Panic World - The effects of true crime brain rot

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

In the past decade, true crime has gone from a niche and somewhat disparaged genre to one of entertainment’s most prolific. What is it about true crime that’s made it become such a huge part of popular culture? Through the lens of the mysterious disappearance (and reappearance) of Hannah Kobayashi, journalist Jennifer Swann joins us to talk about how missing persons’ cases take on lives on their own online. Our guest Jennifer Swann is a journalist and producer. She has a newsletter, Self Storage, https://jennswann.substack.com/ and produces the investigative true crime podcast My Friend Daisy, which you can find anywhere you listen to podcasts. Listen to the extended conversation on Panic World's Patreon — and enjoy ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord — for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Engineer: Rebecca Seidel - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I mean, there's something very American, like, at the heart of just, like, obsessing over stories of crime and murder and malfeasance. Like, we love that stuff. That's part of our national identity, I think, in a way. Yeah. And I think, like, we saw so much of it, like, in the 80s and 90s, you know, and I think, like, when I was growing up, there was always something on the news, you know, of, like, missing women, someone that disappears in, like, Aruba, the Natalie Holloway story. So many women went missing in the 80s. Like, they were just disappearing every week, it feels like. I don't know where they're going.

Yeah, they're totally disappearing. So I'm Ryan Broderick. Joining me, as always, is our producer Grant Irving. You'll hear his angelic voice pop in from time to time. This is Panic World to show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. Honestly, when I think of true crime culture, and I should admit at the top here, that, like, I am actually not really a true crime purveyor. I'm much more of the unsolved mysteries.

Like, why are all the cows being mutilated and our aliens and the most of the most of the mothman reel kind of person. That's my thing. And when I do sort of see true crime culture, I get a little grossed out, I think. Because also, like, as a journalist, I always sort of feel very conflicted about turning that kind of thing into entertainment. But in the TikTok age, it's not just like big production studios that are doing this. It's everybody. It's like this decentralized, like from the floor up kind of thing that's happening now. And joining me today to talk about this whole kind of new online true crime culture. Jennifer Swan, writer, host of my friend Daisy. And, you know, from reading and listening to your stuff, it does, I was, I was

excited to have you on because it feels like you're similarly conflicted about this. Can you, can you sort of walk us through broad strokes like the, the queasiness that you have around this subject? Yeah, for sure. I mean, even just the name, true crime, there's this connotation that comes with it of like, you know, people being salivating over these gory details of someone's story. and there is something inherent about it where we're finding entertainment. Sure, there's like a profit margin over someone's tragedy, ultimately. And I think, you know, these stories are fascinating. I think there's certainly worth telling, especially in a way that might shed light on our culture,

our society, on people's lives who we might not otherwise get to hear about. And so, like, I do think there's value in it, but I think there's something inherently that can be a little bit cringy when you think about the stories that, get told and whose stories were telling, whose stories were omitting and why we're telling those stories and, you know, even stories I've worked on where I'm like, I would not have written this or I would have not done this story, had this horrible tragedy not befallen this person. And there is something really inherently, I think, upsetting about that, you know. You talked about sort of like the stories you've worked on.

And that's actually where I wanted to start, you know, you had this piece in the cut where you talk about the kind of true crime brain rot and the way that like our you know our I think our national fascination with crime and with stories of murder and and particularly like crime against women has mixed together with like the social media panopticon one of the defining archetypes of the current era we're living in is like the internet detective which 10 years ago 15 years ago were sort of this like weird cultural laughing stock this thing we kind of ignore and now they they aren't so I guess like How did you become interested in the internet detective as a concept?

I think that a big part of this internet detective sort of motif in the last 10 years is like, I think a lot of it has to do with when these missing or murdered women have their own social media presence. And then it becomes like this big feast of clues to try to figure out like, who is this person? And like, where were they last seen? What are they into? And how do we find them? And I think for me, like, I remember hearing. about the Elisa Lam story.

