Latest / Beyond The Horizon / Lindsay Clancy and the Dark Side of True Crime Culture (8/21/26)

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Lindsay Clancy and the Dark Side of True Crime Culture (8/21/26) · Beyond The Horizon

0:00
Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome back to the program. I
0:04
Speaker 1: had no plans to talk about this case none. It
0:07
Speaker 1: was not on my board. It was not something I
0:09
Speaker 1: was looking to turn into an episode, and I had
0:12
Speaker 1: no interest in inserting myself into a tragedy that was
0:15
Speaker 1: already carrying more pain than most people could possibly comprehend.
0:19
Speaker 1: There are cases that I choose to cover because the
0:21
Speaker 1: evidence demand scrutiny, because institutions need to be challenged, because
0:26
Speaker 1: unanswered questions deserve daylight, or because victims have been ignored
0:32
Speaker 1: and accountability has gone missing. This was not one of them.
0:36
Speaker 1: I would have been perfectly content leaving Lindsay Clancy's case
0:39
Speaker 1: to the courts, the lawyers, the doctors, and the people
0:43
Speaker 1: actually responsible for sorting through the legal and psychiatric questions
0:48
Speaker 1: in front of them. But there's a point where staying
0:51
Speaker 1: quiet starts to feel like watching something disgusting happening in
0:54
Speaker 1: public and pretending not to see it. And some of
0:58
Speaker 1: the behavior surrounding this case has crossed so far beyond
1:02
Speaker 1: ordinary disagreement, speculation, or bad taste that silence stops feeling
1:07
Speaker 1: like neutrality. And that's why we're talking about it now,
1:12
Speaker 1: not because I was itching to add another case to
1:13
Speaker 1: the pile, and certainly not because I needed another subject
1:17
Speaker 1: to fill time. The conduct dragged this conversation into existence.
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Speaker 1: Watching people turn murdered children into background scenery, manufacture suspicion
1:28
Speaker 1: around a grieving father, and build identity politics around the
1:31
Speaker 1: woman accused of killing her own children became too fucking
1:35
Speaker 1: grotesque to ignore. When cute slogans start getting wrapped around
1:40
Speaker 1: the case like this, when unsupported accusations are tossed around
1:43
Speaker 1: like party favors, When three dead children become secondary to
1:47
Speaker 1: the emotional needs of strangers on the Internet, the line
1:50
Speaker 1: has been crossed. There are times when restraint means keeping
1:54
Speaker 1: your mouth shut, and there are times one restraint means
1:57
Speaker 1: refusing to join the mob while still calling out exactly
2:00
Speaker 1: what the mob has become. This is the latter. Somewhere
2:05
Speaker 1: along the way, true crimes stopped being about facts and
2:08
Speaker 1: started behaving like fandom. The Karen Reid case did not
2:12
Speaker 1: invent that pathology, but it exposed it in full daylight.
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Speaker 1: Adults organizing themselves into digital tribes repeating theories until repetition
2:21
Speaker 1: itself became a substitute for proof treating Courthouse developments like
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Speaker 1: playoff games and convincing one another that obsession had somehow
2:30
Speaker 1: transformed them into experts. For a certain segment of that crowd,
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Speaker 1: the case was never just something to follow. It became
2:38
Speaker 1: an identity, complete with slogans, heroes, villains, enemies, rituals, and
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Speaker 1: the kind of absolute certainty that only seems possible when
2:48
Speaker 1: nobody in the room is required to prove a fucking thing. Now,
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Speaker 1: some of that same energy has migrated into the Lindsay
2:55
Speaker 1: Clancy case, and the result is even harder to stomach,
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Speaker 1: because the human cost is impossible to ignore. This is
3:02
Speaker 1: a case involving the deaths of three children, yet social
3:06
Speaker 1: media has already begun doing what it does best, simplifying
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Speaker 1: horror and the branding same. Lindsay gets typed into captions
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Speaker 1: as though those words carries some profound moral weight, while
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Speaker 1: strangers project their own experiences onto a woman facing murder
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Speaker 1: charges and then call that projection. Understanding the complexity of
3:27
Speaker 1: psychiatric evidence, criminal responsibility, intent, and mental illness gets compressed
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Speaker 1: into a slogan short enough to fit underneath the selfie,
3:37
Speaker 1: and that would be bad enough on its own, but
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Speaker 1: the Internet rarely stops at bad enough. Once Lindsay becomes
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Speaker 1: the person who must be defended at all costs. Someone
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Speaker 1: else has to absorb the suspicion, and that's where Patrick
3:49
Speaker 1: Lancey gets dragged into the operating table of amateur investigation.
3:54
Speaker 1: People who have never interviewed him, never sat across from him,
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Speaker 1: never lived one hour of what he's lived, start dissecting tone,
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Speaker 1: facial expressions, pauses, grief, marriage dynamics, and whatever else can
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Speaker 1: be isolated from a clip and repackaged that something fills off.
4:12
Speaker 1: From there, the insinuation creeps in. Maybe there's more to
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Speaker 1: the story, Maybe he knows something, maybe he did something.
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Speaker 1: Maybe maybe maybe a grieving father becomes raw material for
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Speaker 1: people who need the case to be more elaborate than
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Speaker 1: the evidence is shown. And what makes all of this
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Speaker 1: so ugly, at least for me, is not simply that
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Speaker 1: the theories are reckless. It's that the spectacle requires the
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Speaker 1: actual victims to become smaller. Cora, Dawson, and Callen are
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Speaker 1: reduced to names in the background while adults argue over narratives, diagnosis, personalities, motives,
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Speaker 1: and online allegiances. Their deaths become the event that powers
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Speaker 1: everybody else's content, but their lives are rarely allowed to
4:56
Speaker 1: remain the center of the conversation, and that inversion tells
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Speaker 1: you almost everything you need to know about what happens
5:02
Speaker 1: when true crime turns into a social club. There's a
5:07
Speaker 1: difference between trying to understand the case and needing a
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Speaker 1: case to give you purpose. One requires patience, skepticism, humility,
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Speaker 1: and an ability to live with uncertainty. The other reward
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Speaker 1: certainty before evidence, outrage before thought, and community before truth.
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Speaker 1: The first approach can survive being wrong because the facts
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Speaker 1: matter more than ego. The second cannot because once the
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Speaker 1: theory becomes part of someone's identity, correcting the theory feels
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Speaker 1: like admitting that the person they built themselves into was
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Speaker 1: never as informed as they believed. That's the terrain that
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Speaker 1: we're walking into here, not because the Internet needs another
5:47
Speaker 1: lecture about being nice. That ship saild a long ass
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Speaker 1: time ago. The issue is much more serious than manners.
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Speaker 1: We're talking about what happens when people begin treating accusation
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Speaker 1: as entertainment, grief as evidence, mental illness as branding, and
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Speaker 1: dead children as an emotional backdrop for somebody else's need
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Speaker 1: to belong. The ugliness is not confined to one defendant
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Speaker 1: or one case. It's a habit of mind that follows
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Speaker 1: the crowd wherever the next tragedy appears. And unlike the
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Speaker 1: people who treat these cases like content farms, I have
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Speaker 1: no interest in turning any of this into a popularity contest.
6:25
Speaker 1: I'm not selling T shirts, scheduling live stream collaborations, building
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Speaker 1: a fan army, or auditioning for television. Whether somebody likes
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Speaker 1: me at the end of an episode has never been
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Speaker 1: the measuring stick. The only thing worth chasing is the truth,
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Speaker 1: or as close to it as the evidence allows, followed
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Speaker 1: by accountability for the people who deserve it, and justice
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Speaker 1: for the people who can no longer demand it themselves,
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Speaker 1: And that last part matters more than anything here. Cora,
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Speaker 1: Dawson and Callin cannot correct a bad theory. They can
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Speaker 1: res respond to a viral video. They can't explain who
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Speaker 1: they were before their names became attached to a criminal case.
