Incredible article. You really know how to contextualize the world of the digital with hauntingly accurate fairytales, you really get Jungian with it. I was just thinking about this case and how I found myself feeling schadenfreude over the stupidity of the murderer - how satisfying he was caught, how comforting to know he will rot in jail - and then the real unfixable horror of the case set in and I felt that probably I shouldn't spend much more time taking in details
This is really powerful. I’m raising small children (one of which is a boy) and this weighs on me so heavily- how to raise a child (especially a boy) in the world today? This folktale framing is so uniquely powerful. I just read abiyoyo to my kids and it’s a version of this story (insatiable people eating monster) but a light touch for younger kids. It makes me start thinking about how to start planting these concepts soon. The sacredness of our human consciousness and protecting it against dark forces. My grandmother told me to not let evil find a place in my heart and I definitely rolled my eyes - she probably thought rock and roll and punk music was evil. How do I become a force for guidance that they believe and trust?
I think we’ve uniquely lost touch with these folk tales that tell universal truths and I will start to think about how I can use them more
Thanks for the kind words. I'm in the same boat. Storytelling helps, I find, even with reminding myself of what I value. My mom was and very much still is an excellent storyteller -- one thing I've been thinking a lot about is that not every story is good. But when you find a good one, it really sticks. Just gotta find the right vessel.
I just posted one of my own articles about the Wendigo, but I have to say, this one is more chilling than mine in a few specific ways. For one, nobody dies in my article, and it focuses more on the 2024 NFL Draft than yours. But your article raises a lot of powerful questions about human nature and the way society might be cannibalizing itself. Not the nicest topic right before bed, but it's captivating.
I think the one modern true crime show/movie that comes close to not being cynical is Stefano Sollima's The Monster of Florence.
It's based on a murderer that was never found, but follows threads of famous suspects every season, so there is no killer, technically. Sollima films the whole thing as a fucked up art film, it features fucked up stories, but he always tries to push the intelectual side of it. The true horror in that case is realizing that any italian man, due to misoginy, cowardice or repressed thoughts, could be the killer, and with that comes anger.
His movie Suburra is similar to this. They arent about empathizing with the victims (he trusts the audience), but about showing you things that take you out of your confort zone and inviting you reflect and I think his coldness is why most people see him as more right wing than he actually is.
It's not a perfect series, but it's one of the better attempts at an ethical true crime production because it isnt hipocritical and understands that the audience isnt there to honor some random teenager. In a way, it's a good exemple of modern exploitation cinema.
You know, it's interesting, I think even exploitation films where the MO is to make the audience flinch through the entire production is more ethical than "crimeslop." I don't have a problem with covering these stories per se, it's more the way they're covered.
This really reminded me of a podcast episode I listened to last night, the latest episode of Subject to Power, where Jane Caputi was interviewed about her book she wrote nearly 40 years ago, The Age of Sex Crimes. The folk tale theme in reference to murderers was explored in a parallel way.
I also appreciated the call out on true crime consumption, something I chose to limit years ago.
I used to consume my own fair share of it, with the excuse/feeling that as a member of the more physically vulnerable sex, a sort of intimate, grotesque understanding of the monstrous predator figure would give me some amount of survival advantage or the ability to suss out a potential problem of a male from a benign one.
I stopped listening to and watching true crime because it actually only made me more fearful than is necessary. I realized my intuition is pretty spot on as is, no gruesome details of crimes needed to hone it. And also for this reason, along with the increased level of fear and suspicion, there ironically was a desensitization. That second death factor is real, as in the telling of these stories the victims of crime who no longer can speak for themselves shift simply into a kind of folk tale character, a necessary tool of the tale, but more mythic and less human.
I am reminded of the saying from Saint Sophrony of Essex - “Stand on the edge of the abyss and when you feel that it is beyond your strength, break off and have a cup of tea.”
In Orthodox Christianity we continue to pray for the dead and I think, if nothing else, this forces us to remember them as "people" - full, whole identies.
