Latest / True Crime Reactions / Reacting to SERIAL KILLER: The West Mesa Serial Killer

Transcript

Reacting to SERIAL KILLER: The West Mesa Serial Killer · True Crime Reactions

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine it's New Year's Eve, right, we're talking twenty seventeen
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: going into twenty eighteen. Right, you're at a party, or
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: maybe you're just at home on your couch, you know,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: scrolling through your.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Phone while the ball drops, waiting for midnight.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Exactly, and you open your audio app and you download
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: a brand new file for your morning commute the next day.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Which is a pretty normal thing.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: To do, totally normal. But hidden inside the code of
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that file, like layered underneath the audio you're about to hear,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: is a deeply polite apology for a swear word, a
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: literal roadmap to a multi million dollar media empire. And
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: this is the core of it, the horrific unsolved murders
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: of eleven women in New Mexico.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot to process. And today we aren't
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: actually looking at the story in that audio file. We're
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: dissecting the digital packaging it came out right.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Because welcome to today's deep dive. I'm so glad you're
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: here with us, because today we are embarking on a
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: very different kind of mission.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: We really are.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: We are examining a unique piece of digital history. It's
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: a snapshot of the digital footprint and the metadata for
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: one very specific piece of audio content. Specifically, we're looking
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: at the Apple Podcasts page for an episode of the
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: show Crime Junkie. The title of this specific audio file
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: is serial Killer, the West Mesa serial Killer.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: And right up front, I mean we need to establish
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: exactly what we're looking at here. We have the show notes,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: the publication data, the platform tags, and the global syndication footprint. Yeah,
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: we're basically looking at the diagnostic landscape of a digital release.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: And to be incredibly clear with you right out of
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: the gate, we are not here today to solve the
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: West Mesa case.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: No, definitely not.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: The source text we're examining today does not give us
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the granular details of the investigation, or the suspects or
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: the exact timeline of those terrible crimes.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Right because the source text focuses entirely on the packaging,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: the distribution, and the digital framing of the story.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So, our mission today is to deconstruct how true
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: crime as a genre's frame and how it's marketed and
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: how it is globally distributed by looking at the fascinating
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: almost invisible clues hidden write in the show notes and
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the technical metadata.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Right because metadata is essentially data about data, right right.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: It's the label on the soup can not the soup itself,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: but I mean, in the digital age, the label dictates
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: who buys the soup, where the soup is sold, and
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: what the consumer's supposed to feel when they eat it.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: That is exactly it. I want you to think about
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: reading metadata like reading the rings of a tree.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Oh I like that analogy.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Thanks? Yeah, It's like when a forester looks at a
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: tree stump, they don't just see a piece of wood.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: They see a year of drought or a year of
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: heavy rain, maybe a scar from a forest fire.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: The metadata of this crime Junkie release tells us exactly
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: where internet culture, medium monetization, and our collective psychology were
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: at that specific moment in time early twenty eighteen.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Which was a huge transitional period for digital media.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Huge And to understand the massive phenomenon of this content,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: we have to start by looking at the very thing
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the creators, Ashley Flowers and Britt Praywatt tell their audience
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: in the show notes.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the very first thing we see in this digital
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: artifact is a date in the declaration. The text reads
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: December thirty, first twenty seventeen, followed closely by the publication
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: stamp of January one to twenty eighteen at twelve four
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: to fifteen am UTC.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Great as the year turns.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and the show notes begin with this exact sentence,
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Happy New Year. For our first episode of twenty eighteen,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: we outline the still unsolved murders of the West Masis serial.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Killer, which is just I mean, it's a staggering juxtaposition
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: if you pause and really visualize that moment, absolutely Happy
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: New Year. The ball has dropped, the confetti is falling,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Grab a glass of champagne, and here is a story
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: about unsolved serial murders.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: This total total whiplash, it really is.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: But before we get completely lost in the bizarre psychology
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: of that greeting, let's look at the actual anatomy of
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: this release. The source indicates a total runtime of exactly
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: thirty five minutes, and it's explicitly described by the hosts
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: as an outline of these still unsold and.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: The word outline is the lynchpin. Here you have to
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: contextualize this within the broader landscape of the true crime
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: genre at the time.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Okay set the scene for us.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: So Historically, true crime media, especially in the podcasting space
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: post twenty fourteen, was defined by multi hour, sprawling, exhaustive investigations.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Right, like the really deep, serialized stuff.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You had shows where posts might spend ten hours
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: detailing a single week of a police investigation, or reading
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: court transcripts verbatim, playing unedited interrogation tapes.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the really heavy, immersive deep dives.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Right. So, in that environment, releasing a thirty five minute
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: summary represents a very specific, highly calculated editorial choice.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because I want to push back
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: on this a little bit. Sure, is a thirty five
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: minute runtime really a calculated editorial choice by brilliant media
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: strategists or did they just not have that much information
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: because the case is fundamentally unsolved? That's a very right,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, are we giving them too much credit for
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: a lack of material? If the police don't know who
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: did it, how much can you really talk about?