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Speaker 1: They can't ask strangers to stop making their deaths useful
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Speaker 1: for somebody else's Internet identity. The adults left behind get lawyers, microphones, followers, defenders, critics,
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Speaker 1: and endless opportunities to shape the conversation. The children, they're
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Speaker 1: just a memory. So before anybody decides this is another
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Speaker 1: team sport, another opportunity to pick a woman to defend,
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Speaker 1: another chance to invent a villain, or another excuse to
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Speaker 1: turn a courthouse into a fandom convention, remember what sits
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Speaker 1: beneath all of it, three children who should still be alive.
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Speaker 1: If that fact does not control the tone of the conversation,
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Speaker 1: then the conversation has already lost its moral center. And
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Speaker 1: now we have reached the inevitable next stage of the disease.
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Speaker 1: The people making breathless little videos, staring into the camera
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Speaker 1: and saying things like Sam lindsay, as though they have
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Speaker 1: personally appeared through the veil of psychiatric medicine and discovered
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Speaker 1: the hidden truth that somehow escaped investigators, doctors, lawyers, and
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Speaker 1: everyone else actually involved in the case. Same lindsay, What
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Speaker 1: does that even mean? It's the kind of phrase that
8:16
Speaker 1: sounds profound only if your entire understanding of criminal responsibility
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Speaker 1: comes from TikTok captions and inspirational Facebook graphics. Same lindsay,
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Speaker 1: is an analysis. It's not evidence, it's not medicine. It's
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Speaker 1: a slogan. It's emotional merchandising. It's the true crime equivalent
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Speaker 1: of putting a live laugh love sign over a crime
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Speaker 1: scene and congratulating yourself for having solved the case. These
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Speaker 1: people aren't examining complicated questions about mental illness, intent, culpability,
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Speaker 1: or the legal standard for a criminal responsibility. They're adopting
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Speaker 1: Lindsay Clancy as an identity project. They've decided that understanding
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Speaker 1: her means becoming an advocate, and becoming an advocate apparently
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Speaker 1: means standing away every uncomfortable fact until all that remains
9:02
Speaker 1: is a sympathetic character they can defend on social media.
9:07
Speaker 1: And then, because merely a romanticizing the defendant apparently wasn't
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Speaker 1: deranged enough, some of them decided they needed a new villain,
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Speaker 1: So naturally they start looking at Patrick Clancy, because why
9:19
Speaker 1: stop at irresponsible speculation when you can canonball directly into
9:23
Speaker 1: accusing a grieving father of murdering his own children. And
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Speaker 1: that's where this shit stops being merely stupid and becomes
9:30
Speaker 1: genuinely vile. There's a particular kind of Internet detective who
9:35
Speaker 1: cannot tolerate a tragedy without manufacturing a secret explanation. Reality
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Speaker 1: is too boring, evidence is too restrictive, sometimes horrifying things
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Speaker 1: happen for horrifying reasons, and there isn't a shadowy puppet
9:48
Speaker 1: master waiting behind the curtain. But that answer doesn't generate engagement,
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Speaker 1: so outcomes the corkboard and the yarn. A facial expression
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Speaker 1: becomes suspicious, a sentence from an interview becomes suspicious. The
10:02
Speaker 1: fact that someone didn't behave exactly the way Brenda from
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Speaker 1: Canton believes she would have behaved after the unimaginable slaughter
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Speaker 1: of her children becomes suspicious. And suddenly you've got somebody
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Speaker 1: sitting underneath a ring light, speaking with the confidence of
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Speaker 1: a homicide detective and the credentials of a Cole's Cash
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Speaker 1: Reward member, explaining why Patrick Clancy is actually the person
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Speaker 1: everybody should be investigating based on what vibes. It's always
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Speaker 1: fucking vibes. These are people performing forensic grief analysis from
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Speaker 1: their kitchens. They watch a grieving parent speak for three
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Speaker 1: minutes and decide whether his sorrow looked authentic enough, too composed,
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Speaker 1: suspicious to emotional, performing talks about his wife suspicious, doesn't
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Speaker 1: talk about her enough also suspicious. There is literally no
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Speaker 1: behavior that cannot be reverse engineered into evidence. Once somebody
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Speaker 1: has already decided what story they want to tell. That
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Speaker 1: is conspiracy culture in its purest form. The conclusion comes first,
11:04
Speaker 1: the evidence gets recruited afterward, and once the algorithm starts
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Speaker 1: rewarding it, the lunacy compounds. One person asks a question,
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Speaker 1: another person turns the question into a theory. The next
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Speaker 1: person describes the theory as something people are saying. Then
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Speaker 1: somebody else makes a video responding to what people are saying.
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Speaker 1: Within forty eight hours, an accusation that began inside somebody's
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Speaker 1: Savignon blanc soaked imagination has somehow acquired the esthetic appearance
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Speaker 1: of a legitimate controversy, no evidence required, just repetition. That's
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Speaker 1: the same machinery we watched operator around Karen Reid. Somebody
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Speaker 1: notices something, somebody else magnifies it. A content creator gives
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Speaker 1: it a dramatic thumbnail. Facebook groups recycle it ten thousand times. Eventually,
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Speaker 1: the origin of the claim disappears, and all anyone remembers
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Speaker 1: is that there was supposedly something weird about it, and
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Speaker 1: the phrase I'm just asking questions becomes the diplomatic immunity
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Speaker 1: of the terminally online. No, you're not just asking questions.
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Speaker 1: Sometimes you're laundering an accusation. There is a difference. If
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Speaker 1: you make a video implying that a man murdered his
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Speaker 1: own children without actual evidence supporting that allegation. You aren't
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Speaker 1: participating in citizen journalism. You aren't bravely challenging the narrative.
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Speaker 1: You aren't doing what the media refuses to do. You're
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Speaker 1: gossiping about dead children while wearing the costume of an investigator.
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Speaker 1: And spare me the inevitable defense that everyone is entitled
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Speaker 1: to their opinion. Of course you are. You're also entitled
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Speaker 1: to believe the moon is a hologram and that your
12:41
Speaker 1: cat is communicating with the CIA through the microwave. The
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Speaker 1: existence of your opinion does not magically turn it into
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Speaker 1: something intelligent, responsible, or worthy of publication. The real obscenity
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Speaker 1: here is how completely the children disappear from the conversations.
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Speaker 1: Cora disappears, disappears, Callen disappears. They become supporting characters and
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Speaker 1: somebody else's Internet crusade. The discussion becomes Lindsay's innocence, Lindsay's suffering,
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Speaker 1: Lindsay's medications, Lindsay's doctors, Lindsay's husband, Lindsay's defense teams, Lindsay's supporters,
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Speaker 1: and somewhere underneath this avalanche of content are three dead
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Speaker 1: children whose lives have been reduced to background scenery while
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Speaker 1: strangers fight over which adult gets assigned the hero role.
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Speaker 1: That shit should discuss people instead, some corners of the
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Speaker 1: Internet have turned the entire tragedy into another fandom war.
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Speaker 1: You can acknowledge the seriousness of postpart of mental illness
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Speaker 1: without turning Lindsay Clancy into a saint. You can believe
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Speaker 1: psychiatric evidence deserves careful consideration without putting Sam Lindsay in
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Speaker 1: your bio like you're joining a sorority. You can wait
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Speaker 1: for the expert testimony without inventing conspiracies about her husband.
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Speaker 1: You can recognize that criminal responsibility is complicated without pretending
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Speaker 1: the underlying horror didn't happen. These concepts are not mutually
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Speaker 1: exclusive unless your brain has been completely liquefied by true
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Speaker 1: crime social media. And perhaps the most revealing thing about
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Speaker 1: the same Lindsay crowd is the incredible certainty. Actual psychiatrists
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Speaker 1: will discuss diagnostic uncertainty, Actual lawyers will argue over legal standards.
