Please, no more “Tiger King”

Monitor is A sort of Weekly column Committed to happen on wired The cultural world, from movies to memes, from TV to Twitter.

OK.I watched Tiger King Just like everyone else.It was March 2020. In this month, the world is coronavirus, blockade, with Yo, do these Doritos need to be disinfected? It was a bleak time, it seems to be by watching my colleague Kate Knibbs Rightfully called A terrible “feel bad show”.The world is not without bleakness, but Netflix Just announced Tiger King 2, I can’t think of any show that I don’t want to watch.

This is not to say Tiger King that’s terrible.As far as documentary production is concerned, it has all the right ingredients-fascinating characters (especially Joe Exotic and his nemesis Carol Baskin), a lot of drama (the world of the big cat owner is wilderness,who knows? ), and enough to fill the plot twists and turns of Christopher Nolan’s movie.That’s it Tiger King It is a time and place, and that time and place have passed.

I am not saying that no one will watch this.Approximately 64 million households watched Tiger King In the first month of theaters in 2020.Of course, many of these audiences will be TK2 Decline later this year. Frankly speaking, this is consistent with the current state of unscripted TV. Depraved betrayal. If you look at other non-fiction shows that Netflix announced yesterday, you will clearly see this pattern.Have Tinder liar, About a playboy who pretends to be a billionaire on a dating app and “women who plan to let him down”; Don’t trust anyone: looking for the king of cryptocurrencies, About “a group of investors turned into detectives” investigating the mysterious death of crypto millionaires Gricoton; Puppet Master: Hunting down the ultimate liar, This is a three-part series, exactly what its title implies; and Bad vegetarian, About a restaurant owner, he-surprised! ——Be deceived by someone who claims to be able to build a gourmet empire for her, uh, “make her beloved bulldog immortal.” Those were three liars and three hunts, as far as I know, each promised to compare One is more confusing.

Perhaps all of this makes this week uncomfortable because news of Gabrielle Petito’s case keeps coming up. For those who did not follow, Petito was reported missing earlier this month when she did not travel back with her fiancé Brian Laundrie.Soon thereafter, dozens of Internet detectives took over the case, searched and filled out Petito and Laundrie’s Instagram and YouTube feeds Many TikTok FYPOn Tuesday, the authorities confirmed that the remains found in the Wyoming National Park were the remains of Petitto, causing another concern.

Frankly speaking, this is the kind of story that one would expect to see in the Netflix documentary series, and all those online detectives flocked to Because These series of conspiracies revolve around cases like Petito. Sometimes, Internet gatherings can help (see: Basically harmless, Or subject other Netflix documentary series, Don’t make friends with cats), but people Already commented On social media posts about Petito, things like “Don’t sound disrespectful, but I can’t wait for the Netflix series.”And as Joy Reid pointed out on her MSNBC In this week’s show, the attention surrounding her story is entirely a “missing white female syndrome”-a public obsession, paying attention to certain missing persons, but rarely missing people of color or transgender or others People from minority groups. Frankly, this is just a bit disturbing.

To be fair, this is not entirely Netflix’s fault. If viewers don’t swallow them, streaming services won’t produce all these shows.Maybe people swallowing them is just disturbing Very. Fascination with the dark side of human psychology is common–and just as SNL Taught us that everyone likes good”Murder show“–But at one point, it was too much. It’s one thing to be locked up in early 2020 and escape into the exotic animal theater world of Oklahoma; spend a few hours in the next two years The time to absorb the real criminal content of scammers and scammers and all other ways is another matter. The cat has taken it out of the bag.