Feel-True Crime

Think the "true crime" craze is bad? How about the sleuths for crimes that might exist?

Midjourney

When the Smokepocalypse came on June 7th, I just knew the conspiracy theories would come. Of course they did. Some said it was no wildfire, but something chemical. Some said it was started by environmentalists that were desperate to make their cause relevant. Then there were those who said the timing of Mike Pence and Chris Christie announcing this days apart from the event was suspicious, as if their campaigns started the fires to discredit an already unpopular Biden. Yes, yes, even Jews were blamed.

The culture of conspiracy is nothing new. Since the ‘70s, anti-government skepticism has been a boom industry. But back then, the conspiracies were related to actual misdeeds that were committed by somebody. JFK was assassinated, but few believed Lee Harvey Oswald did it. Even when books that were published in a hyper-dystopian manner about overpopulation had exaggerated claims, there were at least piles of research papers to misinterpret. Since 2016, though, it has increasingly been the case that anything bad, from a murder to a DC movie with bad box office, could be blamed on some shadowy conspiracy.

And it’s not just wildfires now that need amateur sleuths. Serial was a great podcast, but oh what it hath wrought! In the good old days, we complained that true-crime sleuths on the Internet would meddle in homicide investigations. Nowadays, they don’t even need a mystery. Even prestige TV shows like Succession, which aired its final episode weeks ago, are still being pored over. And while the show was still on the air, fans expected the sort of hairpin turns that would belong more on a show like Lost or 24. If Logan was actually dead, why not show the body maaaaan?

What makes this particularly interesting compared to all the other wild Internet theories is that all the others are either about shows that lend themselves to such speculation or, if they are true-life stories, then they are about people. And do we ever really know anybody? But Succession was a show written with a particular perspective. And that perspective was never titillation. Like any great satire, we had a good idea what the outcome would be. How it got there was the mystery. I didn’t predict that Tom would end up being CEO of Waystar Royco, but I was pretty confident none of the three principal children would get it. What satirical point would that accomplish, if Kendall won and strutted into his limo playing gangsta rap just like in the beginning? It would not fit the character of the show.

And that is the crux of all this, in case you were crux-starved. Our current feel-true crime moment (where it’s a crime if it feels like a crime) is less centered around the actual character of the suspect (even though many times it involves character assassination) and has way more to do with making the sleuth look good. Most actual sleuths like to do an intensive psychological profile of their suspect in addition to connecting the timeline of events. The Feel-True Crime Sleuths though (let’s call them FTCS’s [it’s a free Substack]) often have a grand narrative that they are working with that they need to hew close to in order to prove that their sleuthing is making the world a better place. The Internet may be clogged with content about superheroes, but the actual role models may just be Woodward and Bernstein. Yes, they were actual sleuths that unearthed a real crime. But how many investigative hacks after them riddled their news stories with deceptive editing and gotcha! moments?

This is when it was old media, of course. Now with new media, why yell at your TV like a lunatic? Quietly type your theory on Reddit like a silent madman. And it’s not just the right that’s full of conspiracies about COVID and smoke. It did not take all that long for #MeToo to curdle into the sordid clickbait gossip tripe it’s become. But this is what happens when FTCs are plot-driven instead of character-driven. FTCS’s have been raised with Boomer/early Gen X parents that watched Dateline NBC and Law and Order. What cynical shows like this instilled in their childhoods was that anybody could be a suspect.

The problem with this type of cynicism is it is too broad. Not discerning enough. It is this type of skepticism that makes supposed Succession fans believe that, for example, “Swedish billionaire Lukas Matsson had completely made up a piece of bad news to ensnare the central Roy brothers in an unexpected trap…[e]verything was four-dimensional chess, and you, conspiracy-minded viewer, were there to catch the show in the act.” A true fan would have told you that characters that try to play four-dimensional chess on the show end up looking like Greg, who idiotically told Kendall half the story about Shiv being out, leading to Greg getting nothing from an eventually powerless Kendall and new CEO Lukas Matsson calling Greg Judas in front of the press. But, like the terrible potboilers the sleuths were raised on, character matters less than roller-coaster thrills.

Well, I guess the main character matters. I am of course talking about Main Character Syndrome, which at this stage has become an epidemic. It used to be Main Character Syndrome meant you were the main character of your own life, with everyone you met being a side character or love interest. It has gotten to the point now where the FTCS’s are main character sleuths in crimes that not only have nothing to do with them, but may not even be crimes (Smokepocalypse). And this sleuth character is, needless to say, a stock character.

But, for arguments sake, who was behind the Smokepocalypse? Like the man said in the song, it was you and me.

I am no granola tree-hugger. Frankly, I think recycling is a joke (one I play along with anyway). But the government, which had no problem closing down factories in the ‘80s for, among other reasons, environmental concerns, still has a very cushy relationship with the Big Tech companies that are way worse for the environment. But it’s you and me that are at fault, at the very least because we insist on sticking to the two party system, neither of which has made any serious attempt at….

Blah blah blah, point is, conclusions like this don’t sit well with amateur sleuths. They hated films that ended like Blow Up, with ambiguous endings.

They like egotistical narratives that validate the sleuth’s hunches, not endings that have us wonder if the sleuth himself was reliable. And it is EXACTLY this discomfort with uncertainty that is our problem. In the ‘60s, consciousness was explored. The ‘70s was more of an internal investigation. But from the ‘80s on, we have looked more outward for extrinsic rewards than inwards at our own consciousness or values. I would suggest turning those magnifying glasses on ourselves. But only if we are willing to sit with a pile of deep, unresolved mysteries.