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Speaker 1: Actual investigators will distinguish between evidence and inference. But Deborah
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Speaker 1: with four nder and twelve followers, and a Stanley Cup
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Speaker 1: has cracked the entire thing wide open. She watched six clips,
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Speaker 1: she read three screenshots, She listened to a podcast. Case closed,
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Speaker 1: same Lindsay put her on the Supreme Court. This is
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Speaker 1: what happens when true crime stops being about understanding cases
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Speaker 1: and starts becoming an identity. People don't follow the evidence anymore.
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Speaker 1: They choose jerseys, they pick their defendant, they find their villain,
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Speaker 1: They form their little old digital armies, and then every
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Speaker 1: new fact gets filtered through the only question that matters
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Speaker 1: to them does this help my team? And if your
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Speaker 1: journey from the Karen Reid circus has now brought you
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Speaker 1: to the point where you're making tiktoks accusing Patrick Clancy
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Speaker 1: of secretly murdering his three children because something about his
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Speaker 1: demeanor gave you a funny feeling, Congratulations, you haven't become
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Speaker 1: an investigator. You've become exactly the kind of reckless internet
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Speaker 1: ghul you've spent the last three years insisting everyone else was.
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Speaker 1: And look, we're not searching for a victim here. The
15:31
Speaker 1: victims already have names. They weren't hashtags, they weren't exhibits
15:36
Speaker 1: They were not abstract little figures orbiting around Lindsay Clancy's
15:39
Speaker 1: defense strategy. They were Cora, Dawson, and Callen. There were children.
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Speaker 1: They had favorite foods, favorite toys, little habits that probably
15:48
Speaker 1: drove their parents crazy, and little expressions that could change
15:51
Speaker 1: the temperature in a room. They had birthdays ahead of them,
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Speaker 1: first days of school, Christmas mornings, skin knees, bad report cards,
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Speaker 1: soccer games, bed time stories, teenage arguments, graduations, entire lives
16:04
Speaker 1: that should have unfolded over decades, and they didn't get
16:07
Speaker 1: any of that. That's the fucking story. Not whether some
16:11
Speaker 1: TikTok whineant thinks Lindsay looks sufficiently sympathetic in a photograph,
16:15
Speaker 1: not whether a Facebook group is decided that a medication
16:18
Speaker 1: list is a Rosetta stone, not whether somebody with a
16:22
Speaker 1: ring light and a canvas subscription has produced a twelve
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Speaker 1: part series explaining why everyone should really be focusing on Patrick.
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Speaker 1: Three children are dead, Three tiny human beings had every
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Speaker 1: single future possibility taken away from them. Cora should have
16:37
Speaker 1: been allowed to grow up and become whoever the hell
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Speaker 1: Quorra wanted to become. Dawson should have gotten the chance
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Speaker 1: to become a kid, then a teenager, then a man
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Speaker 1: with his own stories and mistakes and triumphs. Callen was
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Speaker 1: a baby, a fucking baby. He barely got started. But
16:57
Speaker 1: somehow the Internet has managed to take a case involve
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Speaker 1: in three dead children and reframe it into an endless
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Speaker 1: seminar about how unfair everything has supposedly been to Lindsay clancy.
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Speaker 1: That is moral insanity. There is room to discuss mental illness.
17:12
Speaker 1: There is room to discuss postpartum psychosis. There is room
17:15
Speaker 1: to discuss medication, hospitalization, criminal intent, and legal responsibility. Those
17:21
Speaker 1: are legitimate issues, and the court will have to wrestle
17:24
Speaker 1: with them. But compassion for mental illness does not require
17:27
Speaker 1: erasing the dead. Understanding is not absolution, Explanation is not exoneration,
17:34
Speaker 1: and empathy is not a magic Wand that makes Cora,
17:36
Speaker 1: Dawson and Callen disappear because their existence complicates the preferred narrative.
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Speaker 1: Yet that's exactly what some of these people seem determined
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Speaker 1: to do. They center Lindsay so aggressively that the children
17:48
Speaker 1: become almost inconvenient. Every conversation begins with what Lindsay experienced,
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Speaker 1: what Lindsay felt, what Lindsay was prescribed, what Lindsay allegedly understood,
17:58
Speaker 1: what Lindsay endured. Maybe try saying the children's names first,
18:03
Speaker 1: Maybe try remembering who lost literally everything, because Lindsay Clancy,
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Speaker 1: She's alive, she has lawyers, she has advocates, she has
18:10
Speaker 1: people making videos for her, she has strangers, maybe some
18:14
Speaker 1: of you defending her honor as though they were protecting
18:17
Speaker 1: a wrongly maligned pop star. Cora Dawson and Callen. They
18:21
Speaker 1: don't have TikTok accounts, they don't have microphones. They don't
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Speaker 1: get to explain what happened to them. They don't get
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Speaker 1: to correct the record. They don't get to tell anybody
18:30
Speaker 1: what they were afraid of, what they loved, what they
18:33
Speaker 1: wanted to be when they grew up, or what their
18:35
Speaker 1: favorite bedtime story was. They're silent because they are dead,
18:40
Speaker 1: and somehow that silence has created a vacuum into which
18:43
Speaker 1: every Internet lunatic with the theory is rushed. And that
18:46
Speaker 1: should make your stomach turn. The same Lindsay bullshit is
18:49
Speaker 1: especially disgusting because it transforms a woman accused of killing
18:53
Speaker 1: her three children into some kind of vessel for collective identification.
18:57
Speaker 1: Same Lindsay we are Lindsay, We understand Lindsay. No, you
19:01
Speaker 1: are not Lindsay. You are a person watching a criminal
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Speaker 1: case on the internet. You don't know what happened inside
19:07
Speaker 1: that house beyond what the evidence ultimately establishes. You don't
19:11
Speaker 1: know what was inside her mind. You don't know what
19:14
Speaker 1: every medication did, You don't know what every conversation meant.
19:18
Speaker 1: And you sure as hell don't acquire a mystical insight
19:20
Speaker 1: because you once had a difficult postpartum experience yourself. Personal
19:25
Speaker 1: experience can create empathy. It doesn't make you a forensic psychiatrist,
19:29
Speaker 1: it doesn't make you a neurologist, It does not make
19:32
Speaker 1: you a judge, and it absolutely does not give you
19:35
Speaker 1: permission to turn three murdered children into collateral damage in
19:39
Speaker 1: your campaign to make Lindsey Clancy the patron saint of
19:42
Speaker 1: misunderstood motherhood. And the people that are accusing Patrick, well,
19:48
Speaker 1: that's a particular corner of the circus that deserves contempt
19:51
Speaker 1: all its own. Imagine losing all three of your kids
19:54
Speaker 1: and then opening the Internet to discover a pack of
19:57
Speaker 1: strangers conducting amateur body language analysis on you and suggesting
20:01
Speaker 1: that maybe you killed them. Think about how diseased the
20:05
Speaker 1: online true crime ecosystem has to become before somebody considers
20:09
Speaker 1: that acceptable entertainment. They'll freeze from his face. They'll dissect
20:14
Speaker 1: his words, they will analyze where his eyes move, they'll
20:18
Speaker 1: decide that some sentence sounds off, and then they'll sit
20:21
Speaker 1: there nodding gravely into the camera, like fucking Colombo after
20:25
Speaker 1: three white claws. Meanwhile, the actual children are still dead.
20:29
Speaker 1: That is what these people never seem capable of holding
20:32
Speaker 1: in their heads. Cora is dead, Dawson is dead, Callen
20:36
Speaker 1: is dead. Not characters, not content, not the kids, children,
20:41
Speaker 1: a five year old girl, a three year old baby,
20:44
Speaker 1: and an eight month old baby. And if you say
20:47
Speaker 1: it plainly enough, and suddenly the social media pageantry starts
20:51
Speaker 1: looking as disgusting as it actually is. There should be
20:55
Speaker 1: something sacred about the dead, especially dead children. Some boundary,
20:59
Speaker 1: even the most range content goblin understands should not be crossed.
21:04
Speaker 1: Apparently not anymore. Now, tragedy is raw material, grief ist content.
