Something's Wrong with the “Something was Wrong” Podcast

Trauma media: who is it for, what does it do?

Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash

Some years ago while casting around for podcast recommendations, a friend recommended that I listen to the podcast Something Was Wrong. Something Was Wrong, hosted by Tiffany Reese and produced by Broken Cycle Media, is a now-twenty-one-season podcast that recounts people telling their stories of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in their own words. Sometimes a story takes a whole season, sometimes a few episodes, and someones only one episode at a time.  

At some point while listening through the seasons, the podcast started to make me feel uncomfortable. I don’t remember exactly what it was, and I was writing a dissertation at the time, so I didn’t interrogate those feelings. Some time went by, I mostly forgot about the show, but I tuned back in when another friend told me about some wild stories in the later seasons.

I listened to them, and I agreed the stories were wild. But once again, I found those creepy feelings returning. It wasn’t even the content of the show that made me uncomfortable – that’s to be expected in a show about abuse. No, it wasn’t the stories themselves that created these feelings. It was the way in which they were being told, framed, and recounted. 

The more I sat with it, the more I found myself struggling with these questions. You can find a trove of subreddits and podcasts that make fun of the style, the extraneous psychological speculations about the subjects, the proliferation of online therapyspeak, and so on. These are all things that could be fixed in an editing room, though, and you can fast forward through them if you choose. No, my concerns were a bit more foundational. Namely: why is this a podcast at all?

Why is there a podcast in which (primarily) women speak into a microphone about experiences with people who harmed them? What is the goal that is pursued by giving them a platform to tell these stories? What is the purpose of producing media about abuse? What is gained by telling these stories? Is it an inherent good to tell stories about people being traumatized? For who? Who benefits, and how?

In a post-Me-Too world, disclosing stories of abuse is often a necessary, public process that occurs when legal or public action needs to be taken against an of abuser or abusive structure. This is done in order to hold the abuser accountable, pursue legal action, or to develop reporting that can reveal shortcomings in a system that allows abuse to proliferate. We are now all used to hearing stories of abuse through these contexts – contexts in which people must disclose painful stories in order to bring accountability to someone who otherwise would be able to abuse unabated.

But I wonder if our familiarity with these stories has caused us to be overly uncritical of the form itself, and how it’s produced and distributed. We all understand why people testify against Weinstein in court, or to an NYT reporter. But against unnamed, private individuals? On a podcast? Who is this for? Who benefits?

Well, the question of “who benefits?” is actually pretty easy to answer in the case of Something Was Wrong. The answer is, in part, “corporations.” Something Was Wrong was previously produced by Audiochuck but is now produced by Broken Cycle Media, which Tiffany Reese owns. Broken Cycle Media was incorporated in California in 2022. Their headquarters are in Oakland, and the business address listed is for this two million dollar house. The distributor Wondery is an Amazon property. The New Testament Review, this is not.

I want to emphasize that it is okay to be successful at media making, and to get paid for it. But the standards we apply to this show should probably be closer to a large-scale radio production like This American Life than your best friend’s small-circulating pod.

The production of Something Was Wrong is incredibly fast. There are 245 episodes of the flagship podcast alone, not including the multiple spinoffs. The first episode was released on January 21, 2019. So in about 182 weeks, that’s about one and a third episodes per week – higher output than This American Life, in other words. Part of the rapid production seems to owe in part to the fact that there’s very little audio editing involved in these podcasts. Season 17 primarily features a woman reading her story from an extended written statement, so the audio production itself seems like it was mostly done by the subject of the story herself – it’s not clear she was even interviewed. There’s whole episodes where you rarely hear from a narrator at all. These seem like productions that are easy to crank out, and there’s minimal editing involved. If you want to make a ton of shows and put a lot of ads in them, a first-person storytelling podcast format fits the bill nicely: have a person talk into a microphone, put the ads and music in, and you’re ready to upload.¹

You can tell as the seasons go along that Reese does not seem to be doing many of the interviews herself. In Episode 21.3 at 16:22 I’m pretty sure that Reese has ADRed herself pretending to ask a question to set up the next part of the story (“and the baby’s DAD? Was HE in the PICTURE?” I don’t know, it just sounds like bad acting to me.) What this looks like to me is that to keep production high, interviewing has been outsourced or dispensed with altogether.