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Well, if we look at the mechanics of content production,
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: it absolutely is a choice. Even with unsolved cases, you
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: can do deep dives into the victims backgrounds, the history
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: of the geographic area, the psychological profiling, the missteps by
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: law enforcement.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I see what you mean.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: You can easily stretch an unsolved case to four hours
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: if you want to, especially with the case as massive
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: as West Mesa.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Right, because we have to remember what this case actually is.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: We're talking about the haunting discovery of human remains in Albuquerque,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: New Mexico.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly over a dozen bodies found buried in the desert.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, eleven victims eventually identified, plus an unborn child. It's
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: a massive, sprawling tragedy. And the fact that it remains
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: completely unsolved. I mean, there is so much to dig
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: into there, the victims' lives, the community responds, the search.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Right, the material is there. So the decision to distill
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: all of that horror and complexity down to an outline
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: is a deliberate formatting constraint. It prioritizes a clear, easily
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: digestible narrative arc over exhaustive granular detail.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they are actively choosing brevity. They were choosing
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: the thirty five minute mark, which by the way, is
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: the exact length of a slightly heavy morning commute.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Or folding one large basket of laundry.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Yes, it favors extreme accessibility. It's like the cliff notes.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Of true crime exactly, and that raises a profound question
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: about the psychology of the listener. When you take a complex,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: unresolved chaotic tragedy, like an unsolved serial killer case with
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: eleven identified victims, and you can press it into a tight,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: thirty five minute outline, what does that do to the
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: listener's perception of the event. It actively makes the horror
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: feel more manageable.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: It domesticates the terror.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, it domesticates it. The listener gets the feeling of
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: being informed without the burden of being overwhelmed. The outline
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: format is essentially a promised to a listener. We will
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: give you the intrigue, the adrenaline spack of the mystery,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: but we won't demand too much of your time right,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: and more importantly, we will not demand too much of
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: your emotional stamina.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: It's like serving a very dark, very bitter espresso shot
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: instead of making you sit down for a heavy, five
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: course meal of tragedy.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: You get the jolt, you feel the adrenaline of the
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: scary story, and then you're at your desk at work
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: by nine zero am, ready to start the new year.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: You haven't been emotionally wrecked for the week you've just
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: been entertained on the drive in.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: And if we connect this to the bigger picture, this
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: specific careful pacing was actively setting a new standard for
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: rapid consumption true crime in early twenty eighteen. Oh for sure,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: it trained audiences to expect a beginning, middle, and end,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: even when the real world case fundamentally has no end.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: It's a highly constructed, highly curated approach to the listener's comfort.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Which leads us directly into what might be the most
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: fascinating head scratching contradiction in the entire source text.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this part is wild.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Because this deliberate desire to make the listener comfortable with
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: a neat thirty five minute outline connects directly to another
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: incredibly careful, yet completely paradoxical choice the creators made right
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: in the very next line of the show notes.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Right, the show notes continue with what we can really
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: only classify as an explicit, highly formal apology.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, listen to this exact quote from the source text.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: It says, FYI, we've marked this episode as explicit because
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: there are a couple of f BOMs. Sorry, we'll do
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: better next time.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: I promise that single sentence is a monumental cultural artifact.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Just think about the sheer weight of what's happening in
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: that sentence. We are looking at a document that is
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: packaging a story about grizzly unsolved murders committed by a
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: serial killer. The subject matter is inherently violent. It is
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: deeply disturbing.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Right, eleven women murdered and buried in a desert exactly.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: It's fundamentally explicit in its very nature. Yet the hosts
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: feel compelled to profusely apologize for using a couple of
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: swear words.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. I'm actually mind blown
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: by this. Why are we as a society totally fine
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: listening to the horrors of a serial killer on a
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Tuesday morning commute, but an F bomb requires a formal,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: written apology in the permanent digital record.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: It's wild, right, Sorry.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: We'll do better next time, I promise. Like, what does
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: better even mean? In this context? Does better mean discussing
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: unsolved murders with pristine, polite Sunday school vocabulary.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: To understand why this apology exists, you have to look
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: at the psychology of media consumption and how we compartmentalize
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: trauma versus social etiquette. We have to separate the subject
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: from the delivery.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for me. How does that separation
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: actually work in our brains when we're listening.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: So the violence, the serial killer, the crime scene, the