21:08
Speaker 1: Court filings are fandom lore. Dead children becomes supporting evidence
21:13
Speaker 1: for whichever adult the audience has decided to emotionally adopt.
21:17
Speaker 1: And the sickest irony is that these people will call
21:20
Speaker 1: themselves advocates, advocates for whom because it's sure as hell
21:24
Speaker 1: doesn't look like advocacy for Cora or Dawson or Callin.
21:29
Speaker 1: It looks like advocacy for the person accused of ending
21:32
Speaker 1: their lives with the children quietly pushed to the edge
21:35
Speaker 1: of the frame, because acknowledging them too vividly makes the
21:39
Speaker 1: hero narrative much harder to maintain. That's why they need euphemisms.
21:43
Speaker 1: That's why they need slogans. That's why they need Sam
21:46
Speaker 1: Lindsay because saying an eight month old baby named Callan
21:50
Speaker 1: died forces you to confront the reality that inspirational slogans
21:54
Speaker 1: are trying to smother. These children deserve more dignity than
21:58
Speaker 1: being reduced to footnotes in somebody else's psychiatric defense. They
22:02
Speaker 1: deserve more dignity than becoming props in a Facebook conspiracy.
22:06
Speaker 1: They deserve more than watching adults transform their deaths. Is
22:09
Speaker 1: the fucking fandom. Whatever a jury eventually decides about Lindsay
22:14
Speaker 1: Clancy's legal responsibility, the moral center of the story should
22:17
Speaker 1: never move. It belongs with the children. Cora, Dawson, Callan,
22:22
Speaker 1: three lives, three futures, three little people who should still
22:26
Speaker 1: be here. And if your entire understanding of the case
22:29
Speaker 1: somehow leaves you talking for forty five minutes about Lindsay
22:32
Speaker 1: Clancy and forty five seconds about the children who have died,
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Speaker 1: you haven't discovered some deeper truth everyone else missed. You've
22:39
Speaker 1: just demonstrated exactly how completely the cult swallowed you. And
22:44
Speaker 1: once the colt swallows you, everything starts getting inverted. The
22:47
Speaker 1: accused becomes the victim. The dead becomes scenery. The surviving
22:51
Speaker 1: father becomes a suspect because strangers do not like his
22:54
Speaker 1: facial expressions. The children become abstractions because abstractions are easier
22:59
Speaker 1: to manipulate than actual human beings. That inversion is the
23:03
Speaker 1: entire game, because if Cora, Dawson, and Callen remain at
23:07
Speaker 1: the center of the story, the whole performance gets much harder.
23:10
Speaker 1: If you picture Cora as a real little girl instead
23:13
Speaker 1: of a line in a court filing, suddenly the hashtag
23:16
Speaker 1: activism looks grotesque. If you picture Dawson running through a house, laughing, yelling,
23:22
Speaker 1: being three years old, Suddenly the smug, little same Lindsay
23:25
Speaker 1: videos start to feel less like advocacy and more like obscenity.
23:31
Speaker 1: If you picture Callen as an eight month old baby
23:33
Speaker 1: who depended completely on adults for protection, Suddenly the Internet's
23:37
Speaker 1: endless effort to make Lindsay the emotional center of the
23:39
Speaker 1: universe becomes unbearable. And maybe that's why so many of
23:43
Speaker 1: these people avoid lingering on the children, because the children
23:47
Speaker 1: ruin the fantasy. The children make the case real. The
23:51
Speaker 1: children force everyone to confront the fact that whatever psychiatric
23:55
Speaker 1: explanations are ultimately proven, whatever legal conclusions are eventually reached,
24:00
Speaker 1: defenseless human beings lost everything. There's no comeback tour for them.
24:04
Speaker 1: There's no sympathetic documentary appearance. There's no podcast interview, there's
24:08
Speaker 1: no legal strategy. There's no army of strangers wearing their
24:12
Speaker 1: names on sweatshirts while screaming at reporters outside of courthouse.
24:16
Speaker 1: There's only absence, empty rooms, birthdays that never happen, pictures
24:21
Speaker 1: that never get updated, clothes that never get out, grown
24:25
Speaker 1: toys that stay exactly where they were left. That's grief,
24:30
Speaker 1: not your fucking TikTok atit, not your dramatic music, not
24:33
Speaker 1: your stitch video where you stare knowingly into the camera
24:36
Speaker 1: for six seconds before announcing that's something just doesn't add up.
24:40
Speaker 1: You know what doesn't add up? How three children can
24:43
Speaker 1: somehow become supporting characters in a public conversation about the
24:46
Speaker 1: woman accused of killing them. That's what doesn't add up.
24:51
Speaker 1: And there is something uniquely repulsive about watching grown adults
24:55
Speaker 1: compete to demonstrate who can feel the most compassion for
24:57
Speaker 1: Lindsey while seemingly rash in compassion for Zora, Dawson and Callen.
25:02
Speaker 1: Compassion is not a zero sum game, but attention certainly is.
25:07
Speaker 1: And these people have made their choice. They've decided where
25:10
Speaker 1: the spotlight belongs. They've decided whose pain deserves endless explanation.
25:15
Speaker 1: They've decided whose humanity deserves essays and videos and hashtags,
25:19
Speaker 1: and time after time, the children get whatever scraps are
25:23
Speaker 1: left over. Then comes the sanctimony, and that might be
25:27
Speaker 1: the most infuriating part the lectures, the smug insistence that
25:31
Speaker 1: anyone who refuses to canonize Lindsey simply doesn't understand mental health.
25:36
Speaker 1: There it is the moral blackmail. Agree with us, or
25:40
Speaker 1: you're ignorant. Agree with us, or you hate mothers. Agree
25:44
Speaker 1: with us, or you don't understand post part of illness.
25:47
Speaker 1: Agree with us, or you lack empathy. No understanding mental
25:51
Speaker 1: illness does not require surrendering your brain at the courthouse door.
25:56
Speaker 1: You can acknowledge profound psychiatric illness and still refuse to
25:59
Speaker 1: protec there are no victims. You can believe a defendant
26:02
Speaker 1: deserves a fair trial and still say the names of
26:05
Speaker 1: the children who died. You can believe that the legal
26:08
Speaker 1: system must carefully evaluate criminal responsibility without transforming the accused
26:13
Speaker 1: into a fucking folk hero. That's called holding two thoughts
26:16
Speaker 1: in your head at the same time, and apparently that
26:19
Speaker 1: is advanced placement material in the Winan Academy. Because everything
26:24
Speaker 1: has to be flattened in the team Lindsay vers the haters.
26:28
Speaker 1: Everything has to become tribal, Everything has to become a
26:31
Speaker 1: morality play where the internet crowd gets to congratulate itself
26:35
Speaker 1: for occupying the enlightened side, and once they decide that
26:39
Speaker 1: they are the enlightened ones, there's no accusation too disgusting
26:42
Speaker 1: to make against anybody standing in the way. Patrick becomes suspicious,
26:48
Speaker 1: Doctors becomes suspicious, prosecutors becomes suspicious, police becomes suspicious. Media
26:55
Speaker 1: coverage becomes suspicious. Anybody who focuses too much on the
26:59
Speaker 1: dead children become suspicious. Eventually, the only people considered trustworthy
27:04
Speaker 1: are other people inside the same Facebook group, my friends.
27:08
Speaker 1: That is a fucking cult mechanic. And we've seen this
27:10
Speaker 1: movie before. The same people who spent years training themselves
27:14
Speaker 1: to believe that every inconvenient fact in the Tyler Robinson
27:18
Speaker 1: universe was evidence of a larger conspiracy are now primed
27:21
Speaker 1: to apply that template anywhere. They do not investigate cases anymore.
27:26
Speaker 1: They import narratives. They arrive with conclusions pre installed woman defendant, Massachusetts,
27:31
Speaker 1: complicated evidence, tragedy, perfect fire up the conspiracy generator, find
27:37
Speaker 1: the corrupt institution, find the secretly evil husband, find the
27:41
Speaker 1: sinister doctor, find the hidden motive, find literally anything except
27:45
Speaker 1: the possibility that reality may be horrific, complicated, and resistant
27:50
Speaker 1: to the tidy little story you desperately want to sell
27:53
Speaker 1: your audience. And while they're doing all of that, Cora, Dawson,
27:57
Speaker 1: and Callan are still gone. That should be the gravity
28:00
Speaker 1: holding every conversation about this case in orbit, not Lindsay's
28:04
Speaker 1: fan club, not Patrick's supposed body language, not somebody's postpartum
28:08
Speaker 1: story projected onto a woman they have never met three children.
28:13
Speaker 1: Cora was old enough to have a personality that was
28:15
Speaker 1: becoming unmistakably her own. Dawson was at the age where
28:20
Speaker 1: every day brings another word, another obsession, another little piece
28:24
Speaker 1: of the person he might become. Callen had barely begun
28:28
Speaker 1: discovering the world. Think about the cruelty contained in that,
28:32
Speaker 1: not abstractly, actually think about it. Callen never got to
28:36
Speaker 1: learn to ride a bike. Dawson never got a first
28:38
Speaker 1: day of kindergarten. Cora never got to become a teenager
28:42
Speaker 1: and roll her eyes at her parents. They never got
28:45
Speaker 1: driver's licenses, first dates, graduations, careers, weddings if they wanted them,
28:50
Speaker 1: children of their own, if they wanted them. They were
28:54
Speaker 1: robbed not only of life, but of every ordinary future
28:57
Speaker 1: that comes attached to it. And somehow there are adults
29:01
Speaker 1: online acting like the urgent moral crisis here is that
29:04
Speaker 1: people are being too hard on Lindsay, give me a
29:07
Speaker 1: fucking break. You want to discuss your mental state, discuss it.
29:10
Speaker 1: You want to debate criminal responsibility, debate it, you want
29:13
Speaker 1: to examine the medical record, Fine, but stop behaving like
29:17
Speaker 1: saying the children's names is somehow an attack on mental
29:20
Speaker 1: health awareness. Stop pretending accountability and compassion are moral enemies,
29:25
Speaker 1: stop treating the accused like the only human being in
29:28
Speaker 1: the story complicated enough to deserve empathy, and most of all,
29:33
Speaker 1: stop using Cora, Dawson and Callin as background props in
29:37
Speaker 1: your Internet identity project. They weren't born to become content.
29:41
Speaker 1: They didn't exist. Those strangers could build followings around their deaths.
29:44
Speaker 1: They were not supporting characters in Lindsay Clancy's tragedy. They
29:48
Speaker 1: were children. They were the ones who were supposed to
29:51
Speaker 1: be protected. They were the ones with no voice and
29:54
Speaker 1: no escape. They're the reason this case matters at all.
29:58
Speaker 1: So every time their grinning true crime disciple fires up
30:02
Speaker 1: the ring light and says Sam Lindsay like she is
30:05
Speaker 1: unveiling some profound act of solidarity, maybe somebody should ask
30:09
Speaker 1: a different question. Same Cora, Sam Dawson, same Callan. Where
30:14
Speaker 1: is that movement? Where are the hour long videos centered
30:17
Speaker 1: on the lives they lost? Where are the armies demanding
30:21
Speaker 1: that they not be reduced to inconvenient details? Where are
30:24
Speaker 1: the hashtags reminding everyone that these children were people before
30:27
Speaker 1: they became case numbers. Funny how quiet the colt gets
30:31
Speaker 1: when the spotlight moves away from its chosen protagonist and
30:35
Speaker 1: that silence tells you everything. And maybe that's where this
30:39
Speaker 1: really has to end, Not with another theory, not with
30:42
Speaker 1: another live stream, not with another smug little video from
30:45
Speaker 1: somebody staring into a ring light like they have been
30:48
Speaker 1: personally appointed by God to dakote a murder case from
30:51
Speaker 1: their kitchen. With shame, because some of you should feel it.
30:55
Speaker 1: Not performative shame, not the kind you post about, The
30:58
Speaker 1: quiet kind, the kind that creeps in when the phone's
31:01
Speaker 1: finally down, the comments stop refreshing, the lights stop coming,
31:04
Speaker 1: and there's nobody left to impress. The kind that makes
31:07
Speaker 1: you ask yourself what the fuck you have been doing.
31:11
Speaker 1: You've been consuming the worst day of somebody else's life
31:13
Speaker 1: as content. You've been turning dead children into lare. You've
31:18
Speaker 1: been turning a grieving father into a character. You've been
31:21
Speaker 1: turning and accused mother into a symbol. You've been turning
31:25
Speaker 1: tragedy into community theater. And then you have the nerve
31:29
Speaker 1: to call it compassion. Compassion for whom Because Cora can't
31:33
Speaker 1: read your posts, Dawson can't hear your theories, Callen cannot
31:36
Speaker 1: be comforted by your hashtags. They don't get anything from
31:39
Speaker 1: your movement. Nothing, not one goddamn thing. They're dead. That
31:44
Speaker 1: word needs to stop being sanitized dead. Cora is dead,
31:48
Speaker 1: Dawson is dead, Callen is dead, not gone, not lost,
31:52
Speaker 1: not at peace. Dead. Their lives stopped, their futures stopped,
31:57
Speaker 1: their famili's lives split into before and after, and every
32:01
Speaker 1: single ordinary thing the rest of us take for granted
32:04
Speaker 1: became something they would never get. Cora never gets another
32:07
Speaker 1: birthday morning, Dawson never gets to wake up excited because
32:11
Speaker 1: it's Noed. Callin never gets to wabble across the living
32:14
Speaker 1: room floor on unsteady legs while somebody cheers because he
32:17
Speaker 1: finally took his first steps. YO. Think about that, really,
32:21
Speaker 1: think about it. There are photographs that will never be taken,
32:25
Speaker 1: shoes that will never need a bigger size, school pictures
32:29
Speaker 1: that will never exist, Christmas ornaments that will never get
32:33
Speaker 1: another year written on them. There are empty spaces in
32:37
Speaker 1: a family where three human beings were supposed to keep growing,
32:42
Speaker 1: and the Internet response to that has somehow included fucking
32:46
Speaker 1: fan clubs that should haunt people. It should haunt every
32:49
Speaker 1: person whoever watched a video about this case, and for good,
32:52
Speaker 1: for even five minutes that the center of It was
32:55
Speaker 1: not a defendant, not a defense strategy, not a diagnosis,
32:59
Speaker 1: not a husband, not a conspiracy. It was three children
33:02
Speaker 1: who should still be here. Cora should still be here,
33:05
Speaker 1: Dawson should still be here, Callen should still be here.
33:09
Speaker 1: That should sit in your chest like a brick. And
33:12
Speaker 1: if it does not, then maybe you have watched so
33:14
Speaker 1: much true crime content that death does not register as
33:17
Speaker 1: death anymore. Maybe a registers as an episode, a development,
33:21
Speaker 1: a thumbnail, a notification, a new document dropped, a new theory,
33:25
Speaker 1: just posted a new live starting at eight yo. That
33:30
Speaker 1: is fucking horrifying, because somewhere along the way, people stopped
33:35
Speaker 1: witnessing tragedy and started consuming it. They stopped listening and
33:39
Speaker 1: started choosing teams. They stopped asking what happened and started
33:43
Speaker 1: asking who they were supposed to defend. And then the
33:46
Speaker 1: ugliest transformation happened of all the victims became inconvenient, too sad,
33:52
Speaker 1: too final, too morally clarifying. Because dead children make fandom harder.
33:58
Speaker 1: Dead children ruin the fun. Dead children do not fit
34:01
Speaker 1: neatly into slogans, so they get pushed to the side,
34:05
Speaker 1: mention briefly, then back to Lindsay, back to Patrick back
34:08
Speaker 1: to theories, back to the dopamine, back to the fucking circus.
34:13
Speaker 1: And maybe that's why Same lindsay bothers me so much,
34:16
Speaker 1: because there is something unbearably narcisstic about looking at this
34:19
Speaker 1: horror and finding yourself in it. Same lindsay, me too.
34:23
Speaker 1: I understand, I relate. I see myself in her. Fine.
34:27
Speaker 1: Now try this, See yourself in Cora. Imagine being five
34:31
Speaker 1: years old. Imagine trusting the adults like your mother around you,
34:35
Speaker 1: because that's what five year olds do. Imagine having no
34:38
Speaker 1: concept of criminal responsibility, medication, postpartum psychosis, court filings, or
34:43
Speaker 1: internet movements. You just know home, You just know your family.
34:48
Speaker 1: You just know that people around you are supposed to
34:50
Speaker 1: keep you safe. See yourself in Dawson, three years old,
34:54
Speaker 1: still learning what the world is, still learning words, four things,
34:58
Speaker 1: still small enough that fear means looking for the adult
35:01
Speaker 1: you trust. See yourself and Callen eight months old, an infant,
35:06
Speaker 1: completely helpless, completely dependent, unable to understand danger, unable to run,
35:11
Speaker 1: unable to ask why, unable to call for anybody in
35:15
Speaker 1: a way the world could understand. Now, say Sam, Lindsay,
35:19
Speaker 1: say it again, say a while picturing those children, Say
35:23
Speaker 1: it without looking away. Maybe it doesn't roll off the
35:26
Speaker 1: tongue quite as easily anymore, And maybe that's the point.
35:30
Speaker 1: Maybe people need to stop seeing themselves in the person
35:33
Speaker 1: at the center of the legal case and start seeing
35:35
Speaker 1: themselves in the people who had no power at all.
35:38
Speaker 1: Because Cora didn't choose any of this. Neither did Dawson,
35:42
Speaker 1: neither did Callen. They didn't choose to become symbols or
35:45
Speaker 1: content or have strangers dissect their family online. They didn't
35:50
Speaker 1: choose to have their names buried underneath debates about somebody
35:53
Speaker 1: else's culpability. They were just children. And children are supposed
35:58
Speaker 1: to be allowed to exist without become evidence. They're supposed
36:01
Speaker 1: to grow. They're supposed to annoy their parents. They're supposed
36:04
Speaker 1: to spill juice, wake up too early, ask a thousand questions,
36:09
Speaker 1: loose some teeth, bring home terrible drawings that get stuck
36:12
Speaker 1: on the refrigerator. Anyway, they're supposed to become people. Cora
36:17
Speaker 1: was supposed to become someone, Dawson was supposed to become someone.
36:21
Speaker 1: Callen was supposed to become someone, and we'll never know who.
36:26
Speaker 1: That's the cruelty that should break your fucking heart. We
36:29
Speaker 1: don't just mourn who they were. We mourn every version
36:32
Speaker 1: of them that never got to exist. The teenager Cora
36:36
Speaker 1: never became the man. Dawson never became the person. Callen
36:41
Speaker 1: never even got the chance to begin becoming. Entire human
36:45
Speaker 1: lives are raised before they could unfold, and then strangers
36:49
Speaker 1: come along and turn the aftermath into entertainment. Yo, that's
36:53
Speaker 1: the part I can't get past. Somebody's baby dies and
36:56
Speaker 1: somebody else gets engagement. Somebody's families obliterated, and somebodyody else
37:00
Speaker 1: gets followers, somebody's grief because somebody else's brand. There's something
37:05
Speaker 1: spiritually rotten about all of it. And you don't fix
37:08
Speaker 1: it by putting justice in your bio. You don't fix
37:11
Speaker 1: it by calling yourself an advocate. You don't fix it
37:13
Speaker 1: by adding heart emojis next to a child's name. After
37:17
Speaker 1: spending the previous twenty posts making the accused the emotional
37:20
Speaker 1: center of the story, at some point you have to
37:23
Speaker 1: decide what kind of person you want to be when
37:26
Speaker 1: nobody's watching. Not what side you're on, not what creator
37:30
Speaker 1: you follow, not what hashtag is trending, what kind of person?
37:34
Speaker 1: Because the next case is coming, there's going to be
37:36
Speaker 1: another tragedy, another accused person, another dead family, another courtroom,
37:41
Speaker 1: and the machine will start again. Somebody's going to tell
37:44
Speaker 1: you who to hate. Somebody's going to tell you who
37:47
Speaker 1: to worship. Somebody will tell you the whole thing is
37:50
Speaker 1: a conspiracy, and you'll get another chance to choose. You
37:54
Speaker 1: can be a spectator, you can be a fan, you
37:56
Speaker 1: can be part of the mob. Or you can remember
38:00
Speaker 1: that real people are buried underneath the story you're consuming.
38:04
Speaker 1: And before you post, before you speculate, before you accuse,
38:08
Speaker 1: before you turn somebody else's dead child into another fucking
38:11
Speaker 1: piece of content. I want you to picture Cora, picture Dawson,
38:16
Speaker 1: picture Callen, Picture three children who will never know that
38:20
Speaker 1: strangers fought over their deaths on the internet, and ask
38:25
Speaker 1: yourself something harder than whether your theory is right. Ask
38:29
Speaker 1: yourself whether your behavior would discuss you if those children
38:32
Speaker 1: were yours. Because the algorithm will forget their names, the
38:36
Speaker 1: influencers will move on, the Facebook groups will find another obsession.
38:41
Speaker 1: The wine ants will migrate to another courthouse. But somewhere
38:46
Speaker 1: there will always be three empty places at a table
38:49
Speaker 1: that should not be empty. Three voices of family will
38:52
Speaker 1: never hear again. Three lives that should have kept going,
38:56
Speaker 1: and long after everybody else has found something new to
38:59
Speaker 1: obsess over, that family will still wake up every morning
39:03
Speaker 1: in a world where Cora, Dawson and Callan are not
39:06
Speaker 1: in it. So if you can look at that, truly
39:09
Speaker 1: look at it, and your first instinct is still grab
39:12
Speaker 1: your phone and make yourself part of the story, then
39:16
Speaker 1: maybe you don't need another true crime case. Maybe you
39:19
Speaker 1: need to ask yourself when exactly another human beings unimaginable
39:23
Speaker 1: grief stop looking like a tragedy to you and started
39:27
Speaker 1: looking like content. And if you can't answer that question
39:30
Speaker 1: without feeling sick to your stomach, good, maybe there is
39:34
Speaker 1: still something human left in you. And when you do that,
39:37
Speaker 1: that's when the mirror gets even harder to look into,
39:40
Speaker 1: because maybe the question isn't whether you were technically allowed
39:43
Speaker 1: to say it. Maybe the question is why you wanted
39:46
Speaker 1: to Why did you need the theory, why did you
39:48
Speaker 1: need the villain, why did you need the conspiracy, and
39:52
Speaker 1: why did you need to make yourself part of the
39:54
Speaker 1: story that was already carrying more pain than most people
39:57
Speaker 1: could survive. What did you get from it? Community a
40:01
Speaker 1: little rush every time somebody liked your comment, the satisfaction
40:05
Speaker 1: of feeling smarter than the police, smarter than the lawyers,
40:08
Speaker 1: smarter than the doctors, smarter than everybody who didn't see
40:11
Speaker 1: what you supposedly saw. Was it worth it? Was that
40:15
Speaker 1: worth turning a grieving father into your suspect of the week.
40:18
Speaker 1: Was it worth talking about three dead children like there
40:21
Speaker 1: were clues in an escape room? Was it worth flattening Cora,
40:25
Speaker 1: Dawson and Callen into background details while you built an
40:28
Speaker 1: entire identity around defending the adult at the center of
40:31
Speaker 1: the case. That's the question nobody wants to answer, because
40:35
Speaker 1: answering it requires admitting something ugly. Some people don't come
40:40
Speaker 1: to these cases looking for justice. They come for a feeling,
40:44
Speaker 1: the feeling of belonging, the feeling of certainty, the feeling
40:47
Speaker 1: of being in on something, the feeling of standing with
40:51
Speaker 1: a righteous few against us supposedly brainwash masses. And once
40:55
Speaker 1: they get addicted to that feeling, the human beings inside
40:58
Speaker 1: the case stop mattering as much as maintaining it. That's
41:02
Speaker 1: how you wind up accusing people without evidence. That's how
41:05
Speaker 1: you wind up laughing at grieving families. That's how you
41:08
Speaker 1: wind up calling witnesses liars. Because their testimony hurts your
41:11
Speaker 1: preferred narrative. That's how you wind up looking at a
41:15
Speaker 1: photograph of three children and somehow seeing an obstacle to
41:18
Speaker 1: your argument instead of three fucking children. And that's where
41:23
Speaker 1: I want this to hurt, because I don't want you
41:25
Speaker 1: thinking about Lindsay anymore. I don't want you thinking about
41:28
Speaker 1: Karen Reid. I don't want you thinking about prosecutors, defense attorneys, TikTok, creators,
41:33
Speaker 1: Facebook groups, hashtags, or core filings. For one minute, strip
41:37
Speaker 1: all that away. Imagine your house. Imagine the noise inside
41:41
Speaker 1: of it, the footsteps, the cartoons playing too loudly, the
41:44
Speaker 1: half finished snack on the table, the tiny shoes near
41:48
Speaker 1: the door, the blanket dragged from one room to another,
41:51
Speaker 1: the cup that always ends up somewhere it isn't supposed
41:55
Speaker 1: to be. Imagine the thousand little annoyances of raising children
41:59
Speaker 1: that feel enormous in the moment and absolutely priceless when
42:03
Speaker 1: you realize what their absence would mean. Now, imagine silence,
42:08
Speaker 1: not peaceful silence, permanent silence. No footsteps tomorrow, no laughter
42:13
Speaker 1: from the other room, no argument over bedtime, no small
42:17
Speaker 1: voice asking for water after you already tucked them in,
42:21
Speaker 1: no toys left in the hallway, no serials spilled on
42:24
Speaker 1: the counter, no sticky fingerprints on the window. Nothing. And
42:29
Speaker 1: then imagine opening your phone and seeing strangers turning that
42:33
Speaker 1: silence into entertainment. Imagine watching someone smirk while discussing your family.
42:39
Speaker 1: Imagine watching someone accuse you of murder because they didn't
42:42
Speaker 1: like the way you spoke. Imagine watching people make cute
42:45
Speaker 1: slogans out of the worst thing that ever happened to you.
42:48
Speaker 1: Imagine watching your children become characters in somebody else's fucking
42:52
Speaker 1: content strategy. Would you call that advocacy? Would you call
42:56
Speaker 1: that entertainment? Would you still think that everybody was just
42:59
Speaker 1: asking questions? Or would you finally understand what it feels
43:03
Speaker 1: like when the person on the other side of the
43:06
Speaker 1: screen is not a character at all. That's what Korra
43:09
Speaker 1: was a person. That's what Dawson was a person. That's
43:13
Speaker 1: what Kllen was a person. Small people, yes, dependent people,
43:18
Speaker 1: people whose worlds were still tiny, but people. And there's
43:22
Speaker 1: something profoundly broken about a culture that has to be
43:25
Speaker 1: reminded about that we should not have to humanize dead children.
43:30
Speaker 1: Their humanity should be the easiest thing in the whole
43:33
Speaker 1: fucking world understand, But apparently it isn't. Apparently we need photographs,
43:38
Speaker 1: we need ages, we need names repeated over and over,
43:41
Speaker 1: because otherwise the Internet turns them into the victims and
43:44
Speaker 1: then promptly forgets them while everybody argues about the adults.
43:48
Speaker 1: So remember them, Cora, Dawson, Callen. Not because their name
43:52
Speaker 1: strengthens an argument, not because they help one side win.
43:56
Speaker 1: Remember them because they were here and now they're not.
43:59
Speaker 1: That should be enough. That should be enough to make
44:02
Speaker 1: you hesitate before you post, enough to make you stop
44:04
Speaker 1: before you accuse, enough to make you ask whether the
44:08
Speaker 1: rush of being part of an online movement is worth
44:11
Speaker 1: contributing one more ounce of cruelty to a family already
44:15
Speaker 1: buried beneath it. And maybe this is the most important
44:18
Speaker 1: question of all. What if you're wrong, not theoretically really wrong.
44:24
Speaker 1: What if the person you accused never did the thing
44:27
Speaker 1: you told thousands of people they did. What if the
44:30
Speaker 1: grieving father whose eyes you analyzed was simply a grieving father.
44:34
Speaker 1: What if the witness you called a murderer was telling
44:36
Speaker 1: the truth. What if the conspiracy that made you feel
44:39
Speaker 1: so clever existed nowhere except inside an algorithm that learned
44:43
Speaker 1: outrage kept you watching longer. What do you do then?
44:47
Speaker 1: Delete the video, close the account, move on to the
44:49
Speaker 1: next case. What happens to the person whose name you
44:53
Speaker 1: dragged through the dirt? What happens to the family that
44:56
Speaker 1: had to read it? What happens to the children whose
44:58
Speaker 1: deaths you used as fuel for your little online crusade.
45:03
Speaker 1: There's no delete button for that. You don't get to
45:06
Speaker 1: pull an accusation back out of another person's life after
45:09
Speaker 1: thousands of strangers have swallowed it. You don't get to
45:12
Speaker 1: pretend it was harmless because you put a question mark
45:14
Speaker 1: at the end. You don't get to say I was
45:16
Speaker 1: only speculating after speculation becomes somebody else's nightmare. And you
45:21
Speaker 1: definitely don't get to call yourself compassionate while refusing to
45:24
Speaker 1: consider the damage you might be doing. So, before you
45:28
Speaker 1: make the next video, ask yourself whether you would say
45:31
Speaker 1: it's standing in front of the people you're talking about.
45:34
Speaker 1: Would you look Patrick Clancy in the eye and accuse
45:36
Speaker 1: them without evidence? Would you stand in front of the
45:39
Speaker 1: families who love those children and explain why your engagement
45:42
Speaker 1: metrics require another theory? Would you stand beside the three
45:46
Speaker 1: tiny graves and perform your fucking content. Would you say,
45:49
Speaker 1: Sam lindsay there? Would you say it loudly? Would you
45:52
Speaker 1: still feel clever? Would you still feel righteous? Would you
45:55
Speaker 1: still feel like you're a part of something important? Or
45:59
Speaker 1: would the physical reality of what happened finally crush all
46:02
Speaker 1: of that Internet bullshit into the dust where it belongs.
46:06
Speaker 1: That's the standard, not whether your followers clap, not whether
46:09
Speaker 1: your Facebook group agrees, not whether some creator would a
46:12
Speaker 1: merch store reposts you. Could you stand beside those graves
46:16
Speaker 1: and still be proud of every word you said? Because
46:19
Speaker 1: someday all of us disappear from the conversation. The creators disappear,
46:24
Speaker 1: the commenters disappear, the armies disappear, the podcast end, the
46:29
Speaker 1: Facebook groups die, the TikTok accounts go dormant, and eventually
46:33
Speaker 1: nobody remembers who won the argument. But there will still
46:36
Speaker 1: have been a little girl named Cora, there will still
46:39
Speaker 1: have been a little boy named Dawson, and there will
46:42
Speaker 1: still have been a baby named Callen. They existed and
46:45
Speaker 1: they matter, and nothing any of us say online will
46:49
Speaker 1: ever give them back the lives they were supposed to have.
46:52
Speaker 1: So maybe the final question isn't whether Lindsay Clancy is
46:55
Speaker 1: someone you identify with. Maybe it isn't whether Karen Reid
46:59
Speaker 1: was your introduction to the Great Massachusetts Conspiracy industrial Complex.