I recall watching a documentary about a serial killer in the USA who targetted women in their houses and there were lengthy interviews with the officers who ran the case for years including the toll it took on their family lives. They got him in the end. (I forget the title of the doco)
The thing that struck me was that right at the end, the final voice-over interview was one of the detectives who was a devout Catholic. He said that over time his family life got back in balance and also, fascinatingly, he said that every night when he prays, he goes through a list of the departed and that the last name on the list is "xxxx"(the perpetrator in the doco) (again, I'll update this if I remember).
My point is that if for whatever reason we find ourselves seeing humans as something to be consumed or "death" as something "other that death" we need to find a way to pause, regather that which has become fragmented, draw it back to the center, and honour the "person". And in the case of an 'objectively' evil person - handing over their ultimate resolution (destiny) to something higher than ourselves.
Nah. All of this type of reasoning just gets used as an excuse for censorship. It is you who are responsible for your actions, not whatever gross video you watched.
The Wendigo lens catches appetite. It misses at least one other pathway: from internal death imagery, to gore spectatorship, to enactment. Each rung is a stronger dissociation tool for the same underlying pain. This isn't the only route to violence — some perpetrators are appetite-driven, some ideological, some instrumental, some sadistic from the start. But collapsing all of them into one appetite-shaped Wendigo obscures what actually distinguishes them.
The diagnostic question isn't whether consumption is voyeurism or justice. It's whether a subject in unbearable pain can find lower-rung regulation elsewhere before tolerance forces them upward — and whether the perpetrator you're looking at even came from that pathway in the first place
in this sense, Brokenwood Mysteries series (fictional NZ cozy crime / police procedural) is kind of an opposite. In each episode, when the main detective arrives on the crime scene, he starts with talking with the deceased, sometimes apologizing for not avoiding the crime, sometimes comforting the person for the undignified situation, always promising to do whatever he can do to find out the truth and establish justice. Except in one case with a particularly vicious victim, a psychiatrist who had tortured his patients - but even this shows the detective saw him as a person, just a person who he despises and doesn't want to talk to.
If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
I agree. I do think you can step back far enough to regain your humanity though
Incredible article. You really know how to contextualize the world of the digital with hauntingly accurate fairytales, you really get Jungian with it. I was just thinking about this case and how I found myself feeling schadenfreude over the stupidity of the murderer - how satisfying he was caught, how comforting to know he will rot in jail - and then the real unfixable horror of the case set in and I felt that probably I shouldn't spend much more time taking in details
Thank you!
And yes -I struggle with the same. The fairy tale thing helps me stay grounded. I'm talking to myself as much as I am everyone else in these pieces!
This is really powerful. I’m raising small children (one of which is a boy) and this weighs on me so heavily- how to raise a child (especially a boy) in the world today? This folktale framing is so uniquely powerful. I just read abiyoyo to my kids and it’s a version of this story (insatiable people eating monster) but a light touch for younger kids. It makes me start thinking about how to start planting these concepts soon. The sacredness of our human consciousness and protecting it against dark forces. My grandmother told me to not let evil find a place in my heart and I definitely rolled my eyes - she probably thought rock and roll and punk music was evil. How do I become a force for guidance that they believe and trust?
I think we’ve uniquely lost touch with these folk tales that tell universal truths and I will start to think about how I can use them more
Thanks for the kind words. I'm in the same boat. Storytelling helps, I find, even with reminding myself of what I value. My mom was and very much still is an excellent storyteller -- one thing I've been thinking a lot about is that not every story is good. But when you find a good one, it really sticks. Just gotta find the right vessel.
I just posted one of my own articles about the Wendigo, but I have to say, this one is more chilling than mine in a few specific ways. For one, nobody dies in my article, and it focuses more on the 2024 NFL Draft than yours. But your article raises a lot of powerful questions about human nature and the way society might be cannibalizing itself. Not the nicest topic right before bed, but it's captivating.
-D.L.
Thank you for reading! Lots to think about with the wendigo
Important text.
I think the one modern true crime show/movie that comes close to not being cynical is Stefano Sollima's The Monster of Florence.
It's based on a murderer that was never found, but follows threads of famous suspects every season, so there is no killer, technically. Sollima films the whole thing as a fucked up art film, it features fucked up stories, but he always tries to push the intelectual side of it. The true horror in that case is realizing that any italian man, due to misoginy, cowardice or repressed thoughts, could be the killer, and with that comes anger.
