People of all generations are easily influenced by social media today. Memes and news stories spiral around quickly on social media, for example, details about the recent scandal and allegations about P. Diddy, renewed interested in the Menendez Brothers, and a few months ago, the obsession with Gypsy-Rose Blanchard. While some people might dismiss these phenomena as silly online trends, the way that “news” can spread on the internet can be dangerous. Some social media users may believe misinformation they read on the internet without doing any proper research, while serious issues may be made into jokes on social media.
The online attention about recent child and sexual abuse claims against Sean “P. Diddy” Combs show how very serious news can unfortunately be turned into the source of humor online. Although Combs has been accused of truly awful crimes, it can feel to some social media users that it’s all a joke. This is completely unfair to the victims of Combs’ crimes and everyone else involved in this and similar situations.
Recently, millions of people have shown renewed interest in the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, two brothers who were accused of murdering their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home in 1989. The Menendez brothers’ story was recently fictionalized in the second season of Ryan Murphy’s crime anthology series Monster and later a depicted in a documentary film, The Menendez Brothers, both released on Netflix in 2024. The danger of the internet’s obsession with the Menendez brothers is that millions of people who may not have even been alive yet when the actual events first hit the news are getting the majority of their information from social media and an inaccurate representation of the case through the fictionalized TV show. Although this real murder case is a serious situation, many people are developing their own opinions without knowing the truth about what occured, not just what was written for TV ratings. More alarmingly, some fans of the fictionalized show, where Lyle and Erik are played by actors Nicholas Alexander Chavez, 25, and Cooper Koch, 28, have begun to sexualize and romanticize the real life Menendez men, posting inappropriate comments and memes that conflate or confuse the fictional and real worlds. This is not okay.
Another example of social media attention being weird and inappropriate is the internet popularity of Gypsy-Rose Blanchard this year. In 2015, Blanchard, then 24, was convicted of second-degree murder in Missouri for killing her abusive mother Dee Dee Blanchard. She was sentenced to ten years in prison and served eight before being released on parole in December 2023. A fictionalized version of her story was made into a miniseries on Hulu in 2019, starring Joey King and Patricia Arquette. When Blanchard was released, she was praised and given lots of positive attention and fame on social media, with people not knowing or understanding the full details of her case. She even filmed a docuseries for Lifetime called Gypsy-Rose: Life After Lock Up, which aired in June 2024. Blanchard became very popular on many social media platforms, with some people even encouraging her unacceptable behavior and also giving unsolicited opinions about Blanchard’s relationships and personal life.
These situations are all different but in some ways terribly similar. A big part of the problem is the ways in which misleading or false information can spread so quickly on social media. Although social media can provide many positive benefits to society when used correctly, there are also situations in which it isn’t helpful, but truly harmful instead. The victims and perpetrators of these crimes that have now become the internet obsessions of millions of TikTok and Instagram users are real people, too, and they deserve the respect of having the full and accurate story being told. It’s our responsibility to do better research and realize that not everything we see or read on social media is trustworthy.
