“American Vandal” and Our Full-of-Shit Digital Selves

We often use social media to paint a picture of ourselves that differs from who we really are. The sophomore season of Netflix’s “American Vandal” highlights this.

American Vandal is a Netflix series that parodies the Serial or Making A Murderer-type true crime documentary by turning the documentary over to high school students. The central crime of the first season is best summarized by the question of “Who drew the dicks?”, and the recently-released second season: “Who is the Turd Burglar?” That sounds silly, and at times it is, but what makes American Vandal a phenomenon is that regardless of how silly you find the premise, it makes the investigation legitimately compelling, and it provides a surprising amount of commentary on the issues of the day.

For most of the second season, American Vandal is focused on the investigation of several poop-related crimes that occurred at a fictional Catholic high school. After the first episode’s school-wide laxative poisoning, you may find all the poop a little off-putting, but as it gets closer to the truth, the show makes a sudden shift and turns its attention squarely on our use of social media, and the shift is so unexpected that the reveal of the use of poop being a metaphor…