Expert insight: Why are we so obsessed with true crime? It’s not just morbid curiosity
Criminologist Michael Arntfield explains why true crime grips audiences, citing safe fear, informal safety lessons and community, after Netflix’s Idaho murders documentary drew 18.2 million views.
Michael Arntfield, a Western professor of criminology and English literature, uses Netflix’s three-part The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare to ask why true crime is so popular. The series revisits the 2022 killings of four University of Idaho students and drew 18.2 million views in its first five days. His commentary first ran in The Conversation.
He says no single explanation suffices. One is benign hedonic masochism, enjoying simulated fear from the safety of a couch, together with opponent-process theory, in which dread gives way to relief. Another is didactic: audiences, especially adult women, may treat these stories as lessons in spotting danger.
A third is belonging. Message boards, Facebook groups, TikTok communities and DIY podcasts let listeners become contributors who collectively interpret cases.
Arntfield suggests the genre says less about a fascination with death than about a need to find one another through stories.
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