In the last month, social media users took to the comment sections as the front-page case of 22 year-old Gabby Petito took over the public conscience. To recap, Petito (who was recently found in the Bridger-Teton Forest, dead by cause of strangulation) went missing during early August after a cross-country trip with her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie. As police investigated the case and evidence, such as police body cam footage and familial interviews, became public, users on social media decided to do a little digging of their own.  

The case was a sensation for nearly three weeks—longer than most viral users’ 15 minutes of fame ever amounts to be. It was an obsession, and the more people fed into it, the more theories were produced. Tik Tokers and YouTubers would explore theories with the tiniest basis of evidence: her hair color in social media posts, the clothes she was wearing in body-cam footage, even year-old comments on her Instagram. Anything and everything that touched the surface of the public eye was brought in for in-depth analysis.   

Now, many label this as a ‘true crime’ interest, but ‘true crime’ is one thing. Learning about Jack the Ripper’s killings, or perhaps previously trying to solve the mystery of the Zodiac Killer’s identity — that is an interest in true crime. The reception to the Petito case was far from that. Petitio’s case revealed a public fascination with the macabre to the point of a gross obsession and harmful speculation. Often, when we popularize the deceased, we tend to forget that they, too, were real people, with real lives and real families that were devastated. The privacy many of us receive in grieving is not afforded to those families, and even worse, much of the speculation surrounding Petito’s mysterious disappearance targeted her family.   

Petito was the eldest of six siblings and half-siblings. Is it that daft to imagine that, in the age of social media, by some grace, these siblings did not see the surge of hyper-theorizing their older sister’s death while the investigation was still active? Did not see the hundreds of thousands of likes and comments on videos potentially speculating their parent’s involvement with her disappearance? Even more grotesquely, when and if they did see these theories come to surface, they were often used as a side story in make-up or hair videos to enlighten the public, or cinched into a one-minute video by a random 16-year old.   

  The Petito case’s reception is all but a symptom of much deeper issues within our culture and the way we develop fixations on the tragedy of others. The glamorization of death and abuse in our society is hidden under a veil of ‘fascination,’ but the reality is much darker. Much of our most viral, most popularized culture is brought to surface when women are being victimized. As Alfred Hitchcock so famously declared when asked how the visceral pleasure of his films were achieved: “Torture the women!”   

  We see this beyond true crime (although that, in itself, is an entirely separate issue to unpack). It is observable in our own pop culture; think of the biggest pop-culture scandals of the last three decades: the O.J. Simpson case, Chris Brown beating Rihanna, Tiger Woods’ or Jay-Z’s cheating scandals, Britney Spears’ conservatorship, the Royal Family’s racism towards Meghan Markle, and plenty more examples all account for major chunks of their respective years’ biggest events. And although our culture certainly does not circulate around the torture of women, it is certainly worth calling into question why exactly it takes up such a large chunk of the public conscience.   

As a society, we ought to reconstruct the ways in which we perceive violence done unto women. “How awful,” we will mutter with distaste before watching 10-minute video footage of a girl and her abusive boyfriend. “How tragic!” we cry, before pouring into descriptions of Petito’s rotting remains with an uncanny captivation. It’s a social faux pas, yet one so widely tolerated, if not expected, certainly worth looking further into. The age of hyper-vigilance and speculation for speculation’s sake needs to find its close; if not that, it at least needs to end its masquerade as genuine concern for the victim. Until then, cases like Petito’s will keep emerging, and the cycle of media damage will continue on.