His movie Suburra is similar to this. They arent about empathizing with the victims (he trusts the audience), but about showing you things that take you out of your confort zone and inviting you reflect and I think his coldness is why most people see him as more right wing than he actually is.
It's not a perfect series, but it's one of the better attempts at an ethical true crime production because it isnt hipocritical and understands that the audience isnt there to honor some random teenager. In a way, it's a good exemple of modern exploitation cinema.
You know, it's interesting, I think even exploitation films where the MO is to make the audience flinch through the entire production is more ethical than "crimeslop." I don't have a problem with covering these stories per se, it's more the way they're covered.
This really reminded me of a podcast episode I listened to last night, the latest episode of Subject to Power, where Jane Caputi was interviewed about her book she wrote nearly 40 years ago, The Age of Sex Crimes. The folk tale theme in reference to murderers was explored in a parallel way.
I also appreciated the call out on true crime consumption, something I chose to limit years ago.
I used to consume my own fair share of it, with the excuse/feeling that as a member of the more physically vulnerable sex, a sort of intimate, grotesque understanding of the monstrous predator figure would give me some amount of survival advantage or the ability to suss out a potential problem of a male from a benign one.
I stopped listening to and watching true crime because it actually only made me more fearful than is necessary. I realized my intuition is pretty spot on as is, no gruesome details of crimes needed to hone it. And also for this reason, along with the increased level of fear and suspicion, there ironically was a desensitization. That second death factor is real, as in the telling of these stories the victims of crime who no longer can speak for themselves shift simply into a kind of folk tale character, a necessary tool of the tale, but more mythic and less human.
Very insightful.
I am reminded of the saying from Saint Sophrony of Essex - “Stand on the edge of the abyss and when you feel that it is beyond your strength, break off and have a cup of tea.”
In Orthodox Christianity we continue to pray for the dead and I think, if nothing else, this forces us to remember them as "people" - full, whole identies.
I recall watching a documentary about a serial killer in the USA who targetted women in their houses and there were lengthy interviews with the officers who ran the case for years including the toll it took on their family lives. They got him in the end. (I forget the title of the doco)
The thing that struck me was that right at the end, the final voice-over interview was one of the detectives who was a devout Catholic. He said that over time his family life got back in balance and also, fascinatingly, he said that every night when he prays, he goes through a list of the departed and that the last name on the list is "xxxx"(the perpetrator in the doco) (again, I'll update this if I remember).
My point is that if for whatever reason we find ourselves seeing humans as something to be consumed or "death" as something "other that death" we need to find a way to pause, regather that which has become fragmented, draw it back to the center, and honour the "person". And in the case of an 'objectively' evil person - handing over their ultimate resolution (destiny) to something higher than ourselves.
Nah. All of this type of reasoning just gets used as an excuse for censorship. It is you who are responsible for your actions, not whatever gross video you watched.
The Wendigo lens catches appetite. It misses at least one other pathway: from internal death imagery, to gore spectatorship, to enactment. Each rung is a stronger dissociation tool for the same underlying pain. This isn't the only route to violence — some perpetrators are appetite-driven, some ideological, some instrumental, some sadistic from the start. But collapsing all of them into one appetite-shaped Wendigo obscures what actually distinguishes them.
The diagnostic question isn't whether consumption is voyeurism or justice. It's whether a subject in unbearable pain can find lower-rung regulation elsewhere before tolerance forces them upward — and whether the perpetrator you're looking at even came from that pathway in the first place
Sure -- I agree there are different types.
in this sense, Brokenwood Mysteries series (fictional NZ cozy crime / police procedural) is kind of an opposite. In each episode, when the main detective arrives on the crime scene, he starts with talking with the deceased, sometimes apologizing for not avoiding the crime, sometimes comforting the person for the undignified situation, always promising to do whatever he can do to find out the truth and establish justice. Except in one case with a particularly vicious victim, a psychiatrist who had tortured his patients - but even this shows the detective saw him as a person, just a person who he despises and doesn't want to talk to.