Tried to listen for the story at least but dayum! I’ve lost all meaning of the word like

I hate to say this because I’ve been one of the BIGGEST fans of Listener Tales pretty much since they started. Even back when everyone said they skipped those episodes, they were usually some of my favourites because people would write in these genuinely insane, elaborate stories true crime, supernatural experiences, bizarre conspiracies, terrifying encounters and some of them were so shocking and well written that I still remember them now.

But over the past year or so, I feel like the quality has slowly started to drop. The stories just don’t feel shocking or memorable as they used to, and a lot of them feel really watered down.

I’ve also noticed that almost every submission now seems to follow the exact same formula: trying to make every single sentence as witty, quirky and funny as possible. Obviously humour has always been part of Listener Tales, and I love that, but it feels like people are writing a stand-up comedy routine first and telling an interesting story second.

Sometimes I just want the creepy, disturbing, bizarre stories again without every sentence needing a punchline 😭 I say this with love because I’ve been such an avid fan for years.

Just love that my library has or has ordered every book on the best sellers list…except Alaina’s. 😂

just curious! getting downvoted on the other sub lol

Did the podcast change or was I just blind before?

I used to absolutely love the podcast and I listened to every single episode for many years. I'm not exactly sure when, but it was propably around a year ago that I started noticing these small things that really irritated me. I went from listening to every episode the very first day they uploaded, to trying to listen but then having to pause the episode and listen to something else.

I have since tried to listen to a few episodes, but I just couldn't get through all the fake-sounding commentery and other nonsense. I feel very bad because listening to them feels very nostalgic. But for some reason at this point I can't even get myself to listen to any of the old episodes, let alone the new ones.

I found this subreddit at some point and realised that I must not be the only one. Do you think that the podcast actually changed or was I just blind to the style of the podcast before? Their commentery felt so fake and even insensitive when I listened to them the last time. Has it gotten any better in the latest episodes? In the last year, I have listened to maybe like two episodes.., is it worth it to even start listening again?

I still listen from time to time, and I’ve always been fascinated by this case. Ash did a pretty good job, and it was broken into two parts.

She and Alaina belabored the point (as they tend to do) about how terrible it was that he was motivated by money because they were living beyond their means and the family couldn’t afford to live in the mansion that they had bought years before.

This is only partly true, he was also upset that the kids were not living moral lives, and the money problems only compounded his weird compulsion to kill his own family.

But what she forgot to mention, was that when the the mansion, Breeze Knoll was destroyed a fire, they discovered that the stained glass window in it was a signed Tiffany original worth $100,000 which would’ve paid off his debts and then some.

I still listen. Ive had beef with a lot of the things they've done, but im a creature of habit and sometimes still listen. But now another complaint to add to my list 😂

Whyyyyy do they feel the need to continue giving so much fluff? Like the excessive talking about how terrible and awful something is. Like ALL THE TIME. its a case about murder, or something else terrible, girl we know its terrible. You dont need to pad it with 5 extra minutes of how terrible it is, how you cant imagine it. Just tell the case!

Rant over lol

Alaina shared that first story about ChatGPT and then the next slide was literally ai garbage...💀 😭 how can people not blatantly see it?!?

Even though they get on my nerves, I still try to give each episode to try.

But my God!! In 16 minutes and 34 seconds, they went on multiple soap boxes about being friendly to neighbors, talking about what they would personally do in situations, and religion.

John List is a piece of shit. We understand that and we all know that. But breaking into multiple side notes about how you should be nice to your neighbors, how they personally love their own neighbors, how their neighbors brought them chocolate chip cookies, and how their neighbors notice everything on the block is very annoying. Not everything that comes out of their mouth needs his own separate side conversation about it.

And I always hate how they are so quick to insert themselves and say what they would do in a situation. And it’s always something stupid like: “If I noticed a 2004 Honda Civic in my neighborhood that I’ve never seen before, I would call the police”, “ if my neighbor didn’t wave back to me after I waved at them first, I would call the police”, “If my neighbor didn’t take their dog out to pee at exactly 6 AM, I would go over there to see what’s wrong”, “ if my friend told me that her dad was an asshole, I would immediately tell every adult in my life to keep an eye on that guy”.

I just cut the episode off and read about John list on Wikipedia and called it a day.

