“Bones are life!” true-crime podcasting, self-promotion and the vernaculars of Instagram with Cult Liter

ABSTRACT

Social media engagement is becoming a significant part of true-crime fandom, providing spaces for true-crime fans to share their knowledge and obsessions. This article explores the storytelling techniques of the Cult Liter podcast and how the listeners engage with these stories on the associated Instagram account. Rather than engaging with the implications of violent crime, fans of Cult Liter on Instagram instead engage in self-promotion, like seeking behavior and in-group validation. Through analysis of episode 31, Jeffrey Dahmer, and the listener/user interaction on Instagram, this article evaluates how true-crime podcasts and social media relate to each other, echoing Seltzer’s “wound culture,” as users gather round the Instagram post as they would the scene of a crime. This article argues that social media provides a safe space where fans can indulge their fondness for stories of murder and their self-proclaimed obsession with certain serial killers.

KEYWORDS:

• True crime
• podcast
• Instagram
• Jeffrey Dahmer
• Cult Liter
• self-promotion
• selfie
• like-seeking behavior
• wound culture
• fandom
• fan practices

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Fan groups have built up around various true-crime podcasts, away from the hosts, and the groups offer support to other listeners. Support includes mental health support and sexual-assault victim support (from the My Favorite Murder fans), and financial support in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic (from the All Killa No Filla fans).

2. The urban slang “dope” to mean exceptional was first used by rappers Busy Bee and Grandmaster Flash in lyrics in the 1980s (Urban Dictionary, 2015).

3. Aside from one user who mentions a victim’s name in relation to Spencer Henry struggling to pronounce the surname.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stella Marie Gaynor

Stella Marie Gaynor is Senior Lecturer in Media, Culture and Communication at Liverpool John Moores University. She is the author of Rethinking Horror in the New Economies of Television (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Her research explores horror and true crime across television, digital and social media, comics and film.