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: discovery in Albuquerque, that is the subject. The listener can
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: keep the subject at a safe objective distance. It happened
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: to someone else somewhere else in the past.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: It's almost like fiction to them.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Right, It's an abstract puzzle. But the profanity that is
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: the delivery. The delivery happens right now, directly between the
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: host and the listener. The host is speaking into.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Your ears, Oh I see.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Using an F bomb is perceived as a direct violation
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: of the polite, intimate boundary they have established with you,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: the listener.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, that makes so much sense. The murder is
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: just the movie playing on the screen, But the swear
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: word is the host suddenly yelling in the theater right
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: next to you. It breaks the fourth wall of politeness exactly.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: It creates this jarring juxtaposition because it reveals the host's
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: desired brand image. They want to be perceived as friendly, approachable,
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: polite companions. They are cultivating an environment that feels like
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: a safe space, which is incredibly ironic given the content.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: They one of your best friends sitting on the couch
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: with you, and your best friend doesn't want to offend
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: you with bad language, even while you both casually discuss
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: a serial killer over coffee. Exactly, they're essentially saying, we
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: will gladly take you into the darkest corners of human
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: de gravity, but we promise to wipe our feet on
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the welcome matt before we come inside.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: It's exactly that. Beyond the psychology, there is a very
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: real mechanical reason for this apology related to how digital
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: platforms operate. When they say we've marked this episode as explicit,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: they are interacting with the metadata tagging system of Apple podcasts.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Right, because if you don't manually check that little explicit
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: box when you upload your audio file and someone reports
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: you for swearing, the platform can penalize you.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Right Precisely, the platform algorithm, especially back in twenty eighteen,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: was very strict about content tagging. If a show was
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: found to have unmarked explicit language, it could be suppressed
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: in the search rankings or even removed entirely from.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: The platform, which is a death sentence for a growing show.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, but marking a show is explicit also meant it
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: might be filtered out of certain parental control settings or
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: international storefronts with stricter censorship laws.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: So they are caught in this mechanical trap. They have
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: to tag it explicit to avoid being banned by the algorithm.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: But they are terrified that the explicit tag will scare
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: off their very polite, ad friendly audience.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, they're walking a tightrope, so they.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Write this groveling apology in the show notes to reassure
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the listener, like, don't worry, we are bad people. It's
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: just a couple of stray words.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: It's a perfect storm of algorithmic compliance and brand management.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: And if you're wondering how deep this obsession with brand
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: management and authority goes, we just have to look at
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: how they handle the actual facts of the case itself.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: This brings us to the technological infrastructure of the show
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: notes and how a seemingly minor technical glitch was actually
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: a massive business opportunity.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, let's pivot to the sourcing, because this is fascinating.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Right after promising to do better with their language, the
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: text reads sources for this episode cannot be listed here
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: due to character limitations. For a full list of sources,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: please visit and then it provides a link to their
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: proprietary website.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: And this is where the technical constraints of a platform
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: intersect with brilliant content strategy. In twenty eighteen, the platform
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: imposed strict character limits on the text that could be
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: displayed within a single show's notes. An RSS feed, which
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: is essentially the digital printing press that distributes the audio,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: uses XML code to send text to the app. Okay,
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: the app would only display a certain amount of that
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: text before cutting it off, So.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: The creators literally ran out of digital paper. They hit
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: a wall, which forces them to fragment the user experience.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: If we think about this like a book, imagine reading
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: a pop history paperback and instead of having the footnotes
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of the page, the author just writes,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I ran out of ink. Go to the library across
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: town to see where I got this information.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: It's a great analogy.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Now I have to be skeptical here. Do you honestly
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: think the average listener who is sitting in bumper to
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: bumper traffic or running on a treadmill is actually going
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: to pull out their phone, click out of the audio app,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: open a web browser, navigate to a specific URL, and
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: read through a bibliography of through crime sources.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Statistically, absolutely not. The conversion rate of people actually clicking
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: that link and reading the sources is likely a tiny
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: fraction of a percent, right, But what's fascinating here is
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: the concept of performative.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Rigor performative rigger explain that in the true.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Crime genre, citing sources became a mandatory practice to differentiate