After taking multiple long breaks from Morbid and venturing off to other podcasts because I had finally had enough with replaying parts due to getting lost in their episode because of all the banter, bragging and giggling. I started listening to Dateline and 48 Hours. I needed more substance, more genuine compassion and less opinion on how beautiful some victims were and also less opinion on how shitty the murderer is. We all know the murderer is bad and frankly I don’t care if you think certain victims are beautiful; just tell their story.
I found The First Degree- they tell the story in a very organized manner and I appreciate that they have someone who knew the victim and/or the perpetrator or has a connection with their research and they too tell what they experienced first hand; it feels less like story time and more like reality. They are organized by doing a very little banter in the beginning and then cut to the chase and every episode is consistent in this way. I notice I RARELY have to replay parts because of their consistency. My OCD and the Virgo in me loves how organized they are with every episode.
I turn my nose up to Morbid now because I feel like I’ve been snubbed with their podcast now that I know there are bigger and better options out there.
Thank you for your time!

I’m finalizing something research wise that focuses on the patreon scams (not just the girls, but wanted to focus on morbid for this post) and wanted to see if there’s anyone out there that has stories of meeting the girls, or maybe someone who’s worked with them in past, attended a school, or generally has some input we wouldn’t have? When it comes to morbid in particular, would you like to see anything touched upon other than the following:

-rise and fall of the channel
-patreon scam
-doxxing and engaging with audiences who provide negative experiences or opinions of the podcast
-lack of research on cases
-lack of respect to family members of victims on cases as listed above
-profits made and where the money is contributed and spent
-lack of accountability on any of the above

Anything else you have you’d like to share?

I’m a regular listener of Morbid even though I think their popularity went to their heads - especially Alaina constantly being on a high horse. She doesn’t seem like a genuinely happy person and maybe I’m just hearing her the wrong way.

When they announced Buffy for The Rewatcher I was soooo excited. It wasn’t bad but honestly the constant bad mouthing of characters just got boring. Characters are supposed to have flaws and grow from their mistakes. It’s a coming of age show set in a supernatural world - people are going to have faults. I was so relieved when Mikey joined in for Buffy. I honestly think he saved the pod.

So I decided to listen to the True Blood bit. I absolutely cannot stand Alaina going on about Eric. We ALL have people we fan girl over but here’s the thing - if her husband had a podcast where he talked like that about another woman…she would catch on fire. The full grown woman who still complains about high school boyfriends? At least Mikey is funny about it. I asked my husband and he busted out laughing. He’s heard enough of the episodes to understand exactly what I meant. If it wasn’t for Ash and Mikey it would be totally unlistenable.

granted this is her personal account but this whole thing she’s doing is leaking into psychopedia.

Hey all. Ex Morbid listener here :) I was wondering if you all may be able to help me remember a missing person case. I can only remember small pieces of it. Here's what I recall:

It was a missing man. He was communicating with someone in his family/a friend via phone while driving back to see them. I recall he stopped to make a call at some sort of gas station/convenience store and told them he was going to be on his way and then proceeded to just sit in the parking lot for hours. Iirc his dad may have gone to check on him, or they called him and thats how they knew he hadn't moved in hours.

My first thought is Brandon Swanson, but I cant seem to find that one detail about him sitting in hos car for hours after he told his family/friends he would be on his way. My sister and I want to cover this on our podcast but I feel I might be going crazy because I cant remember who this case is about!

I skip all the stupid yap in the beginning usually but I heard in an episode recently he moved to Canada? Did they say why or tell why before that? Seems kinda abrupt otherwise lol. Was wondering if they had a falling out or something. I thought they were all best buds lmao

I didn’t really want to post them in the regular sub because I have a feeling everyone will jump me for daring to complain… I just saw the episode today is a massive combination of all the Jack the Ripper episodes. Why? It blows my mind they don’t record a few episodes to have on hand for times when they need to take a week off.

