Well I don’t often agree with Ms Philips but this time she’s bang on the money imo.
Blame social media for rise of trauma voyeurs
Melanie PhillipsFebruary 06 2023, 9.00pm
The Lancashire police came under sustained criticism for saying at an early stage that Bulley was probably in the river. They have now been vindicated in that professional judgment. A diving expert, Peter Faulding, had declared that Bulley was “categorically” not in that stretch of the river because if she was he would have found her. Now he himself has been targeted by accusations of incompetence, provoking him to protest that searching the reeds wasn’t part of his remit.
People are still leaping to apportion blame before all the facts are known. Questions remain, however, about other features of the police investigation, in particular their release of information about Bulley’s psychological state — a disclosure of personal matters that drew expressions of “concern” both from the prime minister and home secretary. We may now find out the answers to these questions. What is already clear, however, is that although the family criticised the media and members of the public but not the police — in a statement the police read out — the behaviour of too many other people has been shockingly stupid, arrogant and cruel.
People descended on the the village where Bulley lived, St Michael’s on Wyre, to conduct their own detective work. The police, who said this made their job “incredibly difficult”, had to issue a 48-hour dispersal order because so many ghouls and amateur sleuths were taking videos for social media. Some recorded themselves digging in woodland. Village residents were forced to hire a private security company to stop these trespassers trampling their gardens and breaking into their outbuildings.
Conspiracy theories swirled uncontrollably around the internet. A friend of Bulley’s told the BBC that “vile theories” about the family’s private life, including unfounded speculation about the involvement of her partner, Paul Ansell, were “incredibly hurtful”. Even after the body was found, baroque theories of “planted” evidence, “dumped” bodies and possible third-party involvement continued to surface.
This callous and self-regarding behaviour by members of the public is the product of social media. Some people believe that reading claims on the internet turns them into an instant expert. From a position of at best ignorance and at worst gullible belief in speculation, outright lies and other nonsense, they then think they know better than the professionals.
Even if the police can justifiably be criticised for their inept public presentation, the assumption by members of the public that they make better investigators combines arrogance with idiocy.
True, the body was found by two people out walking by the river. And the police certainly face questions about why they didn’t manage to discover it. But the two walkers found it by chance. And those who descended on the village seem to have been mainly motivated by narcissism, filming themselves to become famous for five minutes in the alternative universe of social media where the line between fact and fantasy is blurred.
“True crime” dramatisations on podcasts, mini-series and documentaries blur this line. In America, these have been credited with reopening cases or creating petitions for pardons signed by hundreds of thousands of people. In some cases, people have verbally attacked or harassed those they believe to be guilty, heedless of any errors or distortions in these presentations.
Internet content that exploits other people’s suffering has been termed “trauma voyeurism”. America’s National Sexual Violence Resource Centre has observed: “Trauma voyeurism exploits the suffering and vulnerability of a victim for the purpose of securing viewership — often by regarding a victim’s body, privacy, name, and pain as public domain, with zero consideration for its impact on that victim.”
The culture of voyeurism is perhaps the most corrosive element of both social media and reality TV, in which interactions with the real world and personal relationships with real people are replaced by vicarious experience. This provides an illusion of social participation without incurring any costs or other consequences. This in turn deadens empathy, the core of a compassionate and civilised human being. Empathy is the ability to account for another person’s feelings, emotions or experiences. Social media, by contrast, encourages self-absorption and self-aggrandisement. Through the safety of vicarious experience, people can boast, blame, humiliate or pass judgment on others.
In the case of Nicola Bulley, social media users exploited the agony of her family to big themselves up. “It’s almost as though social media idiocy and reality have become blurred,” said the leader of Wyre council, Michael Vincent. “There has to be an element of decency. We can’t allow social media to be a place where there is no morality.”
Alas, that is precisely what has happened. A family’s tragedy, which also raised issues of genuine concern about policing, has been turned into a sickening theatre of cruelty