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: rigorously researched ethical shows from casual, exploitative gossip, even if
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: only one percent of the audience actually checks the sources.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Publicly acknowledging that the sources exists and conspicuously blaming a
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: technical limitation for their absence in the app validates the
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: hosts as reliable, authoritative curators of truth.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: It's the digital equivalent of wearing a lab coat in
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: a commercial for toothpaste. Yes, you might not be doing
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: science in that exact moment, but the coat tells everyone
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: you could, and therefore you should be trusted. The mere
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: existence of the link is a shield against criticism.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Precisely, But the genius of this moment is that the
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: technical limitation, the character limit, actually inadvertently benefits the creators
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: in a massive structural way.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: How so, because usually breaking the user experience and forcing
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: someone to click a link is considered a bad thing
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: in tech, like you want to keep them in the app.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: It is a bad thing for the platform, but a
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: great thing for the creators. By forcing the most dedicated
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: listeners off the platform and onto their proprietary website, they
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: are driving independent web traffic. Oh wow, They're capturing the
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: audience outside the walled garden of the app. When a
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: listener is in the app, the platform owns that data environment.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: But once the listener clicks that link and goes to
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: the crime Junkie website, they are entering an ecosystem entirely
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: controlled by the creators.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Right, they capture the IP address, they can drop cookies,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: they can show their own banner ads. You don't want
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: your audience living in someone else's house, You want them
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: living in your house.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and driving listeners to a website for sources is
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: just the very first step in building what the source
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: text reveals to be a MAPPI highly dedicated and highly
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: monetized digital ecosystem. Right, they didn't just leave a link,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: They built an entire digital trapdoor to pull you out
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: of the public square and into their own private.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Universe, which brings us to the actual architecture of how
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: they keep you in that private universe. If we look
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: further down the source text, it pivots sharply from discussing
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: the unsolved murders to a heavy, heavy emphasis on community
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: and monetization.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: It's a huge shift in tone.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: We see promotions for a fan club offering ad free listening.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: We see an exhaustive list of social media handles across Instagram, Twitter, TikTok,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: and Facebook, not just for the show, but for the
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: hosts personally and for their network audio check.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: This section of the text is a masterclass in modern
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: audience retention. It outlines a fundamental transition from a traditional
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: broadcast model to a community driven parasocial model.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: And there is one specific line in the section that
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: I just cannot get over. Which one The text says
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: text Ashley at three one seven, seven, three, three seven
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: four or eight five to talk all things true crime,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: get behind the scenes updates and more. I look at
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: this and I'm just marveling at the sheer vulnerability, or
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: maybe the absolute marketing genius of giving out a ten
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: digit phone number to the global public.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: It is definitely the latter.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: How does this even work mechanically? Are they actually sitting
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: there with a phone texting millions of people mechanically?
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: No, This utilizes SMS community platforms, which became incredibly popular
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: around this time. When you text that number, you're entering
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: a database. You might get an automated welcome message, and
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: occasionally the host might send out a mass text that
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: reads like a personal message wow. Or they might respond
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: to a few select fans just to maintain the illusion
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: of direct access.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? The illusion of intimacy.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: It totally changes the psychology of the listener. You aren't
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: just a passive consumer sitting in your car anymore letting
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: a radio broadcast wash over you. You are invited to
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: text to talk all things true crime. It makes you
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: feel like an active participant.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: It builds an hense parasocial relationship. A parasocial relationship is
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: a one sided bond where a media consumer feels a
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: deep sense of friendship or intimacy with a media figure,
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: even though the media figure doesn't actually know.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Them, which is wild when you apply it to true crime.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: You are texting a friend about a serial killer the
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: same way you would text them about a reality TV
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: show or a football game. It deeply blurs the line
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: between journalistic reporting on real world tragedies and entertainment based
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: community building, and we.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Must look at the business model underlying this parasocial intimacy.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Intimacy is the product they are actually selling. The text
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: pushes the fan club as a way to listen ad free.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: The pitch is essentially, if you pay us directly, we
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: won't interrupt our intimate storytelling with corporate advertisements.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Which sounds great on the surface. Support the creators directly
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: avoid the annoying mattress ads. But there is a massive
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: catch hidden right at the bottom of the source text,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: isn't there?
