TikTok sleuths: inside the weird world of social-media detectives
The hashtag #truecrime has been viewed over 27 billion times on TikTok. I think I can probably claim a few thousand myself, scrolling endlessly through gruesome murder cases dictated by a spotty teenager until I’m frozen stiff with fear. It was only a matter of time before these TikTok detectives began to blur the line between their feeds and the real world, and between what really happened and what they wished had happened. More clicks means more exposure. More exposure means more money. Last week in England, Lancashire police officers investigating the disappearance of a woman called Nicola Bulley held a press conference where they slammed TikTokkers for “playing private detective,” claiming they had been “inundated with false information.