So all this is to say: it’s hard to make the case that this show should be handled with kid gloves, or be exempted from criticism because it’s some kind of not-for-profit amateur production done as a public service. This is a corporation that makes what looks like a fair amount of money by rapidly producing stories of victimization for a broad audience. 

I don’t begrudge media makers for wanting to be paid for their work. But I also think it’s worth pointing out that the motives here are not entirely altruistic. There is a lot of money in play here.

But, it would be cruel of me to suggest that simply because this show makes money that the people behind it are selfish corporate hacks. And Reese herself does seem to have some big, public-facing, positive goals for her work. Below is the mission statement of Broken Cycle Media:

So we have some weighty agenda items here: advocate for crime survivors, validate survivors, educate the public, and advocate for positive change within our systems, laws and lives. 

Maybe this is the way forward to interrogate this show and what it’s doing. Does it do these things? Does Something Was Wrong advocate for crime survivors? Does it educate the public? 

In Part 1 I want to look at the implications of the podcast framing itself as a crime show, and the way in which law is interpreted (or misinterpreted) in the podcast. In forthcoming Part 2 I want to look at the way in which victimization is constructed and defined in the show. Finally, in forthcoming Part 3 I want to look at the ethical issues surrounding the show, the style of investigation, and how the show may or may not be serving the interests of subjects or the audience. 

Is This A Crime Show?

The show that started it all is Season 1, the story of Sara and her family members. And I’m just going to be honest – this series is outstanding storytelling. 

This owes almost entirely to the storytelling prowess of Sara, who tells her own story with a level of panache and humor that is frankly rare among podcasters. Sara is energetic and animated. She knows how to build suspense in a scene. She delivers shocking revelations with astonishing precision. She is, frankly, absolutely incredible at telling her story. She should do this professionally. I hope she made a bucket of money from this. 

Sara’s story, though, does not really fit with the framing of the narrative as introduced by the narrator. Every episode opens with a reading from what sounds like Psychology Today or Wikipedia about the symptoms of madness that we’re going to encounter in this story. 

Reese even starts the story with this: 

“I’m still absolutely perplexed by the human dumpster fire, abusive, sociopath douche that (Sara) almost married in May of 2018…”

And then she launches into statistics about how many women are murdered by their intimate partners every year. 

The show gears us up to hear about murder, domestic violence, assault, and abuse. And then Sara tells us the insane story of her crazy ex, with a ton of humor and squeal moments. 

Sara’s humor and gasp-worthy revelations are effective because Sara’s story is appropriate for that kind of telling. Sara is telling a story that is insane, but it’s also funny that it’s so insane. (The violent incident in the story is that Sara’s fiancé kicks her dog). Sara’s story is about her whirlwind romance and near marriage to “Dick,” a deeply religious evangelical who turns out to be completely bonkers when he introduces her over text to his best friends “Kimmy” and “Brian.” “Kimmy” gives Sara (predictable, condescending) advice about how to be a good wife to Dick. However, everything comes crashing down when, after a series of hints that Sara places throughout her narrative like she’s planting the Red Wedding, it turns out Kimmy is actually just Dick himself over text with some fake photos – telling his own fiancé his advice for how to be a good wife through the voice of a fake woman. 

This story would be horrible to live through. I don’t doubt that this really hurt Sara and caused her a tremendous amount of grief. But, here’s the thing. In Sarah’s mouth, the story is also hilarious. And Sara tells the story like it’s hilarious. Obviously, the whole family is incredibly relieved that this marriage didn’t happen, and were desperate to get Sara away from Dick once they realized how insane he was. But Dick’s insanity ultimately has few material consequences for Sara – Sara didn’t marry him, Sara had a huge support system to help her get out, and Sara wasn’t hurt. Armed with some new skepticism, Sara actually seems like she’s doing pretty well. She doesn’t seem burdened by the material. She tells this story like the wild yarn it is.