I don't know if you guys followed this. She was like a Canadian college student who I think was on vacation in L.A. back in 2013. She was staying at the Cecil Hotel, which is like a former SRO in Skid Row, but has, you know, cheap rooms to stay the night. It's also famously a place

where like the night stalker murdered women. So it has this like very storied, nefarious history to it. And her body ended up in a water tank on the top of the roof. Yes. I watched a whole Netflix documentary about this. Yes. And there's all these documentaries that have come out in the last 10 years of just trying to unravel this story because it was so baffling of like, how did she get in there? And then there was surveillance footage of her, like in an elevator, seemingly talking to someone who wasn't there. And so I think like that was the first time reading about this story and being in LA when it

happened. And then eventually writing about it and reading the court reports and talking about people who were reading her tumbler and trying to figure out who she was, that was sort of the first time that it came into my consciousness of like, okay, there's this crime that happened potentially, right? Like, there's this woman who was found in a water tank. And then there's these people who are trying to crack the case. And so that was the first thing that sort of came to my attention of like, oh, they're reading her tumbler. And she's like quoting Chuck Palinock and she's talking about her depression and like, what do we think this means? Do we think this means that she, you know, had a mental breakdown? There were all these

clues that people were really assembling. And that was the first time where it was like, oh, okay, people are putting this together based on stuff that she herself has put on the internet. I remember this documentary because it sticks out to me because it was one of the first I'd seen that was taking the citizen journalist, the sort of internet detective seriously. Because I feel like up until the mid-2010s, they were always like depicted as like insane freaks that like, we're just doing this for no reason, like especially in movies or something.

something, right? Yeah. It was always like a middle-aged dude wearing a fedora. Exactly. Exactly. So the two questions I feel like that leads to, though, is like, one, like, do you feel like there is a gendered element to the kinds of internet detectives that sort of circle? And I'm going to keep using that term for lack of a better one during this episode, but like the type of internet detectives that like sort of like circle a story like Hannah Kobayashi or like, are they typically women, would you say? And then two, like, do you feel like they get more intensely conspiratorial as time goes on, because that's been my experience. Yeah, I think that's right.

Yeah, because I think, you know, obviously the cases that really, I think, break through and get tons of media coverage, it tends to be attractive women. Like, let's just say, I think that's obvious. There's this whole, like, term that was coined of missing white woman syndrome. And I think a lot of the detectives, you know, so-and-so, these online detectives, I think they tend to be women too because women see themselves in these women who are supposedly missing or in danger. And so I think it's speaking as women, I think there is a sense that like, oh, the authorities aren't taking our stories seriously or like they're going to say that we deserve this because we like dressed a certain way or set a certain thing. I think it does draw in women who are like mistrustful of the system or maybe have had bad experiences with the court system and they're like, oh, they're not going to take this seriously.

so like we, it's up to us to find this woman. The systemic breakdown piece I think is really important. We touched on this in a recent episode about like the chaos of what we've been calling like the post Me Too era, like everything that's happened after the Johnny Depp trial. So much of it, both bad and good, is sort of stems from a still systemic inability to deal with the violence and harassment against women. The more chaotic like internet content you see about like, Me Too stuff or missing women or true crime, you have to take that into account that like

the American legal system just still doesn't really work for women like at all. Yes, yes. I think there's always a sense that like women are not going to be believed or that like their cases are not going to be taken seriously. And so they're just being like, we got to figure this out for ourselves because like no one's going to save us kind of a thing. So let's talk about Hannah Kobayashi. Hello, I'll do my best true crime impression.

Yeah. Hey guys. another violent tragedy to talk about in a really weirdly positive way for you. But to set this up, so on November 8th, 2024, Hannah Kobayashi was supposed to take a flight from L.A. to New York. She never gets on the plane. Can you sort of set us up about like the family at the center of this? Because I feel like that's sort of like the best place to start here. Her sister is a woman named Sidney Kobayashi. Sydney, I think, is about a year and a half older than Hannah. She did a bunch of local interviews and was able to kind of paint a portrait of

Hannah as someone who wouldn't do this kind of thing, wouldn't just disappear, not tell anyone. A key, key family figure is also this woman named Lurie Pigeon. Great side character name in a mystery. That's just, that's some Agatha Christie shit right there. That's great. Yes, yes. Also, she's a van life influencer. So she has this very robust social media. She's just the- Listeners, you can't hear it. I just cracked my knuckles. I was just like, let's go. Let's dig it. Yeah. And she was this great narrator for this story of like, we need to find my niece. She's in danger. She did a lot of front facing camera

videos where she's crying to her phone and giving out information to her followers. And so she really became the person who was like this megaphone for the family for better or worse. But I think, you know, when you watch the news, like, Lurie is really the person who like she drove down to L.A. she was on the streets looking for Hannah. She held a rally. Like she really got tons of eyes on this story. And then Lurie also worked closely with Hannah's father, Ryan Kobayashi, who flew in from Honolulu to Los Angeles to look for her.

