EVERYONE SEEMS TO be obsessed with true crime at the moment. Whether it’s binge listening to ‘West Cork’ or researching any true crime to death on Wikipedia, true crime has many of us hooked. Enter social media giant Snapchat who have decided to get into the genre.
Condé Nast Entertainment who produced ‘Last Chance U’ for Netflix have produced a 6 episode series called ‘True Crime/Uncovered’ exclusively for Snapchat.
The company also operate several other Snapchat channels on the ‘Discover’ page including Wired, Teen Vogue and GQ. The show launched on March 12th in English speaking markets but doesn’t seem to be available yet on the Irish ‘Discover’ page.
The series will explore 6 different cases which each episode lasting just 5 minutes. The series will be hosted by actress Samantha Miller and the first 3 episodes will be released this week.
The cases covered are pretty high profile with episode one examining the death of New Zealander Warriena Wright who fell off a balcony and died while on a Tinder date in 2014. The man she was on a date with, Gable Tostee was found not guilty of murder or manslaughter in 2016 following 4 days of jury deliberations.
Episode two will focus on Annie Le who was murdered in 2009 just a few days before she was set to get married. Raymond J. Clark was convicted of her murder in 2011 and is currently serving 44 years in prison.
Episode three examines the 2014 ‘Slender Man’ case where two 12-year-old girls who attempted to kill their classmate in an effort to appease the fictional horror character Slender Man. One of the girls was sentenced to 25 years in a psychiatric institution in December 2017 while the girl who did the stabbing was sentenced to 40 years.
Both the Wright and the Slender Man case could easily be the subject of an 8 episode podcast by themselves. With each Snapchat episode only lasting around 5 mins, it’ll be interesting to see how deep into detail the show will go.
It’s also interesting to note that two of the three episodes have been resolved which breaks slightly with the true-crime format of popular podcasts.
Snapchat’s Head of Original Content Sean Mills seems keen to keep older users engaged with the app which received backlash recently for what users perceived as a poor redesign.
According to Mills half of Snapchat’s users are over 25 and with true-crime being a proven method of engaging people, it’s easy to see why Snapchat are going down this route. Whether 4 minute episodes will be enough to keep users remains to be seen.
Condé Nast Entertainment (@CNE) produced a new series for @Snapchat called “True Crime/Uncovered" that investigates the most shocking, mysterious and dark crimes of the last decade. The first episode is about a deadly @Tinder date (my nightmare)!https://t.co/9gjQEeVa8m
— Libby Duke (@libby_duke_) March 12, 2018