This story, as Sara tells it, should be told like a wild yarn. It is a madcap, crazy romp through her bonkers courtship and breakup with a person who is (allegedly!) certifiable. If this was the tone-setter for the podcast, it’s hard to see that this is a true crime podcast, or an advocacy podcast, or a story about surviving abuse. The story comes across like a staggering conversation with a new friend at the bar who tells the best stories you’ve ever heard. Because that is how Sara chooses to tell the story, and it is not inappropriate for the content. 

This would have been a fine model for a podcast. Every season, some woman sits down and tells you all about her craziest ex in the style of a first-person storytelling show. The tone would, as it does with Sara, invite you to guess what happens next, to shriek at the big reveals, and to cheer and shake your head when the relationship finally ends. 

But is it a crime show? Is it journalism? Is this story of a man making up a fake friend a newsworthy event? Does it reveal something about our culture? Should we learn from it? Dick is shady, based on this story alone. He seems like he was manipulative in the way he communicated with Sara, even before the fake friends. And some of this does meet the level of emotional abuse. There is no doubt to me that Dick would have been a controlling, coercive husband. It’s also completely possible, after he kicked the dog, that this would have escalated.

And yet the show opens with statistics about domestic violence and murder. When these elements aren’t in the first season at all. 

This is the first hint of the disconnect between what Something Was Wrong says it is, and what it actually is. It seems as though Reese wants this to be a crime show, which teaches victims of abusers and violent men to recognize the signs, to advocate for themselves, and to share their stories of overcoming abuse. But this is in text and style not the story Sara told. And yet, Something was Wrong continued onto its pilot to seek to be a crime show. As indicated by the tagline:

True crime is a popular multi-media genre which usually combines more than one style of research and writing. Most true crime podcasts today, like My Favorite Murder, Last Podcast on the Left, and Crime Junkies aggregate existing reporting to tell the story of a crime from start to finish. Other true crime texts like Michelle MacNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark engage with primary sources and on-the-ground investigation to uncover the story of a crime.

If Something was Wrong is true crime, it is closer to the latter than the former. The show’s contents are almost exclusively primary sources and independently sought investigations. (They are, however, regularly deeply incomplete investigations. We will talk more about this later in the blog series.)

So, here’s the thing. A lot of Something was Wrong isn’t clearly about criminal events. Season 2 is primarily about a woman, Sylvia, with factitious disorder and who pretended to have cancer. The ordeal she put her children and family through is horrible, but there is no crime here. At no point does Sylvia ever collect money under false pretenses – which would be fraud. At one point a friend of hers supposes that the children were in danger from their mother and possibly made sick. This would be child abuse, or child neglect. However, this is hearsay. Sylvia herself was never charged with any crimes – or, as far as I know, even investigated for one, before her sudden and tragic death by suicide. By any legal standard, this series is not a crime show either. A few people suppose she might have committed a crime. But possible victims of Sylvia’s criminal acts – namely, her children – were not consulted for the show, so they don’t personally allege that they were victims of a crime. This is just not a true crime story.

Seasons 1 and 2 are hardly alone in covering a person who were never charged with crimes, or indeed have any crimes actually alleged against them. The episodes regarding “Lex” in Season 15 revolve around the aggressive hate she received as a “mommy blogger” in her YouTube comments and a Discord server. During the episodes, she expresses repeated surprise that the police weren’t doing more about the angry and insulting messages she received (what law is being broken here, exactly?). It’s certainly awful to be the subject of online hate, but it’s also not the same thing as being a victim of coercive control. You don’t actually have to check the Discord server that’s dedicated to how much they hate your channel. It’s upsetting that it’s there, but it’s not a crime to run it.