But what about Hannah's internet footprint? Because I feel like that is so crucial in these kinds of stories is like you alluded to it at the top. Like was there enough there for people to dig through? Yes. There was enough and then some. And I think, like, her Instagram is just fascinating. Like, for one thing, she is a photographer.

She takes these really beautiful photos, whether it's of, like, the landscape and the islands and the jungle in Hawaii, or it's like she'll do self-portraits. Her photos are beautiful. Her captions are really sort of cryptic. Like, she'll write these kind of, like, Buddhist sayings, you know, that are kind of, like, philosophizing about losing all attachment in life and becoming enlightened. And, you know, I think her captions were a big, piece of why people initially thought, like, that she was on some kind of spiritual quest,

because she had written about, you know, going off the grid. And even the LEPD talked about looking through her social media and trying to come up with theories of the case based on that, which was kind of interesting to see this, like, reversal where even the authorities were looking to Instagram to be like, oh, how do we put this piece together? But her Instagram was super alluring. Like, she is obviously, she's like a gorgeous girl. She has these, like, you know, she travels.

a lot. She goes to music festivals. I think it just drew people in. She seemed like someone who I might know or who I might meet at a concert or something. Like we have similar music interests. And so I think there was something about her like very parisocially where people are like, oh, this girl seems cool and she also seems interesting. Like what is she into? In a world of content, even the police get flattened down into essentially the same as everybody else. Like we're all, we, we interviewed Caroline Calloway very early on in this show and she talked about sort of the unreality of her Instagram captions. It like kind of broke her own brain to see people believe them. Yes. When you were saying like, oh, the cops are like digging through her Instagram

captions. It's like, oh, like everyone is part of the K-Fabe of the internet now. But before we go any further, I want to nail down some basic details of the story just so our listeners can follow here. So on November 9th, she's seen in L.A. at a book store in a fancy part of town. November 10th, she goes to an event at a Nike store and she posts about it. Everything seems like it's fine. She's in LA doing stuff. Then I guess on the 11th, the weird messages start. I will just add that there was something a little off-kiltre about all this too, because at this point she missed a flight. She had layover at L.A.X. She was traveling to New York from Honolulu, or I'm sorry, from Maui. And at this point, she had a, she missed a

layover. And like, the weird thing is she was just kind of exploring L.A. So when she was going to these places, it sort of seemed like everything was fine, but it was also weird in that, like, why wasn't she still trying to get on a flight? So it was, it was strange when, like, she would pop up in the background of, like, a YouTube video that someone filmed at this shopping center. And they're like, why is she at this pop-up event? You know, so there's always, from the very beginning, there were questions about, like, why is she just hanging out, you know? Is she in the, like, she in a video? She's literally in the background. Someone took a video of this, like, LeBron James pop-up event at the Grove. And she's literally,

like walking by in the video and people realized it after it was publicized that she had been missing. So that was another piece of the like, whoa, she just ended up in this video on YouTube somehow. That's like a genuinely insanely creepy thing. But it's this story gets creepier because the next day on the 11th, she sends a message that reads, Deep Packers, wiped my identity, stole all my funds and have me on a mind fuck since Friday. and then the next day her family reports are missing and they fly to L.A. So this is where I think things might get kind of confusing. So I want to nail on a couple things.

So first, can you tell us about Hannah's aunt at this moment? Like this is where she gets involved, right? Like this is where she takes the van down. Right. So these text messages start circulating. It seems like they circulate like Hannah sends these messages to her friends. She was also supposed to go visit her other aunt in New York. And so at some point, Aunt Lurie,

who lives in the Pacific Northwest. She also runs an Instagram account for, you know, traveling throughout the Pacific Northwest. She and her husband drive their RV down to L.A., and they start, you know, this is all within, like, that week that she goes missing. And they start passing her flyers, putting her face on it, connecting with people that Hannah knows, and really, like, sounding the alarm. Okay. And next up, can you talk a little bit about Sherry Finn?

