool to me. Instafamous. Just have to kill a few strangers to live forever.

Terrifying.

But also, true crime content is hard not to consume. It’s fascinating. Sometimes unbelievable. Each of us needing to know why he did it. What made him go crazy? How could he do this? Are humans truly this awful? Yes, I am still watching, fuck your notification streaming app.

People get worked up over these crimes and their professional opinions.

I’ve seen it.

Random Person: “There’s no way Adnan did it.”

The Other Rando: “He was discriminated against by the Baltimore Police. They didn’t want to have an unsolved crime.”

Random Person: “How can you think that crazy conspiracy theory crap?”

The Other Rando: “How can you be so naïve?”

From there the yelling and name calling begins. A friendship strained over a disagreement about a six-hour podcast that discussed a two-decade old court case. After a few hours of consuming, anyone can make a logical, correct verdict on a case where they haven’t seen any physical evidence with their eyeballs. Six hours? That’s expert-level studying.

Everyone manipulated by algorithms. Stuck in an echo chamber of our own choosing. Spewing the half-truths, we believe are true. We all know more than everyone around us. Our thoughts the purest, the most true. How could I ever think or believe something incorrect? NEVER! I research and consume. And know how to research, and what to read and avoid. I understand people have bias, but I am partisan, because I know what the world is really like, strictly based on my own experience, and those like me,  who consume what I do.

Now, when I say everyone is manipulated and stupid, I mean myself, too. I’m just a meat bag of bones on this spinning rock in the middle of an endless universe with practical zero control over my thoughts – mainly from the corporations telling me everything that’s wrong with me and how only their product or service can save my soul.

Back to true crime.

Shit.

The ADHD from constantly being bombarded by popups, beeps, notifications and app nudges has dramatically decreased my ability to stay focused.

Here’s what I wanted to say. The increase of true crime content has had an adverse effect on our society – the recent explosion of American violence. Violent crime caused by true crime. It works. It’s a solid slogan for a political candidate like Dr. Oz. Violent crime has risen. True crime content consumption has risen. There’s mined data, paid-off experts, and extremists, who will back my claims. They’ve been featured on the news and on podcasts all over the internet. And data never lies.

Less true crime content would mean less violence.

But we can’t take away what the people want. They demand this content. They need it. It helps them escape reality. Hollywood needs to produce something, too. It’s how they can afford their lives of luxury… being paid millions to play pretend. It’s not Hollywood’s fault for shoveling the same repetitive shit in different boxes to the same mass audiences until it’s over saturated. Do you know how much taxes cost on a Ferrari? A person’s gotta pay a personal chef, personal trainer, personal stylist, and a person assistant, too.

So, who IS to blame for this true crime content causing an uptick in mass shootings, violence, and crime?

The media? For constantly glorifying murders and rapists for eyeballs on their channel? Do you know how much ad revenue comes in following a mass shooting incident? Gotta keep people watching to get that green. So, it’s not their fault for being irresponsible and putting their greed ahead of our society.

No.

It’s the consumers.

How dare they be interested in this violent content? They’re the monsters here. Which segment of our American population is watching this crap. Let’s do a little research. Wow. It’s mostly women. The data doesn’t lie. It’s women’s fault for the violence in our country.

Women idealizing murders, criminals, and perverts has turned our society violent. The weak, mentally unstable, unloved boys and men of America are committing murders and crimes to impress women. Boys will be boys.

And our poor boys.

How can we protect them?

It’s not their fault.

It’s not the murdering boys parents or guardians faults for not paying attention to their child.

It’s women’s fault. I mean, what was she watching?

Is there an old court case our judicial branch can overturn to ban women from true crime content consumption?

Unfortunately, not in this case.

If Hollywood won’t stop producing true crime content, and since America can’t make women stop watching it, America needs another scapegoat. I mean, reason for the violence all over our free, but violent country…

Maybe we should just embrace the violent nature of our country. It’s in our DNA. Bring back the Wild West… but modernized. With machine guns. Guns for every American! Straight outta the womb, we should have a government official hand a credit card with a $10k limit, $5k of debt, and an automatic handgun with a few rounds for every baby born in the USA. Start them early.

