Mind your business. This is a phrase I’m fairly sure anybody who grew up in the online world has absolutely no use for. There’s a certain amount of gratification in knowing we have done the right thing at one time or another; we have helped a family member move house, a friend with their relationship troubles, or a stranger put their weekly big shop in their car at ASDA. We need moments like these, that are not intended for any purpose other than to help other people in their time of need, to remind us to each play our role in the social contract that binds us in in a well-functioning society.
While that might be a tad dramatic, there are occasions where these lines of social contract blur, causing confusion into what is the correct course of action for help, and what causes a fuss for no reason other than instant gratification and personal gain. Put simply, is it best to mind your own business in life, or is it best to get involved at every opportunity you see fit, donning yourself as something of a community superhero? These questions are asked to us in Netflix’s newest true crime documentary Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.
The story concerns the suspicious disappearance of 21-year-old student Elisa Lam at Los Angeles’ notorious Cecil Hotel, and the online interference thereafter. While the documentary is consistent for Netflix’s true crime dramas (cliffhangers, interviews with friends and detectives, eerie music and presence throughout), the story takes a supernatural turn when the last known footage of Lam is found of her behaving strangely in one of the hotel’s elevators, prompting enquiries into Lam’s mental health. This is where things get strange, and not for supernatural reasons.
As the footage finds its way online, it is taken upon a number of amateur investigators to get involved and solve the case. As the mystery grows, we see these virtual vigilantes, if you will, decide for themselves what happened, blurring the lines between what essentially is and isn’t their business. There is the initial common intrigue in that the YouTubers ask questions most people would ask; why did she press every button in the elevator? Why is she very carefully checking outside the doors? Why does she look to do some form of ritual-style dance with her hands flayed wide?
And then comes the probing. As we see in real time that the Los Angeles Police Department are learning about the disappearance as fast as one can in a missing persons case, the YouTubers begin to create conspiracy theories, combing over Lam’s old Tumblr posts, surmising suddenly that Lam has met some people from L.A.’s infamous Skid Row, the hotel’s connection with this area and fantasising over a government conspiracy.
As we all see in the daily useless spats on Twitter, the wild west nature of the lawless online world is a hotbed for conspiracies, allowing people’s curious nature to take on a whole new level towards sleuthing over any small point and amplifying it tenfold. It’s utterly baffling at times, and yet completely normal for how things operate today. Morbid, a singer accused of having some involvement with Lam’s disappearance by online sleuths, has had his life ruined, all down to online investigators. The conspiracies continue, and it’s only at this point that I think to myself, as if to confirm my own normality, ‘get a life’. Is it only me that finds it baffling to know there are people who openly spend their free time investigating the murder of and, as we eventually see, becoming emotionally attached to someone you’ve never heard of? I think I’m clearly of the post-Princess Diana generation, where I cannot possibly imagine such a public outpouring of grief over someone nobody knew personally.
The involvement of online investigators isn’t new, of course, not even to Netflix itself. Don’t Fuck With Cats is a documentary specifically about online investigators helping arrest the man who released footage of the murders he committed online, which is overall a good thing but still has real life consequences in that you ruin your own life trying to fix someone else’s. Under the Curve, about flat-earth conspiracy theorists (an absolute belly laugh of a documentary if you haven’t seen it), becomes dangerous at the end, as we find out a 14-year-old child has taken the day off school to visit the flat-earth theory convention (and thus went the last of my hope for those people).
The fundamental point is this: yes, we all enjoy a good true crime mystery, something that blends the boundaries between the social contract we all abide by and those who don’t. What is nonsense to the point of dangerous, however, is the fact that, through the broken online social codes to which nobody holds any account for, people can ruin the lives of others with impunity, all in the name of what they believe to be for the social good.
The allure of solving a mystery all by yourself is far greater than that of checking on your neighbour, or helping with shopping. I will therefore leave you with this: is it simply too much for people nowadays to get a life of their own and mind their business, or has the influence of social media meant that we are to constantly be suspicious of all of those around us?