There’s also the uncomfortable question in some stories where a person does commit a criminal act but the only records that are provided of it are simply the people in the episode. Alice, John, and Naomi in 15.3 and 4 have an alcoholic roommate Karina who steals food and wine, keeps drugs in the home, and chronically lies. If the story is true then Karina is a clearly ill person, and  I don’t doubt that Karina is a difficult person to live with. But that’s if the story is true. The only record of Karina’s drug possession are the narrators themselves. If Reese saw police reports or anything like it, we never hear about it in the podcast. There are no court documents showing that Karina was ever charged with possession, nor is there any indication that Karina herself was interviewed. 

And so, it is difficult to make the case that this story documents a crime. It is difficult to even make the claim that roommates and narrators Alice, John, and Naomi are Karina’s criminal victims. Karina is alleged to have stolen wine and cheese from her roommate, which is the only clear criminal act Karina commits against anyone in the story. Karina’s alleged drug possession does not have a direct victim. So are the narrators Karina’s victims? Did she commit a crime against them? What crime did the narrators survive?

So what I’m seeing here is that there is a major disconnect between what the show purports to be and what it actually is at the level of content alone. The show wants to be true crime media, but not all episodes even document criminal behavior. At least some of these stores are first-person narratives about living through a situation that was on a scale between toxic and abusive, and even at the level of abuse, not all the abuses recorded are illegal. The unifying factor in all seasons is abuse, as the narrator of the show themselves define and experience it. These are not always criminal acts, reported or not. 

What If It Isn’t A Crime Show?

Now, here’s what I want to be clear about. It is okay that Something Was Wrong is not a true crime show. It doesn’t have to be. But if it isn’t a true crime show, it shouldn’t call itself a true crime show, and does a disservice to victims of abuse to frame the stories here as crime survivorship stories. They aren’t. Emotional abuse is, in fact, not a crime.² It’s not a crime to tell someone that you hate them or you think they’re worthless. It’s not a crime to cheat on your girlfriend. It’s not a crime to make up a person and pretend to be them online. It’s not even a crime to shave your head and pretend you have cancer. It is a crime to raise money to treat the cancer you don’t have (that’s fraud), and it’s a crime to say you have cancer under oath when you don’t. But the act itself? Just pretending to have cancer? Nope. You can pretend to have cancer all day without fear of legal consequences, if you wish.

But I think the idea that these behaviors are inherently criminal creates problems when these stories interact with the legal system. The problem is that all of these stories are about behaviors that more feel like they should be illegal than actually are illegal. The behaviors are often reprehensible and grotesque. But the problem is that, by framing these behaviors as part of a crime show, Something Was Wrong often latches onto a discourse where part of the story is that it is shameful that the police did not respond more aggressively. What Something Was Wrong sometimes fails to ask, though, is if a crime was committed at all – and if the goal of the show is educating the public, this is a really important question. 

It’s widely reported that most sexual assailants do not serve prison time (or face charges at all), and that incidents of domestic violence are often difficult to prosecute. In light of this, it is not at all surprising that many of these stories end with no legal action being taken. It is not in itself evidence that the story is not true or that no crime occurred. It’s also not surprising that Reese would feel a fair deal of suspicion towards law enforcement, or a sense that police ought to do more to help the kinds of people who come on her show. 

However, there is a huge difference between expressing anger and disappointment with our legal system when a rape survivor is not able to get a rape test or have her testimony heard at a police station, and expressing disappointment when the legal system does not get involved when a crime may not have been committed at all. And on at least two occasions Something Was Wrong, narrators express anger that law enforcement has not been active in situations where it is not clear a crime has been committed.

The first example are Lex’s episodes in 15.18 and 15.19. Lex is apparently a pretty large-scale social media personality and family vlogger who discovered that people were making hate pages and troll pages about her and her kids. Lex called her police station and asked for police officers to start “being on the lookout” for her, to which the answer was, predictably, no. Lex is a public figure, and if Lex wanted regular security to deal with her fame, that’s usually a service you have to pay for yourself – unless you’re the president, of course. The police themselves do not provide security for private residences, and it’s not evidence of our uncaring legal system that the police declined to do so in this situation. This is just not a service that police departments provide, or should provide.

