Why Gabby Petito's Case Went Viral But Daniel Robinson's Didn't
September 2021: My entire TikTok feed became a true crime investigation simulator.
Strangers were analyzing dash cam footage like they were getting paid for it. Reddit threads went 47 comments deep arguing about van door hinges. Millions of people were suddenly experts on Wyoming campgrounds.
Gabby Petito's disappearance had activated something in our collective brain.
Meanwhile, Daniel Robinson had been missing for three months. His father was doing everything Gabby's family did. Organizing searches, hiring investigators, begging for coverage.
The difference? Staggering.
This episode isn't another retelling (you've heard it). It's about the psychological machinery that makes millions of us mobilize for certain cases while others disappear into silence. I've been tracking patterns in viral crime cases for a year, and Gabby's hits four of what I call the Seven Pillars of Harm.
Think of this as your field guide to recognizing what we're actually doing when we think we're helping.
[00:00] When Crowdsourcing Solves Cases and Destroys Lives
Three people you've never heard of actually found Gabby Petito.
A graphic designer stuck behind a white van. A YouTube couple filming their road trip. A college student who picked up a weird hitchhiker.
They noticed things. Reported them. Actually helped.
That same week? An innocent van life couple got death threats because someone on TikTok thought their van "looked suspicious." Wrong people. Completely destroyed anyway.
Here's what makes this disturbing: Sometimes it was the same people doing both things. Sharing helpful tips AND false accusations. The platforms didn't distinguish. The algorithm promoted both.
The episode breaks down the exact cognitive mechanism that makes crowdsourcing both brilliant and dangerous. Why "trying to help" isn't a defense. What happens when millions mobilize with zero coordination.
Plus the psychological bias that makes you think you'd never be the one spreading false information. (You might want to rethink that.)
[15:30] The Pattern Your Brain Doesn't Want You to Notice
Pop quiz: Name another person who went missing summer 2021.
Struggling? Yeah.
Daniel Robinson disappeared three months before Gabby was reported missing. His father launched searches, hired investigators, ran social media campaigns. The national response was basically crickets.
Lauren Cho and Jelani Day were also missing that summer.
Four young people. Four desperate families doing everything humanly possible. Only one case activated millions of amateur detectives.
There's actual quantified research on whose cases get attention and whose don't. The numbers are worse than you think. But the really interesting part? The psychology behind why our brains automatically sort certain cases into "worth caring about" versus "scroll past."
“Nobody consciously decides they only care about specific types of victims. The pattern emerges from millions of tiny individual choices about what feels familiar, what triggers emotional investment, what already has momentum.”
The episode digs into how empathy gets hijacked by pattern recognition. How media literacy doesn't protect you from this. Why your intent doesn't matter when the outcome is still a two-tier justice system.
Once you understand the mechanism, you'll spot it everywhere. Including in yourself.
[28:45] The House That Became a Performance Stage
Picture this:
Daily protesters with signs. TikTokers recording everything. Drones hovering over the Laundrie family home. They couldn't walk to their mailbox without being filmed.
Gabby was already dead. Brian was already missing. The family had already stopped cooperating.
So... what was the actual goal?
Those videos made millions of views though. Creators earned ad revenue. Comment sections became competitions for who could express the most outrage.
There's a term psychologists use for what happened outside that house. It explains why performing your moral position can feel better than actually helping. Why outrage becomes its own reward. How tragedy turns into content without anyone making a conscious choice to exploit it.
The episode explores:
When attention shifts from problem-solving to spectacle
Why the algorithm can't tell helpful content from harmful
What we're actually doing when we engage with true crime cases
How everyone participating in this economy (yes, including me) is complicit
Caring about Gabby and performing that care for an audience aren't the same thing. But they got tangled up so fast most people couldn't tell the difference anymore.
[38:20] The System Worked Exactly As Designed
Every single click you make teaches the algorithm what matters.
Media outlets watch what generates engagement → They produce more of what performs → Algorithms boost what gets clicks → You see more cases that fit the pattern → The cycle reinforces
Gabby's case didn't expose a broken system. It proved the system functions exactly as designed.
Justice runs on virality now. Being found depends on going viral. Your family's chances hinge on whether your disappearance makes compelling content.
But there's one genuinely hopeful moment buried in all this.
When people started tagging Joe Petito in posts about Missing White Woman Syndrome, pointing out the disparity his daughter's case revealed, he had options. He could've gotten defensive. Could've said "don't politicize my daughter's death."
Instead, he looked at the data. Recognized the pattern. Did something about it.
What he did is the only example of real accountability in this entire case. The episode walks through what that looked like and why it matters.
You'll also get specific actions you can take next time a missing person case crosses your feed. Ways to engage that don't reinforce the inequality. How to spot your own participation in these patterns before you become part of the problem.
Because knowing this stuff exists without changing your behavior? That's just true crime trivia.
We've Only Scratched the Surface
Four pillars down. Three to go.
→ Narrative Harm (the fictional stories we build and mistake for truth)
→ Institutional Harm (systems designed to protect that fail systematically)
→ Commercial Harm (the industrial complex profiting from tragedy)
These three might be even more uncomfortable than what we just covered.
By the end of this season, you won't be able to scroll past a viral case without seeing exactly which patterns are activating and why.
Next week: Ellen Greenberg. Twenty stab wounds. Ruled a suicide. No TikTok detectives. No viral mobilization. Just a family fighting in near-total silence for over a decade.
Sometimes the crime we create is complete indifference.
Content Warning: This episode discusses domestic violence, death, and online harassment.
Organizations mentioned: Black and Missing Foundation • Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women & Relatives • The Gabby Petito Foundation
