While Coccio eventually left the subreddit, many others stayed. Dawn Cecil, professor of criminology at the University of South Florida and author of: Fear, Justice and Modern True Crime, says many who engage in 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 real crime forums can become echo chambers that fuel fear or support pre-existing beliefs. Consuming true crime, as she describes in her book, can also distort people’s perceptions 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 to post on r/serialpodcast. At first he “liked” it, but in his time there he has been both verbally assaulted and drugged – a stranger from the subreddit once mentioned him at work. (He asked WIRED not to use his real name for privacy purposes.) He says he’s seen “some of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen on the Internet” thanks to his interest in the serial case.
Meghan, a 30-year-old nurse from Washington who asked WIRED not to use her last name, spent seven years on the submarine out of “habit.” She enjoyed the early “exciting” days when people regularly posted new discoveries and says it was helpful to talk to strangers over the years. “Right now, some of the other long-term posters feel a bit like old friends, even the ones I fight the most with,” she says. But personal attacks on the submarine also increase Meghan’s anxiety, and she’s also come to re-evaluate her attitude toward real-life crime.
“I am ashamed and ashamed of how gleefully I came back to this submarine to look at discolored documents and so on without fully considering that the victim was a real person,” she says. “A teenager died; the lives of several other teenagers have been turned upside down… 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 got really bad for my mental health, for the same reasons,” he says. When Syed was released from prison last month, Marcus returned to r/serialpodcast, but he thinks it won’t be long. Meghan says she will stop consuming serial comment if Syed is not tried again. For others, true crime forums remain tantalizing spaces – where community is forged and answers seem to be just around the corner.
As of this writing, Dahmer is the top english show on Netflix, which reports that some 56 million households have seen the series. The streaming service premieres Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes on Friday.