CyberSleuths Need to Get a Clue

TikTok influencers trying to solve open crime cases does more damage than good.

Over two years ago, I posted this:

I was only being half tongue-in-cheek. If such a position actually existed, I would blow a hamstring rushing to be first in line to apply. With the number of historical documents now available online, researching evidence, media accounts, and contemporaneous accounts is easier than ever. Just think of how much DNA evidence is sitting in basements, waiting to be tested so we can know with certainty who committed murders from a century ago?

Evidently I am not alone. True crime shows on streaming services have exploded in popularity, with ages-old murders now being revived for the entertainment of viewers. I admit I watch all of these shows, waiting for the twist - and in the cases no killer is ever caught, I immediately begin Googling around to see what theories other people have.

But, of course, exhuming these stories can have damaging consequences. People who have lived their lives in peace for decades once again become suspects all over again. Families are forced to relive the pain of a loved one being brutally murdered.

Late last year, The New York Times ran a story about Liz Flatt, whose sister, Debbie Sue Williamson, was murdered in 1975, and whose killer was never found. A few years ago, Flatt started “crowdsourcing” her sister’s case, calling on internet “sleuths” to start putting together clues from a case that had been cold for 40 years.

The story offered a blueprint for what now typically happens when keyboard detectives with no training get involved in trying to solve murders. Wild conspiracies begin to form, and when the family members try to tamp down unfounded speculation, they are vilified as obstacles to the truth or considered suspects themselves.

“People think it’s a movie,” one woman whose sister had been murdered told The Times. “I don’t think people think logically when they get into those groups. They think the absolute worst.”

Perhaps the public is growing a bit of a conscience about using someone else’s gruesome trauma as entertainment. In the past week, two documentaries have dropped that center the discussion on the social media sleuths trying to crack ongoing cases rather than the cases themselves.

#Cyber Sleuths: The Idaho Murders on Paramount+ follows a group of TikTok influencers who attempt to solve a horrific homicide that took place in Moscow, Idaho, in 2022. In the middle of the night, four female students were stabbed to death and no suspect was immediately caught, so a group of “sleuths” armed with cell phones descended on the city to try to find the killer.

In the course of their appalling “investigations,” these know-nothings, thirsty for internet clout, frequently spread misinformation, identified false suspects, and interviewed hoaxers pretending to have personal information on the case. If anything, they made the case harder for the actual police to solve, as the cops had to set up special websites to combat the lies the TikTokers were spreading. (In some cases, the social media sleuths were criminals themselves, having committed hoaxes their entire adult lives.)

At no point did any of these self-appointed internet investigators uncover any bit of information that was helpful to the police.

Also within the past week, Max released They Called Him Mostly Harmless, a documentary in which internet sleuths try to ascertain the identity of a man found dead on the Appalachian Trail. Again, the message boards were flooded with far-fetched theories about who the man was, with internecine battles blowing up between online sleuths battling for supremacy. Eventually, the major sleuthing groups had to split up and anoint their own moderators, given the bad blood that had grown between them.

Ostensibly, these sleuths are acting to solve cases because the families deserve to know what happened. But as these documentaries make clear, there is often a lot more going on with these people who commit their lives to researching crimes with which they have no personal connection.

Maybe you aren’t particularly Instagram model-ready and still want some internet fame. Perhaps your life didn’t quite work out the way you wanted, but now you have the chance to broadcast your brilliance by solving a murder before the police do. Sleuthing likely gives a lot of people a sense of purpose that they didn’t have before.

But the quest for internet sleuthing fame can also do a great deal of damage, harming family members, friends, and police trying to do actual investigations. These people have no idea how investigations are run and how to identify actual evidence. They have no access to DNA data or crime scene evidence. They quite literally know nothing. (In #Cyber Sleuths, one Louisiana-based TikTok sleuth is so smugly, unapologetically wrong and thirsty for clicks, she will want to make you put your phone through your television.)

Of course, complaining about these influencer vultures really does no good - they have every right to spread bogus theories, harass family members into giving them interviews, and lead police on baseless information chases. At some point, society will have to say “This is kind of gross,” and shun these attention hounds. (We are a long way off from this happening - typically, the least accurate and most theatrically self-serving “video journalists” are the ones that get the most attention.)

But these idiots are playing with peoples’ lives, and that has a real toll on society. Thus, when I finally get hired for my imaginary job, I would go back and investigate cases from a century ago, where the victim and their immediate family members are already dead. Applying modern technology to 100-year-old cases seems more exciting, even if it only provides retroactive justice.

In the meantime, I am going to re-assess my relationship with the true crime genre, as it makes me feel gross to derive such pleasure from gawking at the worst (and perhaps last) day of a human being’s life. I vow to spend more time mocking the living people who deserve it.

ALSO:

Speaking of old newspapers, it is always fun to look back and see when certain modern foods first became popular in the United States, and how those foods have changed over the years.

For instance, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches picked up popularity in the 1920s, but newspapers offered recipes that look a bit different than they do now.

For instance, here’s how a 1924 newspaper counseled readers to make a PB and J:

In 1926, the sandwich became a triple-decker:

In 1927, Ruth Newman of Richmond, Indiana didn’t have time for that store-bought bread:

And in 1931, new twists began to emerge:

At some point, society just decided one slice of jelly and one slice of peanut butter crammed together was perfection, which is terrible news for the oldsters who reminisce about the glory days when monsters mixed their ingredients together to form a paste. Disgusting.

ALSO:

I have been reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s book Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, and it is one of those books that is so good you can’t even believe it exists. You can get a copy here.

ALSO:

I have still been working hard on the Wasn’t That Special: 50 Years of SNL podcast, in which my cohost and I watch and grade every sketch, episode and season of Saturday Night Live. We are up to Season 17, which is right when the cast starts to turn over from the Dana Carvey/Phil Hartman/Mike Myers years to the Chris Farley/Adam Sandler/David Spade/Rob Schneider (no relation) years.

At the end of the Season 15, we did a free podcast recapping the first fifteen years of the show. It’s pretty short and you can listen to it for free - check it out here, and if you like it, please subscribe!

FINALLY

There’s an excellent new Sleater-Kinney album out, but if you are unfamiliar with their work, start here with a song that’s almost 20 years old now: