I've watched one episode of Baby Reindeer on Netflix. I appreciate the style and craft, though I don't think I'd say I "like" it in any normal sense. Still, it's original and compelling and I get why people are tuning in. In case you just landed from Mars, this fictionalized-but-true series from Scottish writer and actor Richard Gadd tells the complicated story of a struggling comic and his stalker.
But Piers Morgan's interview with Fiona Harvey, thought to be the real-life woman in Gadd's story, is the perfect apotheosis of all things awful and shallow and cringe; it's a (s)mash-up of celebrity culture, tabloid culture, cancel culture, true crime obsession, and social media cruelty. It perfectly captures our species' bottomless, insatiable desire to see others on their worst day and tsk tsk tsk and say "there but for the grace of god there go I." The Guardian watched the interview so you don't have to:
With grim inevitability, Harvey was last night interviewed on Piers Morgan's YouTube channel. What a queasy interview it was…
Of course, agreeing to the interview was Harvey's choice, yet the whole thing reeked of grubby exploitation. One of two things is happening here. Assuming Harvey is indeed Martha [the fictional stalker], either Richard Gadd, Clerkenwell Films and Netflix have wildly exaggerated the story while passing it off as true, which leaves all of them wide open to all manner of legal action. Or Fiona Harvey did all the things she is being accused of, which means that a huge segment of the media are gleefully parading a mentally ill woman around for clicks. Whichever is true, it is an extremely uncomfortable thing to witness.
Ugh—humans. A month or a year or five from now there will almost certainly be hand wringing and garment rending as we wonder how we and the media could have been so awful and thoughtless and how we'll definitely certainly totally do better in the future.
Jerry Springer set something awful in motion and that genie can never be put back in the bottle.
Previously: The Internet of Shit: a godsend for abusers and stalkers