Because she hasn't appeared yet in this story. And this is sort of when her and her organization get involved. Is that right? That's right. Yeah, it all kind of happens like during this first week that Hannah goes missing. There's this woman named Shari Finn. She runs a nonprofit organization for missing and exploited individuals. A lot of them are children.

Some of them are adults. And so Shari starts putting out all these flyers that say like missing at risk, contact us if you've seen Hannah. And Shari runs this organization called the RAD movement. And so her. organization is really aimed at like finding people, but it also has a focus on people who have been trafficked. So, so Shari's vision from the- Red flag went up for me. Yeah. So her vision from the very beginning is, is thinking like this could be a trafficking case and like we need to, we need to save her from trafficking. So that is very much where her mindset is at. And also the founder of this

organization Shari, she, she says that her daughter was trafficked from high school. So again, and this is something that is very deeply like embedded in her brain and personal to her. If you can hear that right now, it's all the panic world listeners going, mm, uh-huh. Okay. And last but not least here, just to set up our main characters, talk us through Jess Chu and how she gets involved. So Jess is a TikToker.

She's based in Honolulu, basically like in the general area where Hannah grew up. Jess never met Hannah. She doesn't know Hannah, but she hears about this story. And she hears about it on the local news. And she immediately thinks like, whoa, here's a woman. She also lives in Hawaii.

She's about my age. She's traveling. I travel a lot. And Jess immediately starts becoming very alarmed. And she thinks, you know, if there is someone snatching women at airports, I want to know what's going on. I want to know what to avoid, how to protect myself kind of a thing. And so Jess happens to work at a radio station. She moonlights as an on-air host.

And so she starts giving these broadcasts. She mentions it, you know, just in between her music segments, like, hey, there's this missing woman, if anyone has information. She kind of does this little PSA. And after that, she becomes just completely obsessed with this case to the point that she starts going on TikTok and sometimes multiple times a day she'll be doing these updates about Hannah. And it's interesting because when you look at her account, like prior to this, it's like her TikToks are like her on vacation or doing dance trends or talking about, you know, food or restaurants, and all of a sudden, once the Hannah case starts, it just becomes completely all Hannah, all missing person stuff all the time. She can't break away from it.

I really can't come up with a more perfect storm than like a van life influencer on a woman who runs like a trafficking quote unquote organization and a TikToker with a pariscial relationship to a missing woman. And it's so perfect. And the thing you described with Jess and her TikTok feeds sort of like going from all kinds of different content and then hard pivot is such a thing. And not even just stories like true crime, but like the amount of times that we've come across influencers who are doing all a bunch of different stuff. And then like they do one thing. The algorithm likes it.

And like that's their deal. Yes. And I think it's such an important like a force because like now there's no incentive for her to not. like double, triple, quadruple down on this story. Yes, yeah. Do you think she was incentivized by a natural obsession or that she was like, did she seem to like the attention and like think she could spin this off into a true crime podcast? I think that it started from a place of natural curiosity, obsession, concern.

And I think that like what you're talking about, Ryan probably happened where like she saw that the algorithm was rewarding those videos. But at the same time, I think that he's one of those stories where, like, as she got deeper into it, you know, it started as like, oh, I'm just spreading information about the case, I'm trying to find her. And there were so many missing pieces, you know, things that we haven't even talked about yet that, like, did not line up in a story. Oh, we're going to get there.

Yeah, timeline issues. All of these questions that kind of came up where people suddenly realized that the narrators in the story, like, for example, Hannah, Hannah's family were not, you know, they were giving information that was inconsistent. or that didn't add up to people. And so I think as those things happened, I think Jess did genuinely get like really, I think you see her turn and kind of become angry to be like,

well, what is, like, we need to actually understand what's happening. Because at this point, she spent all this time talking about it. And yeah, maybe it's also been good for her TikTok. But I think you kind of see her processing and upset over like, we're working on this case and we need to know what's going on. I actually don't think it's that cynical to follow signals from TikTok. I think it's natural.

