British tabloids and accordant sensibilities.

A few weeks ago my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) texted me and was like --

 Did you hear this disturbing story?

-- and after some initial confusion because her next text with the link hadn't come through, I found the story and read it online and we discussed.

First off, there's nothing like British tabloids. I just re-read and document-searched now, but I do swear that they initially called it a "bleak" shipping container with video cameras, it's such memorable phrasing.

There's also this:

The details of Britton's crimes are so horrific and 'grotesque' that Chief Justice Michael Grant urged the public and security staff to leave the courtroom before the prosecutors outlined the facts of the case in a rare move. 

'These facts contain material that can only be described as grotesque and perverse acts of cruelty which is confronting and distressing and which in my assessment have the potential to cause nervous shock,' he said. Much of the details surrounding Britton's offending are also too gruesome to be published. 

It's almost like Lovecraftian horror, where they can gesture to certain details -- for example, "They also found severed dog limbs in a freezer, a decomposing puppy in a pond on the property, and a severed dog head on a neighbouring [sic!] property" -- but then they leave you to visualize much, much worse.

Second off, this kind of story really starts involving you personally in the different people's perspectives and roles, in this unnaturally horrific situation.

Like, right away, I texted her --

That's crazy

 How could the wife not know

Especially since there was a shipping container on their property

-- to which she replied --

That's what I said!!

She must have suppressed it

Or actively avoided asking anything b/c she knew something bad was happening 

-- to which I replied --

Maybe he was interpersonally abusive and she was afraid 

 -- in what was really a quite extended exchange about another person, like I don't usually text.

It's like these stories leave you little arenas of horror and indignation, where you get sucked in and are forced to engage with these lurid and bizarre situations and then go comment on them. Like, my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend isn't really into tabloids or true crime or anything, but she was forced to share that "disgusting" story and try to figure out what was happening.  It seems like it's just part of the ambient culture, and her.

It's interesting, too, how these stories just find the worst and most disturbing trash and sell it, but then take on the most "moral high road" tone, too, where they condemn the people in it, and are considerate for you and don't tell you all of the most disturbing details, because that would just be wrong.

Just a very, very distinctive perspective and voice and effects.