Is it just me, or are all the "Forensic Files" and true story murder mini documentaries disgusting?

[fried eggs]

Last weekend I somehow ended up watching CNN's Forensic Files. It was horrifying, but I couldn't look away from the back to back stories featuring vile and senseless murders. Hopefully it's only temporary, but I find myself even more distrustful of both neighbors and strangers. I don't think the murder mini-docs add anything of value to our society. They're exploiting the victims and viewers are slowly brainwashed into thinking most humans are evil. I wonder how many people purchase guns after watching shows like that?

[KurtNYC]

1. Bread and circuses. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

[valerief]

2. I never watch that sensationalist shit. It seems 75% of U.S. TV is

a) religious shit
b) kiddie shit
c) sports shit
d) moron reality shit
e) vicious/suffering animal shit
f) true crime shit
g) right wing propaganda shit

[dem in texas]

3. The over the top CSI and Cold Case shows are far worse the true crime stories.

I'd rather watch a true crime show that some stupid fiction like the Good Wife or some fictional crime show where the villain is killing 4 or 5 people in an hour. Which is the most brainless?

[quinnox]

4. Not that one, but I used to watch "The New Detectives" all the time

I thought it was fascinating. One of my favorite things was at the end of the show, the narrator would usually take a jab at the criminals (who would always get caught)

For example, in one show, "Sally" murdered her husband for the insurance money, and tried to disguise it by using poison and claiming it was a natural causes type death. The narrator said, "Sally's dreams of gold vanished as she was led away in chains of steel."

In another show, a guy had tried to cover up his crime by hiding the body. The narrator said, "John thought that by hiding the body and cleaning the crime scene, that he would fool the police. But in the end, he was only fooling himself."

[fried eggs]

20. lol. Sounds cheesy

[winter is coming]

33. The thing I liked about "The New Detectives" (which my kid called "The Dead People Show") is that

they showed how the forensics was done. You could see that there are many specialties, that it can be painstaking and time-consuming, and that it's done by techs who spend virtually all of their time in the lab. Contrast that with the CSI shows, where each forensics person routinely does multiple types of forensic analysis (usually in a ridiculously small amount of time) and goes out to interview witnesses/suspects.

[NightWatcher]

5. for people who like watch murders but dont have the balls to do it themselves

http://www.hulu.com/watch/603082

A funny parody of those shows from SNL

[mwrguy]

6. 'The First 48' is great

[sabrina 1]

7. No, it's not just you. What strikes me about all these shows, real murder cases, some of them

so horrific, children killing parents over a boyfriend, mothers killing their children, and the most prominent 'motive' seems to be LIFE INSURANCE, husbands/wives killing their spouses for the LIFE INSURANCE, but what strikes me is there are SO MANY MURDERS that they can make so many shows about, Forensic Files, Dateline and so many others, shouldn't someone, rather than taking the cold, clinical attitude towards them, start to wonder WHY so many Americans are killing each other that they never run short of material to produce these seemingly endless shows?

It apparently wasn't ALWAYS this way. Eg, Lizzie Borden. It was such a rare crime at the time, we STILL hear about it. Now she would just be another among thousands. What has gone so wrong with this country?

[AverageJoe90]

9. TBH, Sabrina, it's not that murders have become much more common.....

It's just that media is far more willing(sometimes too willing, admittedly), to talk about these things in an overall sense than they were, say, 50 or 60 years ago. Lizzie Borden's crime may have been a sensation, but it was hardly all that rare(sadly). It just got the publicity that it did because of the extreme nature of the crime, the circumstances of the family, etc.

[sabrina 1]

42. Well, some of the crimes on these shows make Lizzie Borden's seem almost humane by comparison.

I think it was more the fact that she was a woman that made it so sensational. Society back then didn't expect women to commit such violent acts. Now it's not all abnormal.

I would like to see statistics on how many mothers eg, were killing their own children a hundred years ago. Or how many wives and husbands were killing their spouses for their Life Insurance.

We had media in the seventies, eighties eg. I don't remember kids shooting up schools until Columbine in the 'nineties eg, now it's a regular event. And Serial Killers. When did this become the norm?

