Top influencers in the online subculture of true crime theorists/crowdsourcers whose exploits include heroically identified hundreds of the MAGA terrorists who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 and less heroically – well downright pathetically – conducted themselves during the search for murdered white woman Gabby Petito as well as her piece of shit boyfriend until he self-canceled with a shotgun in a Florida swamp, and various degrees of useful contributions to law enforcement investigations in between, have for the most part decided to sit out the hunt for the assassin who murdered United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week, NBC News reports.
“Absolutely fucking not,” said TikToker Savannah Sparks, whose beat is tracking down and the identities of people caught committing racist and/or criminal acts on videos. Sparks, who has worked with law enforcement in the past, says her 1.3 million followers have “concepts of thoughts and prayers. It’s, you know, claim denied on my prayers there,” rather than any motivation to help.
“I don’t have to encourage violence. I don’t have to condone violence by any means. But I also don’t have to help,” said “thatdaneshguy,” another true crime TikTok geek with 2 million followers. One Twitter user who initially used some open source Citibike API data to incorrectly advance a theory that the assassin had fled the scene on one of NYC’s ubiquitous rental bicycles took a lot of shit from others for trying to help the investigation. Another crime TikToker, Mike McWhorter, said the blowback against that one schmuck helped him read the room in the community. “If you’re seeing it in such a groundswell, I have to imagine that factors into some people’s decision,” McWhoter, who goes by TizzyEnt and has 6.7 million followers, said. He added that mostly “there’s this weird thing, this vibe of like, I don’t see a bunch of people just feeling an urgency.” Heartbreaking, ain’t it?