WY - WY - Gabrielle ‘Gabby’ Petito, 22, Grand Teton National Park, 25 Aug 2021 #21
I find the observation you raised about the comparisons between the appearance of their van in the police video and the appearance in their video really interesting. In my first year of uni I studied the negative effects social media could have on people and this case is one I feel where the blame somewhat sits on the modern day pressures of social media, which are especially heavy on young women.
Everyone here of a certain age knows that you don't know someone until you've lived with them. You discover that once you move out of home. I haven't seen if these 2 lived together previously It'd be interesting to see. Even if they had, it wasn't in such close quarters where they had no space to get away from each other. The video struck me as the typical type these days where It's 'have to show everyone how perfect our life is' and you just see those moments. Watching that video reminded me, as a bloke who went through high school with Myspace where you could already see this competitive social media aspect starting turning into what we saw with facebooks peak, with instagram 'influencers', now tiktok, etc. I was recently seeing a woman (im Bboomer in my mid 30s) of 23 which I do not normally do but thought from what I had seen I could make an exception. The social media gap was interesting. Every time we were together I felt that while we were together, I was with her, she was on instagram live, taking photos for instagram, trying to drag me into tiktoks etc.
Everything was for someone else, a performance almost. Like I had a good time but she was not present in the relationship and she did not seem to understand why that was a problem when I ended it. Watching the video you linked reminded me of that experience. You can see she is almost completely focused on the camera and not him.
I find this aspect of social media such a cancerous part of society it is something that needs to be dealt with or we will end up in that black mirror episode where everyone rates everyone. People need to understand that the most popular instagramers, influencers, youtubers, specifically curate that part of their life to appear good. They DO NOT live like that daily and those awesome events don't happen every day. The pressure of keeping up appearances is some insane **** that can drive some wild reactions. I'm sure some of you here understand and feel that. I think Petito and Laundrie felt it too.