Research has shown that consumption of crime news can lead to outsize fears of becoming a victim, and for those who are survivors of violence, the glut of content can be a lot to take: 🎨: Jacqui Vanliew/Getty
While Coccio eventually left the subreddit, many others stayed. Dawn Cecil, a criminology professor at the University of South Florida and author of, says that many who engage with true crime forums have “good intentions of wanting to help solve a crime or find a missing person”; some also want to draw attention to miscarriages of justice and question the effectiveness of the criminal justice system.
Still, Cecil warns that true crime forums can become echo chambers that feed fear or buttress preexisting beliefs. Consuming true crime, as she details in her book, can also skew people’s perception of crime and reinforce stereotypes. It can also lead people to things they regret. Marcus is a 42-year-old from Seattle who joined Reddit purely so he could post on r/serialpodcast. At first he found it “fun,” but in his time there he has been verbally attacked as well as doxed—a stranger from the subreddit once called him at work.
“I am embarrassed and ashamed of how gleefully I came back to this sub to look at lividity documents, et cetera, without fully considering that the victim was a real person,” she says. “A teenager died; multiple other teenagers’ lives were completely upended … It’s just all sad. And I think that does affect my mental health.”
Two years ago, Marcus took a step back from r/serialpodcast. “It became really bad for my mental health, arguing the same arguments,” he says. When Syed was released from prison last month, Marcus returned to r/serialpodcast—but he imagines it won’t be for long. Meghan says she will stop consuming
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