47:04
Speaker 1: Maybe it isn't even whether your theory turns out to
47:07
Speaker 1: be right. Maybe the only question that matters is this.
47:12
Speaker 1: When three children were dead and the world was at
47:14
Speaker 1: its ugliest, what did you choose to become? Did you
47:17
Speaker 1: become more careful, more compassionate, more humble about what you
47:22
Speaker 1: could not possibly know? Did you remember that there were
47:25
Speaker 1: real human beings underneath the headlines? Or did you become louder, crueler,
47:31
Speaker 1: more certain? Did you turn grief into entertainment and strangers
47:35
Speaker 1: into targets because being part of the mob made you
47:37
Speaker 1: feel important? Because one day there will be no algorithm
47:41
Speaker 1: to reward you for the answer. No likes, no shares,
47:45
Speaker 1: no little hearts floating across the screen, just you and
47:48
Speaker 1: the memory of what you said when real people were hurting.
47:52
Speaker 1: If that thought makes you uncomfortable, don't scroll past it.
47:55
Speaker 1: Stay there, because maybe that discomfort is your conscience finally
48:00
Speaker 1: asking to be heard. And if you have to look
48:02
Speaker 1: away from Cora Dawson and Kalen in order to keep
48:04
Speaker 1: believing you are the good guy in this story, then
48:07
Speaker 1: deep down you already know the answer. And look, this
48:12
Speaker 1: is where I should make something absolutely clear about why
48:15
Speaker 1: I talk about these cases at all, because these conversations
48:18
Speaker 1: have never been entertainment for me. I don't sell merch,
48:22
Speaker 1: I don't do live streams, I don't do collaborations. I
48:24
Speaker 1: don't go on television. I don't need to turn every
48:27
Speaker 1: case into a networking opportunity, a branding exercise, a social ladder,
48:32
Speaker 1: or a fucking content funnel. What we talk about here
48:36
Speaker 1: is not about me, and it never has been. I'm
48:39
Speaker 1: not interested in making myself the story, because the second
48:42
Speaker 1: the person covering a case becomes more important than the
48:45
Speaker 1: people inside the case, something has already gone wrong. I'm
48:49
Speaker 1: not interested in sitting in a digital circle where everybody
48:52
Speaker 1: takes turns congratulating one another for holding the approved opinion.
48:57
Speaker 1: What matters to me is the truth, or as close
49:00
Speaker 1: as we can reasonably get to it, because absolute certainty
49:03
Speaker 1: is rare, and anybody pretending otherwise is usually selling something.
49:08
Speaker 1: What matters is evidence, accountability, and justice. It's about asking
49:13
Speaker 1: hard questions when the facts demand hard questions, and it's
49:16
Speaker 1: equally about having the discipline to say I don't know
49:19
Speaker 1: when the evidence does not support a conclusion. If the
49:23
Speaker 1: evidence changes, the conclusions should change with it. If the
49:26
Speaker 1: facts are ugly, they are still the facts. If the
49:29
Speaker 1: truth makes people angry, then let them be angry. Because
49:33
Speaker 1: truth does not owe anyone a comfortable emotional experience. Justice
49:37
Speaker 1: does not care about follower accounts, engagement, popularity, access, clout,
49:42
Speaker 1: or whether the people in the loudest Facebook group think
49:45
Speaker 1: you are one of the good guys. I genuinely do
49:48
Speaker 1: not care who likes me and who does not, because
49:51
Speaker 1: that's a game for other people to play. Whether somebody
49:54
Speaker 1: thinks I'm too harsh, too skeptical, too angry, to unwilling
49:57
Speaker 1: to play along, or insufficiently loyal to whatever team everybody
50:02
Speaker 1: has decided to join this week means absolutely nothing to me.
50:06
Speaker 1: If a position is supported by evidence, I'll say it.
50:09
Speaker 1: If it's not, I will not pretend that it is
50:12
Speaker 1: because doing so would make me more popular with one
50:15
Speaker 1: side or another. I have no interest in becoming emotionally
50:18
Speaker 1: dependent on the approval of strangers, because the moment that happens,
50:22
Speaker 1: truth becomes negotiable. Once approval becomes the reward. People start
50:27
Speaker 1: shaping their conclusions around applause, and that's how analysis dies
50:32
Speaker 1: and propaganda begins. That's also why I could be wrong
50:36
Speaker 1: matters so much. Those four words should be mandatory in
50:40
Speaker 1: any discussion of true crime, because that's the line separating
50:45
Speaker 1: skepticism from arrogance. I could be wrong. I wasn't there.
50:48
Speaker 1: I don't know these people. I have not seen everything
50:51
Speaker 1: investigators have seen. I'm watching fragments of somebody else's catastrophe
50:55
Speaker 1: through a screen. That kind of humility would sayve a
50:58
Speaker 1: lot of innocent people from being dragged through hell by
51:01
Speaker 1: strangers who have a mistaken confidence for competence. But humility
51:06
Speaker 1: does not go viral. Certainty does outrage? Does accusations do
51:11
Speaker 1: something fills off? Does? A complicated truth gets twelve thousand
51:15
Speaker 1: views while the conspiracy gets two million? And that should
51:19
Speaker 1: scare the shit out of everybody. Algorithms don't care whether
51:23
Speaker 1: something is true. They care whether people stop scrolling. They
51:27
Speaker 1: don't care whether a grieving father is destroyed by a
51:30
Speaker 1: false accusation. They care whether the next video plays. They
51:34
Speaker 1: don't care whether Cora, Dawson and Kalin are treated with dignity.
51:37
Speaker 1: They care whether their names keep people engaged, reward the
51:41
Speaker 1: ugliest version of the story often enough, and the machine
51:44
Speaker 1: learns exactly what to serve next. More suspicion, more outrage,
51:49
Speaker 1: more certainty, more villains, and less humanity. Eventually, every grieving
51:54
Speaker 1: person becomes a body language puzzle. Every witness is hiding something,
51:58
Speaker 1: Every tragedy requires conspiracy, every silence is suspicious, every pause
52:03
Speaker 1: is meaningful, every inconsistency is sinister, and every person who
52:08
Speaker 1: refuses to join the frenzy becomes part of the problem.
52:12
Speaker 1: That's why the question what if you are wrong has
52:14
Speaker 1: to sit at the center of all of this. Not
52:17
Speaker 1: wrong theoretically, but really wrong. So when the next case
52:21
Speaker 1: comes and the next frenzy begins, and the next crowd
52:23
Speaker 1: tells you exactly who to worship and exactly who to destroy,
52:27
Speaker 1: remember this moment. Remember Cora, Remember Dawson, Remember Callen. Remember
52:32
Speaker 1: that behind every screen there can be real bedrooms, that
52:35
Speaker 1: when quiet, real parents staring at clothes their children will
52:39
Speaker 1: never outgrow, real families waking up every morning into an absence.
52:44
Speaker 1: The rest of us cannot begin to understand. Then decide
52:48
Speaker 1: what you are going to add to that suffering, because
52:51
Speaker 1: that is ultimately what every post, every share, every accusation,
52:55
Speaker 1: every joke, every theory becomes something added to somebody else's reality.
53:00
Speaker 1: Make damn sure that when the noise is over and
53:03
Speaker 1: all that remains is the person staring back at you
53:05
Speaker 1: in the mirror, you can live with what you chose
53:08
Speaker 1: to add. And if you cannot, then maybe the question
53:11
Speaker 1: you should be asking was never what kind of person
53:14
Speaker 1: Lindsey Clancy is, what kind of person Patrick Clancy is?
53:18
Speaker 1: What kind of people the police are, or what kind
53:20
Speaker 1: of people everyone on the other side of the argument
53:23
Speaker 1: might be. Maybe the question that should keep you awake
53:26
Speaker 1: tonight is much simpler, what kind of person did this
53:30
Speaker 1: turn you into? All of the information that goes with
53:33
Speaker 1: this episode can be found in the description box.