We can replace gym class with gun training. Gym class promotes competition and forces kids to be shameful of their motor skills and imperfect bodies. Can’t have our future generation experience anything hard or uncomfortable. Plus, most kids are obese these days, anyway. Who needs gym? It’s not going to help. They’re just going to go home and stare at screens after school. But our overweight youth is not at fault for being fat. Or lazy. Corporations have been boxing up cheap poison and feeding it to the country in drive thrus, grocery stores and through our screens. Quick, cost-efficient profits without considering the long-term consequences. That neglected bill is coming due. With our future generations paying the price.

But what I’m most excited for with this “Guns for Every American” concept, is the daily shootouts over someone cutting in line at the store or a water park. People sliding down water slides with their handguns tucked in their waist. That won’t end horribly. Or an unstable neighbor shooting up his wife and four kids when his depression kicks in during the winter. Road rage will turn into duels. And kids who gets bullied at school and ignored at home will take out their frustration on those weaker than them by slaughtering a bunch of seven-year-olds. But at least they’ll be armed.

But good luck trying to take the guns from our armed citizens of America. It’s our right to own seventy-eight machine guns … or just one. I like my venison littered with lead. Those who invade my home mowed in half. My freedom guaranteed by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin. The men who did the heavy lifting on a piece of scroll written hundreds of years ago that we base our lives on today. Prophets who couldn’t predict the stock market, didn’t recognize women as human, or have the courage to stand up for American slaves, despite knowing what they were doing was wrong. (By American slaves, I mean the black people that were considered property until a war broke out over their basic human rights. The whole thing nearly split our country in two… those slaves.)

Crazy to think that American boys can serve in the military at age eighteen and can buy a gun at eighteen. But our boys can’t drink a beer until they reach the mature age of twenty-one. Beer is too dangerous.

The thought of unstable humans with mass killing machines in the convenience of their own homes? That’s terrifying. Our society has shown us this with the amounts of mass shootings in our country. Mass shootings occur elsewhere, but not at the clip which it does in America. Maybe it’s because the women of other countries avoid streaming true crime content. I bet some women around the world aren’t even allowed to consume it.

Now, I also don’t trust the American government to fix this either. I bet our government will pass some type of snitching gun laws. I can only imagine the human awfulness of people telling on neighbors and colleagues they don’t like to have them raided by law enforcement. Crazy? Dramatic? That won’t happen? Y’all ever hear of McCarthyism? Salem Witch Trials? The violent attacks on Asians in America for “causing COVID?” Japanese internment camps in America during World War II? Nazism? Or are you one of those intelligent beings who doesn’t believe that Adolf Hitler and his crew kidnapped, tortured, starved, and murdered human beings over their religious beliefs with the help of the good citizens of Germany?

We have to blame someone for this violence in America.

Or something. 

Our American leaders can’t blame a white rapper or video games, they already tried that in the nineties.  Alt-right extremism? Mental-health issues? Racism? Liberal gun laws? Not enough guns? Why not all of it? Because if there’s one thing I know about America, it’s that our politicians don’t have a mirror. They are never to blame for the state of our union despite decades and decades of service in the same job with things getting progressively worse for the common American, and turning quite literally into “God Mode” for those with extra cash.

Liberals trying to change everything even when things don’t need it. Conservatives never wanting to change a thing even the things that need it. Black and white. An endless loop that keeps us stuck fighting over issues that are caused by our leaders lack of interest in anything but themselves.

Too much?

I get it.

Most people want to be left alone. Fuck off and let me live. But that’s exactly the passivism that has led us here. Good men and women doing nothing, as the greedy and evil among us buy their way into power and control. (You know, the whole massive corruption and greed in our politics, that we all know to be true, but never deal with because we think it’s impossible to change.) Think about it. It took our politicians months to vote and agree to pay its citizens $1,400 during a worldwide pandemic with lockdown/shelter-in-place orders. Now, as inflation balloons, our government officials nearly unanimously agree (with no elected officials reviewing said bill) to send billions and billions of our American taxpayer dollars to fund a war on another continent. Is it really in America’s best interest to pay for bombs when full-time working Americans are skipping meals due to the price of food? It’s not like our babies are going hungry from a lack of formula or anything. Maybe I should stop eating avocado toast and get myself a $5 fast-food heart attack waiting to happen breakfast instead of complaining about money. It’s more cost-efficient to make short-term profit saving decisions at the expense of long-term health. Capitalism, baby.

