ICYMI - Did TikTok Find Gabby Petito, or Exploit Her?
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2021
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While authorities searched for missing 22-year-old Gabby Petito, she was everywhere to be found on TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram. Content creators, some well-intentioned and others simply chasing clout and clicks, turned the story of Gabby’s apparent death into the latest in true crime drama. On today’s show, Madison and Rachelle talk about the murkiness of the true crime internet and the ethics of using tragedy for clicks. They’re joined later in the show by Hayley Toumaian, a TikTok creator and novice true crime podcast host who says the rapid pace of the news genre means sometimes getting things wrong in front of an audience of millions and willfully sharing misinformation.
Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Derek John.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So no, I do not know Gabby. I have no connection to her or her family. |
| 0:07.7 | But when I first heard about her case, it really stuck with me. |
| 0:13.3 | Hi, I'm Madison Malone Kircher. |
| 0:15.3 | And I'm Rachel Hampton, and you're listening to I see why I'm mine. |
| 0:18.6 | In case you missed it. |
| 0:19.9 | Slate's podcast about internet culture. |
| 0:22.4 | We want to start out this episode with a correction. |
| 0:25.2 | It's very serious. |
| 0:26.5 | Shout out to listener Marissa, who pointed out, we were wrong in our last episode. |
| 0:32.4 | This has never happened before. |
| 0:34.0 | We've never been wrong in our entire life. |
| 0:36.9 | Not a day in my life, except last week |
| 0:39.0 | when we said that the category of foods on Tumblr, like say, Tidepods, that one should never |
| 0:44.5 | eat, even though they look like a delicious candy, are called forbidden foods. That's incorrect. They are, in |
| 0:49.4 | fact, forbidden snacks. In my defense, Madison didn't know at all, and I got to Forbidden Snacks. |
| 1:01.7 | In my defense, Madison didn't know at all, and I got exactly one half of this term correct. |
| 1:02.6 | No, no, no. |
| 1:03.4 | So. |
| 1:03.8 | Rachel. So. |
| 1:04.2 | Rachel. |
| 1:05.0 | This is about snack accuracy in journalism. |
| 1:09.3 | I've been waiting to use that all day. |
... |
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