Consuming True Crime Intentionally: What to Follow and What to Avoid

With an endless supply of true crime content, I personally believe it is both moral and necessary to understand where you are getting your true crime content from, and how that content is affecting the real-life people involved. 

Choose your true crime content wisely. There are certain programs and producers of true crime content looking to benefit from horrific stories without proper consent from the victims, causing additional grief and inappropriate attention towards the victim’s families. Fans of true crime often forget they are listening to stories that happened to real people in this real world and in turn, lack sympathy and respect for all involved in a case. 

Because the plethora of true crime content can become overwhelming and confusing regarding victim exploitation instead of victim advocacy, I have put together a list of true crime content to follow, and a list of true crime content to avoid. 

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Mean Things Come in Threes

By Sandra Vo, Staff Writer

Picture this. You’re a clumsy girl who’s never quite fit in, and you’ve just transferred high schools (again) and now you find yourself trying to navigate this unfamiliar environment with all of your textbooks held tightly against your chest. Due to an unfortunate accident just before your first day of school, your thick glasses have been cracked and taped back together with masking tape you pulled from your father’s toolbox. You feel alone in the swarm of people, the misfit of them all.

Then you fall. For seemingly no reason at all, you trip dramatically in the middle of the hallway during passing period, and your books and papers tumble out of your hands and onto the floor. Heat floods your cheeks. Embarrassment can’t even come close to describing the pure humiliation and shame you feel. As expected in a typical high school, there are plenty of snickers and a complete lack of helping hands. Just as you reach for your chemistry textbook, a hot pink Louboutin heel steps right on top of it. You look up, your lips parting in horror.

Here she is. The head honcho of the high school hallway, the princess of the pubescent people, the tyrant of the teenage throng. “Oh ew, I just stepped in nerd,” she sneers, triggering giggles from all around you. It’s the popular mean girl and her two lackeys.

And she’s just marked you as her target.

When people talk about mean girls, the movie Mean Girls rightfully comes to mind. It’s the prime example of a popular girl with skewed morals who seeks to dominate the high school social scene through terrible misguided actions. As always, her two followers echo every word she speaks as if it’s gospel, but why do we see this trope across so many different films and television series? What could possibly be the appeal of an evil version of the Three Musketeers?

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