Like if you care about something and you're telling people about it and then you're being rewarded for it, like you're just going to keep doing it. Like journalists, that happens to them. Like they get obsessed with the story. They're rewarded for it and they keep going. You know, exactly. But right now, okay, we've set our story up. Everything's in motion and things are going to get more confusing and darker. But also a little tease for the next section.

Hannah isn't actually missing technically, right? So we're going to get to all that after the ad break. But first, a word from our sponsor, Bear Mace. Is that a real sponsor? No, no, no. We try to make a joke tied to the theme of the episode. Grant had it in there CrimeCon, but I wanted to double check of CrimeCon was real. I assume it is.

I think CrimeCon is real. Yeah. That sounds totally fucked up. There's also Crime Cruise now. Crime Cruz is the most fucked up thing I've ever heard of. Oh my God. Yeah. Jesus Christ.

Okay. Where we left off, Anna's family and the Internet are doing everything they can to raise attention to find Hannah despite having no real clue what is actually happening with Hannah. Hannah's aunt. She's speculating wildly on national TV, which is awesome. I hope a family member of mine speculates wildly on national TV if I go slightly missing. This is what her aunt said on CNN. our mind is now going to abduction and i hate to say the word but trafficked if someone has hannah

i want you to know that she's the kindest most beautiful soul in the entire world please don't hurt her and so november continues on the internet becomes more more rabid so can you tell me how the sort of like combined forces of this story break apart like what actually starts the schism here. Yeah. So there are a number of things that happened. And one of them is that Hannah's dad dies by suicide. That ignites more interest in the case. But I think also there is this question of like, how do we handle this? And I think the response from the family, you know, the rad movement was speaking on behalf of them and putting out statements on behalf of Hannah's mother and her sister. And I think the way that these statements came off to the public was strange

because it was sort of like, this is a tragedy. We're very sad about this. But we have. have to move on and we have to keep looking for Hannah. And so I think like that kind of divided people of like, whoa, like they're still looking for her and her dad has died and it seems like maybe they should put the brakes on the search party. And so there was a lot of like conflicting energy around that. And also by that point, the case had really reached this like media frenzy where it was on every TV news network. It was definitely a story where like my mom had been following the story, and it's interesting because, like, the stories that I follow don't necessarily, you know, they're not on her radar, but this was one where it was just like, you know,

people of every age group and demographic were watching this on TV news and on TikTok, and it was really permeating. There was this schism that happened around the time that Hannah's dad died, where it was clear that the family was feuding. Hannah's mom would, and her sister would put out statements through the RAD movement, and then Hannah's Aunt Lurie would put out statements, and they would be sort of like sub-tweeting each other. There was the sort of passive-aggress of thing that would happen where at some point, you know, Hannah's sister was kind of like, Lurie doesn't speak for us, the aunt doesn't speak for us. And so that was another thing that kind of made people feel like, whoa, something weird is going on here. We don't know who to trust.

We don't know who to listen to. We're getting, you know, conflicting pieces of the story. And then the other element that came out was there was news that broke actually through one of the private investigators involved in this story, who also kind of inserted himself into the story. he wasn't actually hired to work on this case. Awesome. Even better. Another, another civil, like another internet detective involved. Great.

Yeah. And he's a professional. He's a licensed detective. But it's interesting because he was also feuding with the internet detectives. He was feuding with the family. And so you have this scenario where like the family is publicly feuding with each other. And then all the detectives on all sides were also like pointing fingers like the Spider-Man meme where they were all kind of accusing each other of lying. You know, I like to think of myself.

as a bit of an internet expert. And I'm going to guess that the people on the internet had a very normal reaction to all of this. I bet that this everyone was like, this seems totally fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No one said anything about it. Reddit just went dark.

Yeah. I bet Reddit didn't care about any of this, right? Like, especially her dad killing himself. I bet nobody thought anything insane about that at all on the internet. There were so many conspiracy theories about this. And I think at this point, too, like, no one actually knew where Hannah was or what had happened to her. And so, you know, there were obviously theories about like her dad knew something or there was some, there was definitely this

like conspirator about some unknown predator or someone who was orchestrating this. And so I think like that was immediately fought off for conspiracy. And then the other thing that came out through this other private investigator was that Hannah had allegedly been involved in some kind of sham marriage. And so that was this point where all of a sudden these online detectives, also began to turn on her and think like, oh, well, is she engaged in fraudulent activity? Is she scamming us? Like, why do we care? Like, there was also this anger over, like, we're spending all of our resources and we're

doing all this work for her and maybe she's scamming us. You know, so like everyone, it just created this total panic, especially on Reddit where everyone was accusing each other of spreading misinformation or like, well, how do you know this? and what's your source? I guess it's probably time to talk about Alan now, huh? Oh, boy, Alan. So this is from your article.

