No Snow Whites here: Bianca Devins murder made social media a mirror, we are all evil
Call it incel rebellion or murder in the time of the internet — the fact remains that we have always been voyeuristic, with or without social media.
The recent murder of 17-year-old Bianca Devins and the subsequent photo session with her corpse shared on social media by the alleged perpetrator of the crime, Brandon Andrew Clark, is alarming but not new. Case in point, Lady Diana’s death in 1997. Two decades later, we are still poring over articles with clickbait headlines promising a closer look into the details about her accident.
Or, public executions in Saudi Arabia, and more recently, when the accused of New Zealand mosque shootings live-streamed the killing on Facebook for 17 minutes.
Just a simple search on YouTube for people dying on the camera will throw you over a thousand graphic hits of people meeting their end…on camera. Changes the whole definition of 'Smile You're On Camera' and life as you know it, doesn't it?
We have always been voyeuristic and social media is just serving as a global mirror that shows you the reality. So, is it really fair to pin the blame on internet communication giants such as Instagram or Facebook or in this case, Discord?
Devins murder has, in fact, shown that fault lies with nobody but ourselves and the millions of users who are peddling graphic images of her death in return for more followers, subscribers and likes. Whether we like it or not, we are existing in a market-driven world, functioning purely on ‘seek and we shall provide’, so all this morbid mess is in fact demand.
On a 4chan thread, several users had posted curious queries about the kind of knife used in the murder while others debated over the authenticity of the photos.
Sure, there are sympathetic posts about her death but they make you question if the grief is genuine or is it a stunt to gain social media influence. Now, that’s the effect of living in the age of the internet.
Don’t shoot the messenger when the bad news is you.