No matter who someone is, if they took one scroll on TikTok anytime between November and December, at least one video about the Idaho murders was bound to be on their For You Page. From conspiracy theories to possible timelines of when the murders could have occurred, TikTokers were all over this case and put their two cents in anytime that they had the chance.

Some of these TikTokers gained major followings updating people on the status of their case and popularizing theories and while they did not realize it at the time, they were forever impacting the lives of people that were somehow involved in the case. 

One major theory that was floating around TikTok was that it was the surviving roommates that committed the heinous crimes. This was not only extremely insensitive toward the survivors who just lost four of their closest friends but also led them to receive hate on social media. 

Yet another theory that many people believed was that the neighbor of the victims committed the crime. This led Jeremy Reagan to have to publicly defend himself from the ruthless and false conspiracy theories that circulated on social media which painted him to be the murderer.

This is only one example of how cases that are in the public eye often lead to destroyed reputations for innocent people who somehow managed to find themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time. They could not control the fact that they lived next to the college kids or even lived in the same house as them, all that they could try to do was to defend themselves from social media and try to keep their reputation positive so that they did not affect their future aspirations. 

While the case being very open to the public did have its perks like keeping the case on the forefront of people’s minds and rushing investigators to bring justice to the four teens, it also had many downsides.

The police had to make sure that they were extra cautious about anything and everything that they said to the public, if they let information about the suspect out earlier, Bryan Kohberger could have fled the country and evaded his 

True crime has become extremely popular on social media sites like TikTok and Youtube and has an increasingly large population which is beneficial as long as it is not taken to the extreme but when it is, it can have some horrific consequences, especially when people start romanticizing serial killers.

From Ted Bundy to Jefferey Dahmer there have been countless serial killers who have been romanticized by a target audience along with other killers. While this is not something entirely new that society has to deal with, it has had a major increase in past years because of social media and the fact that people everywhere have access to the internet and can post whatever they please.

There have been many videos posted on TikTok that feed into this romanticization of serial killers that often consist of people saying how attractive some are to them and even going as far as saying that their crimes are justified simply because they are attracted to that one individual.  

Social media sites have had a very significant impact on many criminal cases that have occurred in the last few years. From the Gabby Petitio case to the Idaho murders, the audience had a major role in the way that the case was portrayed and was very involved.

In Gabby Petito’s case, she and her fiance, Brian Laundrie, were on a cross-country road trip when Brian murdered her. This case blew up on social media sites as everyone was trying to find where Petito went, as she was declared missing for multiple weeks before her body was found.

Theories, of course, circulated across almost all social media sites and many started doing their own ‘investigations’ about where she could be, even though they had virtually no information about the case. After she was found, many of these popular theories were proven completely false.

There are countless other cases like Gabby Petito’s and the Idaho murders that introduced some to the world of true crime but throughout time it is proven that some things are better left out of the public’s eye.