The story revolves around the ups and downs of attempting to get the police to go after Lex’s “stalker,” which she eventually discovers is a group of people on a Discord server, rather than one dedicated and obsessive hater. Because of course it was. But at any rate, much of what happens in the story doesn’t seem to be actionable legally, and as far as I know no one was ever arrested. Getting a lot of hate online from a lot of different people is definitely an upsetting experience. But it’s not really the case that police need to do more to stop it, or that it’s a sign of how unfairly victims are treated in this country that more internet trolls aren’t arrested. Free speech does allow for the robust criticism of public figures and the expression of negative opinions about them. It does not become defamation (for which a person may be civilly liable) until someone recklessly or knowingly makes false statements about them.

It is not helpful, as in this case, to suggest to an audience that the police can and should be addressing online hate about them that doesn’t rise to the level of stalking or harassment. This is not something your local police precinct should be doing. And it is not educational to suggest to an audience that this is something that a responsible police department will handle. 

The second example where Reese’s knowledge of criminal law seems to be questionable is the extended saga in Season 20 of alleged catfisher “Brody,” or Jessica Polly. The narrative documents a series of incidents in which Polly allegedly posed as a man named Brody on online dating apps, then personally insinuated herself into the lives of Brody’s “girlfriends” under the guise of Polly herself being Brody’s friend or cousin. Polly allegedly used texting apps to create a wide range of characters, all of whom would communicate with Brody’s “girlfriends,” to encourage these women to spend more time communicating with Brody and less time with anyone who wasn’t Polly herself. Brody continuously begged out of making phone calls or visiting his “girlfriends,” though he would encourage them to drive hours or get on planes to visit and then fail to show up. In many of these cases, the alleged catfishing went on for years at a time, and women would spend years trying to date Brody, trying to meet him, and dealing with his frequent crises. 

This is all pretty disturbing behavior. But what it might not be is criminal behavior. Some of the women involved were able to secure protective orders against Polly herself, and the man in the Brody photographs has actually been interviewed by the FBI, according to Episode 20.11. This is probably because Polly allegedly used photos of him that he had never posted on social media or that he didn’t even take himself. Stealing photos or pursuing a man to photograph him actually does sound like it rises to the level of a criminal offense. There’s also some indication that the police expressed interest in one of the victims who (allegedly) had a camera in her house that she wasn’t aware Polly could access – this is discussed in Season 20.8. However, the women decline to have Polly charged for a crime related to this camera, due to their belief that it is insufficient for Polly to be charged with a misdemeanor only. 

(Or at least, I think this is what happened. I had to read so many transcripts of this show and listened to the whole thing twice. The editing is absolutely abysmal). 

So, here’s the thing. If I was catfished by an emotionally abusive, jealous person I thought was my close friend, I would probably want them to suffer as well. But charging someone with a felony is not the same thing as settling a personal score. And it’s not clear that anyone involved in the production of this podcast, which is apparently about educating the public and advocating for crime victims, understands that these are not the same thing. 

Reese records more than an hour of footage of her trying to call people at the FBI as well as other local precincts to pursue charges against Polly. The show lovingly uses every second of this audio footage, up to and including the hold music that plays while Reese is on the phone with field offices, and again and again Reese is told that the call has been logged. The show seems as though it was edited to build to some kind of legal announcement. But the finale flags as the subjects reveal that, in fact, no charges have been filed. As of right now it seems like the case has stalled. As the season finale notes, it is simply not clear that Polly can be arrested for a crime even if she literally did everything the show accuses her of doing. 

Reese’s apparent plan was for the FBI to take over the case and pursue Polly for federal stalking charges, and she asks a detective in 20.10 whether she is in touch with the local FBI field office about this catfisher. The detective honestly sounds like she’s trying to be polite, and it’s pretty clear why. There is just no way that this case is a big enough deal that the FBI would be involved. I’m not trying to be unkind to the women involved, and I understand that this must have been a devastating experience for them. But the reality is that a few people being really hurt and disappointed is just not enough to launch a federal investigation. 

