The internet frenzy following the criminal trial of Lindsay Clancy highlights the parasocial tendencies surrounding “true crime” in the digital era, calling into question the lack of boundaries normalized in internet culture.
In the past month, the trial of Lindsay Clancy — an American mother accused of murdering her three children in January 2023 following struggles with postpartum depression and psychosis — has exploded online. Though the case was first understood as a failure of the American medical system’s treatment of mental health, online responses quickly became sensationalized and conspiratorial as users broke down every detail of the case and began to suspect that Lindsay was innocent.
It is undoubtable that Lindsay’s story is tragic: her defense team alleges that she was experiencing “insomnia, anxiety and depression,” leading up to the murders of her children. The detail garnering the most online sympathy is that Lindsay sought help in several areas to remedy her intrusive thoughts and mental health struggles. According to NBC News, Lindsay “saw psychiatrists, called a suicide hotline, went to the emergency room and was turned away from inpatient treatment” all while being prescribed “13 medications over four months.” Evidently, the case demonstrates the medical system’s failure to provide Lindsay with the mental health support she repeatedly sought — a failure that resulted in the tragic loss of three lives.
However, the internet’s interest in the case stretches far beyond the expression of sympathy for this tragedy. Countless TikTok users took it upon themselves to analyze each aspect of the case, pouring over hours’ worth of footage from the tapings of the trial to eventually deduce that Lindsay was innocent, and it was truly her husband Patrick Clancy who murdered the children and framed her for it.
Several TikTok users allege that Patrick was having an affair during his marriage with Lindsay, giving him a motive to kill his family. They’ve interrogated his testimony of the events leading up to the murders and alleged that Patrick was drugging Lindsay to “[make] her crazy.”
Even if users do not explicitly argue that Patrick is a criminal mastermind in this case, they seem to unanimously characterize him as an apathetic spouse, with one user arguing that he holds a level of responsibility in his children’s death:
“She had told him multiple times before the incident that she was feeling like harming the kids. He still left her alone with them for an hour,” noted the TikTok user. “He failed at protecting his children.”
In the comments of the video, another user responded, “because he was having an affair.”
Despite how extreme these allegations sound, many of the TikTok videos that spread this storyline are admittedly convincing. They point out gaps in the story with striking authority and, once you’ve seen dozens in the span of a doomscrolling session, you too could be convinced that the prosecution has the wrong killer.
However, there is a fine line between expressing concern and sympathy for a tragedy online and making a spectacle of that tragedy for engagement. Unfortunately, most of the TikTok content surrounding the Clancy case resembles the latter.
From A.I. songs being created about Lindsay’s innocence, to rampant Facebook stalking of the Clancys themselves, TikTok users are treating the trial like it is an interactive, bingeworthy Netflix series.
The issue here isn’t with expressing doubt about the allegations against Lindsay or noting concerns about potential gaps in her husband’s story. The issue is that the murder of three children is being sensationalized online, treated as though the Gone Girl film came to life and it is up to a TikTok audience to crack the case.
Crime scene photos have been plastered online, clips of Lindsay breaking down into tears during her trial have infiltrated algorithms and it seems that every random TikTok user has a hypothesis surrounding what time the children were murdered to affirm or disprove the defense’s case, depending on whose “side” they’re on.
The insensitive nature with which TikTok users are approaching the Clancy case is precisely the problem with the “true crime” genre in the era of social media.
On short-form content platforms like TikTok and Instagram, videos are designed to grab users’ attention in the first few seconds, so they don’t scroll on through the endless mass of content available to them. This is exactly why social media algorithms push extremist content: it triggers more engagement and keeps users scrolling.
And how can “true crime” content not be insensitive when it is created on platforms that reward sensationalizing tragedy?
Evidently, the online response to Lindsay Clancy’s trial has not been appropriate in the slightest. The murder of her children is not a “hot topic” or a puzzle for TikTok users to solve. It is a horrific event that the family will continue to live with after the Clancys have circulated out of the algorithmic trend cycle.