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Yes, there really is. The very last technical note in
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: the creator provided text before the platform information begins states
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: hosted by Simplecast, an adswhiz company CEPCM dot adswiz dot
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: com for information about our collection and use of personal
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: data for advertising.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, we need to break this down because this is
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: where the curtain really gets pulled back. What exactly is
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: simple cast and what is ads whiz.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: So Simplecast is a hosting platform when you make a
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: digital audio show. You don't upload the audio file directly
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: to the apps. You upload it to a host like Simplecast.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Simplecast creates the RSS feed, stores the heavy audio file,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: and pushes it out to all the different apps.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Got it? So Simplecast is the warehouse and the listening
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: app is just the storefront display window.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Perfect analogy.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: Now. Ads Whiz, the company that owns simplecast, is an
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: audio advertising technology company. They specialize in something called dynamic
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: ad insertion or.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: DAI Dynamic ad insertion. How does that work?
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: In the old days, ads were baked in, the host
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: would read an AD and it was permanently part of
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: the audio file. If you listen to it five years later,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: you'd still hear an AD for a twenty eighteen sale
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: on shaving cream, right right. But with dynamic AD insertion,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: the ads are stitched into the audio file at the
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: exact moment you downloaded, based on your specific digital footprint.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Wait, really, so when I download the file, ads Whiz
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: looks at my IP address, sees that I'm a thirty
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: something living in Chicago, and instantly stitches a local Chicago
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: ad into the true crime episode for it even reaches
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: my phone exactly.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: They look at your user agent, your IP address, your
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: device type. And that is why the privacy policy disclaimer
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: is there. Even if you join the fan club to
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: get the theoretically ad free RSS feed, you are still
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: interacting with a hosting infrastructure that is fundamentally built on
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: data collection.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Oh the absolute irony of it. Think about this from
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: the listener's perspective. Think about the last time you joined
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: a fan club or a premium tier to escape the ads.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: You thought you were buying a premium private experience. You
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: thought you were supporting a friend you text at a
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: three seventeen area code, But you are actually just moving
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: into a different, more exclusive, data harvested funnel. It is
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: a masterclass in audience monetization.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: They've taken a free thirty five minute audio file about
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: a tragic, unresolved local event. They wrapped it in a
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: polite apology for a swear word to make you feel safe.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: They directed you to their website for the facts to
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: prove they are authoritative. They gave you a phone number
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: to make you feel like a friend, and they built
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: an infrastructure to collect data and generate revenue at every
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: single touch point.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: It is breathtaking when you look at it. Structurally like that.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: But what's truly staggering, what really takes this from a
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: clever business model to a global phenomenon is the scale
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: on which this highly intimate, highly localized audio file is distributed.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where it gets really big.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Because the final portion of our source text isn't written
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: by the creators at all. It's the automated metadata provided
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: by the platform listing the global availability of this specific file.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: And this brings us to the sheer power of digital syndication.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Because of that RSS feed technology we just discussed, this
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: file isn't just sitting in a local library in New Mexico.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: It is instantly propagated across a global network of servers.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: And the list of territories in the source text is
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: mind boggling. I mean, we are talking about a thirty
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: five minute outline of an unsolved case originating from the
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: West Mesa area of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is a
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: deeply localized American tragedy, eleven victims discovered on a local
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: mesa and yet this digital artifact is distributed to almost
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: every corner of the planet.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: The source text categorizes this distribution into massive global regions.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: If we look at the data. We see availability across Africa,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: the Middle East and India. We are talking about countries
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: like Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Madagascar, and Yemen. We see it
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: in the Asia Pacific region, Bhutan, Micronesia, Mongolia, Vanawatu. It's
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: available across Europe from Iceland to Ukraine, throughout Latin America
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: and the Caribbean, and of course across North America. And
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: it explicitly notes iterations for localized languages like simplified Chinese, Korean,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Arabic and Russian.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I really want you to paint a mental image of
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: this right now. Picture the mechanism of this. Someone in Vanwatu,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: an island nation in the South Pacific, opens an app,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: an advertising server in the US logs their IP address,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: and then they download this exact thirty five minute file.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: They sit there listening to the hosts apologize for an
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: f bomb before casually outlining the unsolved murders from a
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: desert mesa in the American Southwest. How why does a
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: hyper local unsolved murder resonate across such vast, immense cultural divides?