By the letter of the law, no one in this story was murdered or assaulted. There is no allegation in the show that Polly used a fake identity to swindle money from women. Polly’s worst alleged act is inflicting the intense emotional trauma of pretending not only to be the online boyfriend of lots of women, but being the extremely emotionally abusive online boyfriend of said women. But what “Brody” was doing would have been legal, however wrong, even if he was a real person. It’s not clear how “Brody” allegedly being “Polly” would change that.

In light of this, it’s not surprising that the finale of the show features multiple interviews with women who say that they hope the laws are changed to include the acts that Polly is alleged to have committed. One of the women in the finale expresses hope laws might be made to prevent catfishing in the future, and this is probably what would have to happen for catfishing to have actual legal consequences for people.³

Nonetheless, Broken Cycle Media has continued calling for law enforcement to “hold Jessica Polly accountable,” in the form of an online petition that links to a tip line to the FBI. Clearly, someone involved in this still thinks there’s a chance that the charges may be forthcoming and sees this kind of support gathering as part of the show’s advocacy work. The petition names the following possible crimes:

Reese and the Broken Cycle Media team aim to hold Polly accountable for charges, including (but not limited to) stalking, cyberstalking, sexual assault, child abuse, internet impersonation, recording without consent, and psychological damage. 

Okay, let’s go through these one at a time.

Optional Excursus: Are The Crimes Listed in Broken Cycle Media’s Petition Depicted in Something Was Wrong Season 20?

I’m not a lawyer, but I can read, so I took a crack at comparing the allegations made in Season 20 and the petition with the letter of the law as I could find it in the jurisdictions in question. To sum up, I’m not convinced that any of the crimes that Broken Cycle Media calls for Polly to be charged with are even alleged in the show. Let alone provable beyond reasonable doubt.

Stalking: The majority of the events of the show occurred in North Carolina, where stalking is a class A misdemeanor. A malicious misdemeanor (or a misdemeanor committed with malice) has no statute of limitation in limitations. However, because of the vague archaism of the term, there is no case law in which a misdemeanor has been successfully prosecuted past the normal statute in North Carolina. The usual statute of limitation for a misdemeanor is two years. In other words, if any individual case in the story rises to the level of stalking (and it’s not clear it does, since Polly’s alleged monitoring of her victims seems to have been done primarily through their own volition), the clock is really ticking to charge any specific incident.

Cyberstalking: Cyberstalking is a federal crime (stalking itself is raised to the federal level when the incident crosses state lines or uses interstate communications). We might be getting somewhere with this case since Polly allegedly used the internet to find and harass women in the guise of their awful online boyfriend. 

Here’s the federal law against cyberstalking:

Whoever (1)travels in interstate or foreign commerce or is present within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States… with the intent to kill, injure, harass, intimidate, or place under surveillance with intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person, and in the course of, or as a result of, such travel or presence engages in conduct that (A)places that person in reasonable fear of the death of, or serious bodily injury to (i)that person; (ii)an immediate family member (as defined in section 115) of that person; (iii)a spouse or intimate partner of that person..; or (B)causes, attempts to cause, or would be reasonably expected to cause substantial emotional distress to a person described in clause (i), (ii), or (iii) of subparagraph (A); or (2)with the intent to kill, injure, harass, intimidate, or place under surveillance with intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person, uses the mail, any interactive computer service or electronic communication service or electronic communication system of interstate commerce, or any other facility of interstate or foreign commerce to engage in a course of conduct that (the law repeats the stipulations above).

So the best case scenario here, I think, is that a prosecutor might be able to show that a catfisher “causes, attempts to cause, or would be reasonably expected to cause substantial emotional distress.” 

However, when you look at the cases of cyberstalking that have been prosecuted under federal law, there’s usually an element of pursuit involved – the victim changes phone numbers, moves, blocks numbers, refuses contact, etc The stalker also makes threats of violence or physical violence. Others involve extortion or blackmail, or other clear element of damage intended to come to the victim’s life, like ruining their reputations. I am not a lawyer, but it is difficult for me to see how a prosecutor might demonstrate that Polly has broken this law with the facts of the podcast alone. As far as I was able to find, no one in the US has ever faced federal charges for the act of catfishing in itself. 

