Last weekend, amid the neon-lit stalls of CrimeCon, hordes of armchair detectives descended upon London to debate the ethics of true crime. The irony is thick enough to choke a Victorian undertaker. Here we have a festival dedicated to the macabre details of murder, abduction and serial killing, now suddenly clucking its tongue over ‘responsible consumption’. This is the moral equivalent of a fallen woman preaching chastity from a brothel window. The United Kingdom, ever the global pacesetter in agonised hand-wringing, leads the charge with panels on ‘trauma-informed reporting’ and ‘victim-centred narratives’. But let us not kid ourselves. This is not a renaissance of ethics. This is cultural decadence disguised as soul-searching.
Consider the historical parallel. In the late Roman Empire, as the barbarians gathered at the gates, the elites became obsessed with exotic cults and manicured self-reflection. They debated the finer points of Stoicism while their aqueducts crumbled. Today, as the West’s civilisational confidence evaporates, we wrap ourselves in the soft cotton wool of ethical debates about dead strangers. We have elevated the voyeuristic consumption of tragedy into a quasi-religious ritual. The CrimeCon attendees are not mourners. They are tourists in the graveyard of humanity.
And yet, the British are commendably earnest about it. The new guidelines from Reporters Without Borders? Patronising. The calls to ‘centre the victim’? Deluded. Every documentary about a serial killer is now bookended with a heartfelt plea to respect the families, as if that absolves the viewer of complicity. We want the gore but we want to feel virtuous about it. This is intellectual decadence at its most refined: the ability to gorge on horror while sipping fair-trade tea.
But there is a deeper rot. The true crime boom is a symptom of a nation that has lost its appetite for real moral engagement. We no longer have the stomach for grand narratives of good and evil, for the complexity of justice and redemption. Instead, we reduce crime to a puzzle to be solved, a loose thread to be pulled until we have picked the carcass clean. The victims become characters in a gothic novel. The killers become anti-heroes. And we, the audience, sit in judgment while contributing nothing to the common weal.
Do not mistake me for a moraliser who thinks crime should be ignored. I am a contrarian, not a fool. But the marketing of misery as entertainment, especially when dressed in the robes of social responsibility, is a hallmark of a civilisation in decline. The Victorians at least had the decency to cloak their prurient interests in scientific jargon. We parade ours under the banner of ‘discourse’.
So, here is my penny’s worth: if you attend CrimeCon, own it. You are a ghoul. Do not pretend otherwise. The ethical hand-wringing is just the final, decadent stage of a culture that has run out of ideas. The Fall of Rome did not come with a panel discussion. It came with a whimper and a shrug. And it will come for us too, while we debate the proper way to document the crime.