About this site

Popcorn at the Crime Scene is an independent publication for personal storytelling, launched in January 2026 by Chris Goff.

Born of the years'-long loss that resulted from de-camping from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, from those networks, and from their ease of communication and interaction without any sort of plan for re-connection, as well as missing the joy of writing for and sharing photos with family and friends (past, present, and to be), I started this newsletter primarily as a place to re-build real life relationships by weekly sharing observations gleaned from my life in DC. It's a personal journal, a story of seeking joy and beauty while bearing witness to and seeking justice for the moral injuries that are part and parcel of living and working here. It's a reconciliation of contentment with anger, of joy with fear, of personal growth in a beautiful if imperfect city with its elite depravity, political decay, and institutional rot.

This is also an effort to build a better Internet. I've chosen to pay for a non-profit, open-source platform and content-management system (learn more at the bottom of this page) instead of using a "free" service backed by Big Tech or venture capital (but I repeat myself) where our "attention" and "engagement" get "optimized," and eventually monopolized and enshittified, for the purposes of extracting and monetizing our information. For those of you hung up on the exuberant anti-capitalism, this simply means that instead of an algorithm grasping after your attention, your experience with this slice of social media will be a deliberately slower-paced newsletter in your inbox that you can choose to receive (and even read!) or not; instead of AI and ads, it'll be just us sharing own lives and creations for the fun of it, curated by us, for us; instead of rage-bait to spur reaction, I hope that this will be a venue for warm, thoughtful, and informative writing that inspires curiosity and connection.

You'll always be able to read this for free on the web. Subscribing for the email newsletter will always be free taboot. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope this provides a chance to rekindle and deepen relationships!

Contact:
e mail: popcornatthecrimescene[at]pm[dot]me

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  2. No pornography, nudity, or something that would be considered "NSFW" in a U.S. workplace, even flagged by a NSFW warning.
  3. No gore or graphic violence
  4. Content that is borderline NSFW or could be construed as NSFW at a glance should be flagged by a CW (Content Warning)
  5. No racism
  6. No sexism
  7. No discrimination or harassment based on gender, sexual minority, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), caste, or national origin
  8. No xenophobia or violent nationalism
  9. No sexual depictions of children
  10. No stalking or harassment
  11. No fake accounts, even celebrity joke accounts.
  12. You must be 13 or older to hold an account on this service

Violation of the rules will result in a warning, suspension, or permanent banning of access from the website at the discretion of the moderator, depending on the severity of the offense.

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