Another tangent.

My bad.

Writing is hard, but thinking is easy.

True crime content equals more violence.

We can’t blame the rich, elitist in Hollywood.

Or women.

Our politicians won’t lift a finger.

Blaming minority groups is no longer popular in America. It seems the public has caught on to that trick. It’s a shame, too. It’s been working for generations.

Hmm.

The influx of immigrants could be the reason for the true crime content consumption leading to a rise in violence. Let’s call human beings trying to find freedom and escape oppression “illegal aliens” and completely dehumanize them to the American public.

Nah.

That’ll only work on half the country.

What would Jesus do about the violence in America?

And while we asking questions, what was Jesus doing between his birth and his thirties? There’s just this gap with not much information on those years in the good book. Retracted from the Bible. Or taken out of some versions and not others. Wait. I thought there was only true word of god. Why are there twenty-six interpretations of the Bible?

Either way, Jesus believed in an angry man in the sky with a history of questionable choices. God once flooded the Earth … but he saved one man and his family. At a cost to the poor man though. The price was the man, Noah, and his family, had to build a giant ark and round up two of every animal on the planet. Tons of work of work for a few people. Couldn’t god just do something? He’s god. And he has the power to destroy the planet, which he’s done quite a few times, according to his diary. Pretty spiteful fellow. Why is he flooding the planet and making four-hundred-year-old Noah create the biggest ship ever built while also having to catch wild animals to ensure humanity’s survival? God really is lazy. Are we sure he only took off Sunday to rest? More importantly, how did Noah confirm the gender identities of the animals to ensure proper breeding? And if only his family survived the great flood, are we all inbreed babies from Noah’s family?

Spiritually is important, but I draw the line when religions use their “superior beliefs” to judge and force others to confirm to their beliefs. That’s not religion. But what I hated the most about being forced fed made up rules was being taught that god watches what everyone does and says. All the time. Watching billions of people all at once. Judging them on how they act. Creepy… and mighty authoritarian. God sounds like one of those true crime stalkers. Maybe that’s why people consume true crime content. It’s a religious experience. The unapologetic, irrational, and crazed men of the world were created in god’s image. Or did the almighty powerful man in the sky make a few mistakes?

But if there is an almighty powerful man pulling all the strings, I can’t wait to ask him how many times he’s watched me masturbate. If he’s god, he’ll know. And I’ll definitely be able to ask him. I’ll be in heaven. All I have to do is confess my sins to a priest or offer my son to serve as an altar boy and I’ll be absolved of my shitty behavior. A one-way ticket to the Holy Land, baby! See you there.

Another tangent.

Dammit.

If we’re going blame anyone for America’s regression, why not those who are elected over and over again despite no results? Feels like most of them have been in office since John F. Kennedy was shot. I thought it was a civil service, not a career path. Our government officials are too far removed from regular everyday American life that they can’t help but misrepresent us. They have no idea what our daily struggle is truly like. I bet more than half of them couldn’t name the price of milk or eggs in a  grocery store without talking points and a media training meeting with a communications professional. Brain dead, old white people, collecting paychecks for what? They all talk a good game, enough to get re-elected over and over, but they do nothing but blame the other party and its followers for America’s lack of progress and deteriorating population. Politicians selling their souls for pieces of paper that says, “In God We Trust” while ignoring the American people. Now there’s a religion I’m into.

The increased violence and crime is wrong, but it’s also a plea for help. A symptom of a greater disease. We live in a country where rational people no longer trust our government, but even more upsetting, we don’t trust our fellow Americans. We need to find some common ground because things are changing in these United States. Doesn’t matter if we like it or not. Let’s make sure the change is for the better. It’s up to us. It’s our America. All of us. Not your neat, little United Same Thoughts of America, where everyone believes what you think and does what you expect them to do. That’s control. It’s ego. Not freedom. We can do so much if we stop fighting each other over philosophical differences. Stop being afraid to listen to difficult opinions. Stop avoiding the conversations we’ve put off for far too long. Stop trying to control the world and force it to your perspective.

But in conclusion, there’s something wrong with America. And it’s that there’s too much true crime on TV. It’s ruining our society. And we need to cancel it. If you disagree, I’ve got nothing for you but thoughts and prayers.