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question, doesn't it. It's an astounding
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: paradox of modern media on a global scale, the specific
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: geographic reality of the crimes, the actual dirt of the
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: West Mesa, the local politics of Albuquerque, the specific cultural
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: context of the victims ceases to matter to the audience.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: It gets stripped away.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: It has to be stripped away for it to travel
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: that far. The true crime narrative functions as a universal language.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: It becomes a universally understood story about human nature, about
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: the psychology of a killer, the danger lurking in the dark,
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: and the intellectual puzzle of a mystery. A listener of
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Bhutan isn't connecting with the zoning laws of New Mexico.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: They're connecting with the primal fear of the unknown.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: But if we look at the structural reality of that,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't that massive global scale inherently abstract the real victims.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: If you are thousands of miles away, completely detached from
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: the physical and cultural reality of the event, These real people,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: these eleven women, these unsolved tragedies, they just become universal
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: characters in a mystery plot. They become pure content.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: That is the fundamental reality of digital distribution. Platforms utilizing
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: RSS feeds and content delivery networks have democratized information to
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: a degree previously unimaginable in human history. A story you
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: can reach Madagascar in the exact same second it reaches Boston,
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: but the mechanism of that distribution inherently commodifies the local tragedy.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: It packages a localized trauma into a universally compatible audio format,
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: wraps it in standardized metadata, tags it for region specific languages,
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: and monetizes it through an ADS whiz data tracking protocol.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: It's the ultimate flattening of reality into data. A human
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: tragedy becomes a thirty five minute file, which becomes a
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: text string, and an XML feed which becomes a blip
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: on a server in Micronesia.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: It really is well.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: We have covered an incredible amount of ground today looking
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: at just a single page of text. We started with
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: the concept of reading the digital tree rings, and I
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: think we have really seen how much a single digital
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: footprint tells us about the mechanisms of our modern world.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: We journeyed from the calculated thirty five minute outline format
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: designed for rapid psychological consumption, to the incredible cognitive dissonance
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: of politely apologizing for profanity while discussing a serial killer.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: We broke down how technical constraints like character limits drove
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: the performance of academic rigor and funneled users into a
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: private ecosystem.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: And we looked at the mechanics of SMS marketing and
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: dynamic ad insertion, revealing the brilliant, if somewhat unsettling, parasocial
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: marketing of giving out a phone number to build an empire.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: And finally we traced the staggering, almost surreal global footprint
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: of a hyperlocal American tragedy being distributed by servers to
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: almost every country on Earth. It really makes you realize
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: that when you tap play on your app, you aren't
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: just listening to a story. You're participating in a massive, complex,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: heavily engineered system of media consumption.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: The metadata isn't just data. It's a mirror reflecting our
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: technological capabilities and our cultural habits right back at us exactly.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And I want to leave you with one final lingering
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: thought to mollover as you go about your day, think
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: back to the very first line of the show notes
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: we discussed. They described this as an outline of still
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: unsolved murders. This digital artifact, this exact metadata page we
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: analyzed today, was published in January twenty eighteen over the years.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Millions of people across the globe, from commuters in Iceland
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: to listeners in Vanuatu, have downloaded this audio file, but
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: the file itself remains frozen in time. The audio doesn't change.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: The apology for the F bomb is still there. The
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: plea to text the three seventeen number is still there.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Think about the eerie reality of a static digital file
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: generating continuous global engagement, triggering dynamic ad insertions, and maintaining
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: an ecosystem, while in the physical, tangible world, real families
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: are still waiting for a case to evolve. Counting what
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: happens to the concept of truth? What happens to our
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: understanding of reality when a real world unresolved event becomes
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: just another fixed, unchanging piece of content, permanently sitting in
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: a limitless digital library. Thank you so much for joining
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: us on this deep dive. Next time you open your
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: favorite app, take a second to look past the play button,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: look closer at the fit prints of the media you
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: consume every day. You never know what the metadata is
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: trying to tell you.