It’s hard to see how the events in this podcast itself rise to the level of cyberstalking as it is usually prosecuted. Polly and her alleged victims apparently engaged, however abusively, with the mutual consent of both parties. Yes, the consent was allegedly obtained fraudulently – the women believed they were talking to a sexy man, not their friend or roommate. But according to their own testimony, many of them affirm that even after they tried to cast Brody aside, and Brody reached back out, they did continue to engage with “him.” If your terrible boyfriend asks you for another chance, and you give it to him, is he stalking you? Does the element of deception change things? Given the examples of other cases, this might be challenging to prove.

The case might also run afoul of the “reasonable person” standard for “substantial emotional distress.” For example, a reasonable person might expect that, if they have been texting a man for three years without ever meeting him or hearing his voice, that he is not in fact the person in the photo; therefore, any distress upon discovering that he is not the man in the photograph is not substantial emotional distress, but expected. This may seem cruel, but remember that Something Was Wrong has now produced a twelve-hour podcast where many, many witnesses say that they attempted to tell their friends and loved ones that “Brody” did not seem like a real person, and that Polly was probably really Brody. This raises the ethical question of why the show was released now, when it seems as though the show itself provides a compelling piece of evidence why a prosecutor might not want to take the case. The evidence of the show is, in fact, that a reasonable person might have believed they were engaging a catfisher.

Sexual assault: There is a highly disturbing incident involving a woman using a vibrator on themselves that “Brody” was able to access remotely. In this case, the woman in question consented to the act under false pretenses – believing the controller was her boyfriend, not (allegedly!) her best friend in the other room. North Carolina does not include a statute for deception as a condition for sexual assault. Neither does federal law. Rape by deception is a legal loophole that has been closed in some states – and should be closed in all cases. But as it stands, it is difficult to see how a prosecutor could charge Polly for this alleged act in North Carolina now. I understand why the victim in this case feels violated and severely wronged. I hope she gets help. But it is not likely Polly could be charged for this.

Child abuse: there are no allegations of child abuse at any point in the show. I assume the idea here is simply that it is abusive for a child to be raised by someone whose behavior is so bizarre (Polly is a single mother), but that’s not really illegal. Reese is understandably angry that Polly allegedly encourages her child to keep up the Brody story. But I can’t find any statute that would classify telling your child to lie as child abuse. 

Internet impersonation: Internet impersonation is illegal in North Carolina (a class G felony) when one person pretends to be another person in order to commit fraud. This is distinct from pretending to be a person who doesn’t exist. The only time in Season 20 where it is clearly alleged that Polly pretended to be an actual person – using a first and last name of an extent person – is an alleged incident when Polly was a juvenile. Later on it seems that she continues to use “Brody’s” photo, but not his name, since the mom of a victim realizes that “Brody” is un-Googleable. Using a fake name on the internet is itself not a crime, and there is no financial element of the crime that would make this done for the purpose of fraud. 

The “real Brody” (or the man whose photos were used to make “Brody’s” profiles) is, as near as I can tell, the only person who has actually been called for an interview with the FBI, though the show does not give a good indication what federal crimes may be in view.

Recording without consent: I assume this refers to the fact that Polly had cameras all around her apartment and allegedly used them to guilt-trip her alleged catfishing victim and roommate Lauren when Lauren did something fun. The problem with charging Polly for this is that Lauren says she knew the cameras were there. There is one person who says that a camera in their apartment could be accessed by Polly that the roommate didn’t know about. But, the speaker also says that Polly gave her the camera for use when the speaker was babysitting Polly’s child, so there may be an issue here with the “reasonable person” standard again.

Polly allegedly did this with most of her friends by asking them to share their locations on their phone with her, and would bother them if they went out. However, according to their own testimony, everyone involved in this shared their location with Polly of their own volition. If Lauren can show that Polly filmed her at one point without her knowledge, there might be a case there. But recording phone calls – no. North Carolina is a one-party consent state for recording telecommunications, as are all the other states in which this story took place. California is actually a two-party consent state, which is why I suspect Reese (who is California-based) waited to call Polly until she was in Texas in Ep 20.10. 