[quakerboy]

17. I doubt that that is accurate

If you control for the easy bam dead aspect of gun homicide, I doubt that there are significantly more murders now than at any other point in history. But from my understanding of much of history, if you killed your subordinates, it wasn't really a big deal. A Woman got beat to death by her husband? Not anyone's business, except you might hesitate to marry my daughter to him, if you like her. A servant got uppity? He can be disappeared with no consequence to the owner of the house. That sort of thing.

[fried eggs]

25. Violent crime rates in the United States (1960-2012)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Crime_over_time

[quakerboy]

43. So it appears I was essentially correct

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/06/16/a-crime-puzzle-violent-crime-declines-in-america/

Apparently murder rates are slowly dropping. Yet to hear the news, or many of my relatives, we are living in Dangerous Times.

[AverageJoe90]

8. It's just you, TBH.

I'm a true-blue progressive and Obama supporter, but I've never had a problem with these shows, TBH; I certainly never got the impression that they were implying that most humans were evil, either. So I dunno what to tell you. No offense meant, of course.

[frogmarch]

10. I watch little else but true crime shows

The only true crime shows that annoy me are ones with a lot of dramatic re-enactments. I hate those. I hate them but I watch them.

[otohara]

11. Murder In America Is Big Business

I watch Dateline sometimes and if it weren't for all the murders we have, there wouldn't be this many shows that are about true murders. There would be no Dateline, 48 Hours, Forensic Files, etc....

Crazy but true stories that end in murder - they all start out the same...nice neighborhood, they seemed like the perfect couple, beautiful family, church goers, and then the affair and the ultimate murder.

[LeftofObama]

12. I'm a liberal through and through and I love these true crime (murder) shows.

They don't make me think of the general public any differently, and they certainly don't make me want to run out and buy a gun. The thing I like most about these shows is the arrogance of the perpetrator who thinks they aren't going to get caught. There is a show starting soon on the Investigation Discovery channel called Sinister Ministers about so called "men of the cloth" who thought they could get away with crimes too. It looks to be pretty interesting.


To each their own I guess.

[fried eggs]

22. Maybe I have too much anxiety

to handle it. "Sinister Ministers" sounds intriguing. I'm tempted to tape one episode but I don't want to get sucked into it again.

[Nye Bevan]

13. "I couldn't look away..."

And you're not a fan. Talk about a successful concept for a TV show.

[JJChambers]

14. Murder shows (true crime) make great TV

They're fascinating and educational.

[fried eggs]

18. Educational? Like teaching would be killers how not to get caught??

[JJChambers]

19. No, Learning how killers did get caught. Lots of science; lots of criminal justice.

With a healthy dose of reality about human nature.

[fried eggs]

24. Speaking of which... the way some of the crimes were solved seemed miraculous or

nearly impossible. One woman chopped up the body parts of another woman and buried half her body in one landfill and the other half somewhere else, but yet some cops were able to find her body parts in a landfill that serviced over 250,000 people (in freezing weather?)?!

[SevenSixtyTwo]

15. We're chillin' after work

with supper and Law and Order on TV. Wife watches a lot of those shows.

[justiceischeap]

16. I fall asleep with ID on every night

I also like Dateline Saturday Mystery and The First 48. I don't find that I look at human kind any differently after watching these shows other than when I run across creepy people, I wonder if I'll ever see them on one of the shows I watch.

I'd rather watch a true crime show than "reality" TV any day of the week.

[Shandris]

21. I don't need television shows to know many people are downright evil.

All I need to do is look out my window on a Friday night during the summertime, or maybe read the Police Blotter from my block. Or count the number of times my belongings have been stolen, rifled through, taken from the laundry, or otherwise tampered with. Or the number of times I've heard people walk by, checking my doorknob to see if it was unlocked. Or the people who sit by an outside window, watching down into the darkness hoping to see someone out alone.

I too used to live in a place where I could convince myself the vast majority of people were really nice and kind and just wanted to be good people. But those days are long past, and with it the illusion that many people are anything other than opportunistic animals more often than not.

