Living only a few hours’ drive from the University of Idaho, I vividly remember the shock and terror that permeated communities in 2022 as news spread of the four college students murdered in Moscow. Morbid details of the tragedy seemed to become inescapable for anyone who checked their phone; only for it to happen over again in 2025 during the case’s trial. The case generated billions of social media posts and several podcasts dedicated specifically to the crime investigation. The media’s marketing of people’s lived trauma as narrative entertainment comes at the detriment of both those related to the case and those who regularly consume it.
It seems appalling for such a large number of people to become so invested in the story of an isolated crime. What was even more shocking was the number of people who seemed to profit off of monetizing content about the tragedy. The public interest in true crime is enormous, with over 84% of the population over the age of 13 engaging with true crime content. True crime podcasts are among the most binged genres among regular podcast listeners. It’s easy to become “sucked in” to a true crime rabbit hole on social media, many of us finding ourselves enthralled in the pursuit of answers to a chilling mystery.
At its core, our attraction to stories of murder and crime could partly be understood with the same framework through which we understand the allure of the tragic narrative. Aristotle’s ideas in “Poetics” theorize that tragic narratives, specifically the Greek plays of his time, served to provide people with a sense of psychological catharsis; evoking and purging negative emotions to aid in emotional processing, and providing a sense of pleasure through an orderly concluded narrative. This can be loosely translated to true crime TV shows, books and podcasts, where the narrative is satisfyingly concluded — the killer is found — providing a modern sense of catharsis for negative emotions, like fear.
However, with the fast pace of media today, these stories are often told as the cases are still unfolding, before the conclusion can be reached. This prolongs our suspense for the purging of the unresolved emotions associated with vicariously experiencing the trauma of others.
Today’s social media algorithms thrive off of the sensationalization of stories and evoking strong emotions from users, as it promotes usership of their platforms. The nature of algorithms aids in the emphasis of negative and morbid content at the expense of victims and consumers. After engaging with a true crime story, there suddenly seems to be an endless amount of ideas and theories flowing from YouTube, TikTok, X, Reddit and other online forums, encouraging users to investigate personal and tragic events. A 2025 study showed that as crimes are sensationalized in real time on social media, the abundant accessibility of information and theories can cause consumers to become compulsive or obsessive with their engagement and to develop a preoccupation with the story. Negative impacts on mental health are linked to obsessive crime-content consumption, as people become dependent on the negative emotions fuelled by a morbid event.
Regular consumption of murder, kidnapping and crime content also alters risk-perception, making people feel that they are at a higher risk of violent crimes. This is especially true for women, who make up a disproportionately large percentage of true crime consumers. Women were found to be motivated to consume true crime at higher rates based on a more prevalent fear of violent crimes like rape. Women consume true crime as a precautionary measure, in an attempt to protect themselves against violence through ‘preparedness.’ What they really develop is paranoia and altered social perception. It can be argued that true crime content causes more psychological distress to women than it does a sense of protection from violence. True crime media is made to be addictive and preys on women seeking a sense of comfort and control, leveraging the paranoia that it causes to further profit off of consumers at the expense of their quality of life.
The dramatization and marketing of true crime narratives pose ethical concerns about the use of trauma as narratives for public consumption. Real victims and families involved in the tragedy are often lost in media speculation. In the case of the Moscow murders, one of the surviving roommates has spoken out about being viciously harassed online by true crime fans convinced that they were internet vigilantes. She was accused of working with the killer by some, and of being at fault for the death of her friends due to her response to the crime by others. Not only does the sensationalization of true crime stories desensitize people to the real victims and horrors of the crime, it can result in the further traumatization and harassment of people associated with the victims and spread harmful misinformation.
When a murder becomes a spectacle used for capitalistic gain and the fascination of an online fandom, we need to seriously reconsider the ethics of our media consumption and habits.