Psychological damage: Not a crime. Can give you grounds to sue for damages, but this dog don’t hunt. You can’t go to jail for being an asshole.

The law Reese doesn’t mention that actually seems like it might be relevant in this case is “false pretenses,” or making deceptive claims to obtain someone’s property. If a prosecutor could show that Polly (allegedly) used her fake name to obtain the women’s sensitive photographs, there could be a case here. The issue would be whether or not these photos are items of value. But Reese doesn’t mention this, which to me is a pretty revealing oversight. Not only do none of the women involved in this case have legal representation at the time the show is being made, but the show doesn’t seem to be consulting with a legal expert either.

Conclusion To Excursus: “No.”

Reese keeps talking about how long the “criminal timeline” is that she’s given to the FBI, but the staggering majority of what this report contains, I suspect, is not criminal behavior. Reese talks a lot about how many of the texts are “direct threats,” but the threats in the texts that the show reads are threats against the fictional Brody, not the women trying to date him. Brody would, in the voice of a catfisher, threaten to harm himself. But there is no point in the show where Brody threatens to harm one of the women. I haven’t been able to find a case where someone was charged with cyberstalking for threatening themselves, as opposed to their stalking victims. “I’m going to kill you” is much more the kind of charge that the FBI seems to investigate – not “I’m going to kill myself.”

All this is to say: I would be astonished if the FBI took up this case. It just doesn’t seem like, even if there is compelling evidence that Polly is a catfisher, that there’s a reason for the FBI to pursue it. It’s just not clear to me that Polly committed a federal crime. Or, even if she did, it’s not clear that an FBI field office would dedicate significant efforts tracking Polly down when she didn’t commit any financial crimes, and seems to have left off contacting her alleged victims once she was revealed.

This Is A Problem Because

Why does it matter if Something Was Wrong isn’t a crime show, or if the production team doesn’t seem to understand the laws they’re invoking?

Using the language of crime and abuse more or less interchangeably creates unrealistic and defeatist narratives about what kinds of legal support victims of crimes can expect. It’s not good advocacy to paint a narrative where prosecutors and investigators refuse to act when the show itself cannot even make the case of exactly what crime occurred. 

This show does not provide helpful advocacy for victims to get through the legal system, since it does not seem that the production team of Something was Wrong uses legal experts in the process of reporting (there’s not a legal expert on the staff list). The resource list for the show includes a number of legal aide foundations, but the show itself does not seem to make good distinctions when crimes occurred and when they didn’t. As such, Broken Cycle’s stated goal of educating the public seems to fall through in this case. The show does not contain evidence of legal expertise that actually can inform the public of how to respond to some of the situations described in the show. 

The muddy waters between “crime” and “harm” run throughout the show and even seem to be a problem in the show’s public-facing advocacy work – namely, the petition to “hold Jessica Polly accountable.” Thus, the argument that this show is educational about law and crime is difficult to sustain. 

But this doesn’t mean the show can’t be informative in other ways. So is it? What does it mean for the show to educate people on the subject of abuse? 

We’ll look at this in the next section. 

1. Some seasons do seem to be more labor-intensive than others, to be fair. Season 20 seems like it was a ton of work, but even then there are episodes where Reese includes long sections of her trying to call the right offices for law enforcement and even hold music – which suggests that very little by way of post-production happened.

2. There are seven states with coercive control laws, in which domestic violence includes not just domestic battery but also patterns of isolation, threats, degradation, and financial controls. In these states, emotional abuse might be prosecuted as part of a pattern of coercive control. These laws are quite young and it will take time for case law to develop around them.

3. This would be a tricky law to write, though– for instance, is an older, skinnier photo of yourself in a Hinge profile catfishing? What about using a fake name on Twitter? Should my article on AI crochet, in which I pretended to be an old lady, be prosecuted as a federal crime?