The fragility of digital connectedness

As the nation now knows, Gabrielle Venora Petito disappeared on August 27, 2021. She and her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, traveled by van across the United States to visit national parks. Petito, a twenty-two-year-old social media influencer, is now dead. Authorities found her body in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming. Her boyfriend, who returned home without her a week before her body was found, is the prime suspect. He has now disappeared, presumably fleeing police.

There are a great many angles this story can take, including the one my radio producer brought up. Why should so many strangers care about Gabby Petito? Of course, we should care that a life has been senselessly ended. Ironically, some in the media have wondered why the media would care about this young, blond, white girl and not care to cover countless non-white girls who have disappeared. There is, however, a less focused angle about which we should care greatly.

One reason hundreds of thousands cared so passionately is that they had built a virtual connection to Gabby Petito online. Petito had hundreds of thousands of followers, just on Instagram, as she documented her life and created a following as she travelled across the country with her boyfriend. Social media presents a unique form of connection that is only going to grow in the postmodern era.

Reducing human experience to relational connections and emotion are two of the hallmarks of postmodernism. Gone is any claim to objective truth. Now, people talk about “my truth” and “your truth,” neither of which may be objectively true. Instead of people saying “I think,” they are now much more likely to say “I feel.” People are less open to taking any other person’s statement as truth if they do not have a relationship with their supposed truth-teller.

Americans once watched Fox News or CNN. Now the same people watch Tucker Carlson and Wolf Blitzer. It’s personality and celebrity at the center. Institutions have limited credibility. Personalities matter most. The trend arguably began with Walter Cronkite in the Vietnam era. After Cronkite, viewers moved to watch Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, or Dan Rather, but NBC, ABC, and CBS still mattered. These days, CNN or The New York Times might be cited as authorities. But today, no one really cares what The New York Times thinks. They care what individual reporters think. More importantly, a growing body of people care what individual voices on social media think.

Gabby Petito is the beginning of something, not the end. Gen Z has been isolated at home due to COVID. They have built virtual relationships with people they do not really know. But they rely on those people to explore the world in ways they cannot—sharing another’s camera lens for their own eyes. They think that they know the person. They relate to that person and have an emotional connection to that person. But they do not really know the person, just the persona. Overexposure on social media is not limited to the hours of a television or radio program but can be constant, expansive, and interactive.

Petito had a passionate base of people who cared about her. They followed her across the country. When she went missing, they became invested in her story. As social media influencers gain clout, they will shape more interest, steer more coverage, and, most importantly, start shaping other people’s views of truth and reality.

Through a device in our hands, someone else’s curated world begins to appear real. In the absence of objective truth, their curated world can shape our own uncurated lives. It is a power Gabby Petito was only just beginning to use in life. It is a dangerous power growing more dangerous by the day.