I've been wanting to make a post about that since it's release, but it took me a little time to watch the whole thing.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned Explore With Us being a poor comparison to Matt Orchard and Jim Can't Swim. They are better than the majority producing low effort True Crime content and have a good choice in subjects. However, they often feel more exploitative, especially in their thumbnails, their analysis didn't feel or wasn't at least conveyed as well as JCS, and their telling of the narrative of the crime wasn't as exceptional as it is with Matt Orchard. I watched their content, but I wasn't excited for a new one like JCS or Orchard.
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An example of one of their thumbnails that I think are in poor taste, the one I really disliked was a picture of a girl with the quote "Are all of your holes like that?" Obviously implying something sexual, but it was discussing a first attempt at a shallow grave. I'm guessing however that video has gotten pulled down from Youtube as it was a recent one.
This is a recent example of one where the case was interesting, but they presentation distracted me. It's a man who murdered his girlfriend and shot her brother, while on the run from the law shot and killed a cop trying to arrest him. The interrogation is interesting cause it catches examples of stuff that could be considered police brutality, he's hurt real bad getting interrogated, asking for a doctor they say is coming, but they haven actually called for. He's got handcuffs on too tight that were the ones issued to the cop he killed. The narrator implies during the interrogation coverage that there are dramatic revelations from the trial that impact the interpretation of what the officers are doing. I started thinking there was something interesting there, he was going to beat charges due to the police brutality, mistakes they made in the rush to convict him, or the actual events of the crime being different than presented in the interrogation. Instead, he just convicted, and the premise that they set up of the trial having startling revelations were completely false. It was still an interesting video over all, but that false promotion soured me a bit.
We get to this latest one, and it really highlights some changes that's been made to the channel. In recent videos they started listing the credentials of those analyzing the interogation. They emphasize this is never before seen footage and talked about having a "team of experts" that analyzed the case. It initially felt very insecure to me. However, they did something further in this video that irks me. They are now reaching out to people on social media that knew the criminals, to get interviews. I don't know why it bothers me, its really just doing research, but it feels... try hard? They did read the email response from someone that refused the interview that may of tipped me over on disliking this aspect they are adding.
The video really is great, but it weighs more on the content than the presentation. I'll give them credit, there is a talent to finding good content to cover, but there is just something about that channel that puts me off.
Subscribe to Matt Orchard though, Jesus Christ Explore with Us has 10x the subscriber count he does, and Matt deserves it so much more.