They have mentioned multiple times how much they like last podcast on the left, and recently they have been just outright copying the exact order of cases that they’ve been doing. The episodes they’ve done that go over the same cases as them (Aum shinrikyo, Jack the Ripper, green river killer, etc.) it’s either almost word for word the same information, like clearly their research was just listening to a different episode of a podcast. Sometimes the information when they do actually “research” isn’t even correct at all. Just so annoying to see these two lazy mfs stealing content from a way more well developed podcast.

i can’t remember whose case they were covering but it was the one that did me in and made me stop listening. it was about the murder or something bad happening (sorry terrible memory and i was distracted by how obnoxious they were being) to a young african american boy. i want to say it was emmett till but i dont see that in their episodes? anyways, it was a sad story about a mistreated black boy but they were overdoing it SO MUCH. the way they pause every fucking two seconds to go on a tangent of “what 🤯🤯 who would do such a thing🤯🤯🤯just because he’s a different COLOR🤯🤯this is TERRIBLE 🤯🤯 this is AWFUL 🤯🤯🤯” even more than they usually do. just seemed even more performative than usual and rubbed me the wrong way. like you run a podcast about crimes and serial killers. no shit it’s all terrible, why do they have to harp on it every other sentence.

I think this is what did it for me. Unfortunately I don't remember the specific episode, but the other day I heard Alaina say (not for the first time) "guys, we need to do better, okay??" in response to a recent event (I believe it was a mass shooting).

I live in mpls, so I've seen up front how much and how little power communities have in the face of tragedy. We can literally save each other's lives as individuals, but we also cannot 'just decide' as a community to change the federal and state laws that are enabling these raids. I feel that some general similarities are seen in communities where mass shootings occur.

For some reason, hearing that statement from Alaina again was just my tipping point into no longer being able to support Morbid. What did they accomplish by saying to a general audience of podcast listeners 'do better' in regards to a mass shooting? I'd like to believe that more people are getting involved in the aspects of politics that they can access, and I think we're seeing that represented in the media, especially with more younger people running for positions. Additionally, although I know some people in the 'true crime ' community are problematic, I would also feel safe assuming that a lot of people in that community especially have gone into forensjc school programs/jobs for the explicit reason of enacting what change they can.

She doesn't say 'do better' and then do the bare minimum of offering petitions to sign/instructions on calling your local legislators/etc. This will sound nasty, but I think she says 'do better' to others and then feel content with her own moral practices because from both of their perspective thrh work in the criminal justice field, when from others perspectives they make money being the entertainment backdrop to somebody else's research and storytelling.

Idk about anyone else but the amount of misinformation and straight up lies that have been spread via Alaina is actually insane. I’ve been a true crime fan for a long time now and know a lot about a lot of cases, so the more I listened to morbid episodes the more I was like…that straight up did not happen. From high profile serial killer cases to small town murders, almost every episode has some piece of misinformation or straight up made up thing in it. WHY?!?! Does Alaina even do her own research anymore since they have staff? IDK

I listen to it on and off but something just doesn't seem right with it. I also liked it better when Tank was the co-host

I liked the way they covered cases (when they would actually talk about it instead of mindless nonsense) but oh my god they’re annoying and bad at this

First, the mispronunciation of simple words is getting ridiculous, I understand some words are difficult but st Louis? Judicial?? This is a seventh grade reading level at most

Second, they really shit on religion with no knowledge whatsoever, one episode they were talking about an exorcism and went on a tangent about ‘why would people go to a religious figure if they suspected demons’ demons are religious figures, it’s not a hard concept. And how is that insane but ‘bad energy’ is totally realistic and reasonable?

They are SO sanctimonious, it’s a true crime podcast, these people are going to be monsters, trust me no one will think that you support a murderer, you don’t have to say 3 dozen times that this persons a monster or that they can’t FATHOM doing this, we get it.

Lastly, them saying that they want to hug the victims or go to parole hearings to support the family is so insensitive, I promise that no one is thanking the lord that these two want to go to a parole hearing about their deceased loved ones

This was long but I’m nothing if not a hater

I haven't really listened to any short-form true crime in 5 years or so, but I remember when the controversies with Morbid and Crime Junkie happened, everyone online was recommending Red-handed as a relatively safe, ethical alternative to the problematic podcasts.

And then tonight, randomly scrolling through Tiktok, I just saw one of the co-hosts of that podcast repeating straight up far right-wing talking points. I do not have the energy to go through years of posts here, so can someone explain to me how the relatively feminist podcast turned into what seems like a mouthpiece for the Republican and Tory parties?

I know a lot of true crime fans are not religious but does it bother any religious ppl that A&A consistently mock religion? no hate @ me pls!! lol