[hopemountain]

23. agreed. the other

shows i will not watch are "locked up" and "locked up abroad". too much of this kind of "entertainment" does begin to color one's world, thinking, etc.
unfortunately, positive shows and programming do not garner high viewing data.

[Lee-Lee]

26. It's good to look outside ones bubble and see how some others live

When I first got into law enforcement they warned us in class-" you won't believe how very different some people are, how little regard they have for others, how little regard they have for societies rules".

I didn't grow up exactly innocent, so I took that with a grain of salt. But yeah, there is a segment of society that is just plain evil. I am not talking about the people driven to some crimes by desperation of their situation in society, but some that thruely have zero regard for others- their life, their property, or the laws that make polite society possible.

[fried eggs]

29. What percentage of the population do you think falls into that category?

I've been telling myself that it can't be a high percentage. I've only lost one extended family member to murder, many years ago, and nobody in my circle of friends and family has committed murder (that I know of). The police never found my relative's killer(s), and I doubt that they tried. Such stark contrast to the almost psychic, unrelenting cops featured on Forensic Files.

[Prophet 451]

31. About 1%

What's being talked about is psychopaths (aka sociopathy or ASPD) and according to most estimates, about 1% of humans are psychopaths (for reasons not fully understood). However, it much be remembered that most psychopaths are not violent. They only become dangerous when that psychopathy coincides with internal desires that can only be satisfied by violent, most commonly sexual sadism (which is a quite different thing from consensual kink).

[Lee-Lee]

41. About 2-3%

With at any given time probably half of them incarcerated, or left unable to harm as much as they would want because of physical impairment brought on by prior stupid acts.

Ask any cop- 99% of their problems come from the same 1-2% of people.

But 2-3% can make a huge shift in how a community is. In the communities with the worst crime rates 95% or so of residents are still pretty much good lawful people! with the biggest difference typically being they will turn a blind eye to the rest instead of not tolerating them- that is often the biggest difference between high and low crime areas.

[GreenPartyVoter]

27. I don't find them disgusting, but I knew I had to stop watching them when I started getting really

paranoid about someone taking my kids and doing horrible things to them. I mean I couldn't even leave the window open during the height of summer, and nearly cooked the boys every night.

[Logical]

28. Forensic Files is a really interesting show. I love it. Learn a lot also. nt

[Prophet 451]

30. I actually find them interesting

I'm doing a degree in Forensic Psychology and will, if I recover enough to go back to work, likely be working with law enforcement so I find the information about techniques to be illuminating.

[SwankyXomb]

32. They're incredibly cheap to produce

and get better ratings than you'd expect. Of course networks are going to flood the airwaves with them.

[Skittles]

34. no

real life is far more fascinating than ANY fiction can be

[LadyHawkAZ]

35. South Park called it "informative murder porn"

They nailed it.

[Laffy Kat]

36. I know this is weird.

But I have to have a "murder show" on in order to take a daytime nap. The only thing I can rationalize is, there is just one voice, the narrator, and the monotone puts me to sleep. Go figure. I know it's messed up.

[treestar]

37. Those are about how they solve the crimes

They aren't focused on the murderer, but on the science used to find out what happened and who did it. They're interesting.

[TheFrenchRazor]

39. true. i was hooked on them; got a sense of satisfaction out of seeing evil people punished,

i guess. plus the science is interesting.

[840high]

38. I like Forensic Files.

[laundry_queen]

40. I really like watching them

not because of the murder part. Basically, I'm going through a divorce with a sociopath and I was overly trusting and naïve, and it ruined my life. Now that I understand a bit more about personality disorders, I enjoy watching these shows to study just how psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists behave. I'm a shitty judge of character, and these shows help me by showing me what may or may not be a red flag (which, due to my abusive childhood, I have problems seeing). I've learned a lot about behavior.

[Recursion]

44. "But I couldn't look away"

They know what they're doing...

American obsession with violent crime made more sense 20 years ago when violent crime was so much more common. OTOH the emotional responses to the Great Bloodletting of the 80's and 90's may take a generation or so to disappear.