Are you comfortable with me reading your own article back to you? I know it's a very strange feeling. Who the fuck is Alan, Chu, said on Thanksgiving Day in one of her near daily TikTok updates. She tracked down the new characters, social media accounts, and quickly formed a picture. He was a surfer who, like Hannah, was fond of nature, travel, and electronic music. So who's Alan? Talk us through Alan here. Oh, man.

It's so funny because, like, I wrote so many drafts of the story because it was such a confusing story to like try to convey to people who weren't already following it. And like it was like a very late stage point where my editor was like, wait, Alan's real. Like he's, he actually exists. And I was like, yes, Alan is real. Alan is a person who he's an Argentinian man. He moved to Maui at some point a few years ago. He has since left the country actually as a result of this whole sort of fiasco that he got caught in. But he allegedly, no one actually knows what happened, but he allegedly had some sort of arrangement with Hannah where he was going to get a green car, they were going to get married. It's unclear whether that actually happened, but, you know,

it does appear that they staged some sort of ceremony with photos. And so that was like a huge theory driving this was like, oh, did he cheat her out of money? Did she cheat him out of money? And that's why she went on the run. That became a huge leading theory in this case. Yes, as you're writing your piece in Reddit and TikTok theories blossomed that Hannah had plan to take the photos that they found of her and Alan for the purpose of faking a loving relationship, for example, or that she'd been paid to marry the Argentine man because she was having money troubles, as suggested by the Pinterest boards, she titled money-making jobs and money-saving strategies. Now, I want to pause for a second because I think this is so crucial.

The daily lives of all of us online make total sense to us. And they are. And they are. are probably fairly random, actually. Like, you know, what I'm putting on my Tumblr or my blue sky account or what I'm looking at on YouTube, they make sense to me. But, like, they don't really say anything other than, like, what I was, you know, doing. And so many of these stories all hinge on essentially everyone in the world pretending like that's not true. It's like that Nick Mullen joke where it's like, we're the CIA and, uh, we're okay, we're all ready

to secretly do 9-11. But we just forgot one thing. The clues. We've got to go do the clues now. And it's like everyone assumes that this woman hid clues about her life all over the internet and then went missing. Every, yeah, it's literally just Easter eggs. It's so brainbreaking to me that this keeps happening. I think it's a huge part of the internet kind of turning against the family now, right?

Like this is part of what is happening. Like the clues, quote unquote, that they're finding don't make sense with the reality of what's unfolding in front of them. They don't make sense. And then the other thing is, like, the family was sometimes saying different things and news articles. I think, like, Hannah's mom came out at one point and was confronted with this supposed evidence of, like, a marriage certificate or documents related to immigration. And her line was like, oh, yeah, I just found this. And, you know, this is the first time I'm seeing this. And I reported to the police.

And no one actually knows how this went down. But, of course, everyone hears this. And they think, like, the mom is hiding something or this doesn't make sense or she must have known about this at some point. And so there is this feeling online. that like the family knows something. They're withholding information. That upsets everyone. And then it makes everyone so much more determined to be like,

we're going to actually figure out what happened. Like, what is she posting about? Another big thing that came out on her Instagram. And this was, I think, like, a day or two before she left for this flight, was she posted this photo of like a Hawaiian lay. And the caption was something like, hell hath no fury, like a woman scorn kind of a thing. And so people saw that.

They said the lay looks like the photo she's wearing in these. supposed marriage photos. And so like everyone was constructing this narrative based on what is really a photo of, you know, a flower necklace on a window cell. You know, like it could be anything. But I think they give you them at the airport in Hawaii. Yeah. Like you just get you just get them. Like it's. Yeah. But in this case, it was like, oh, this is the secret to the case. Like we, she's a woman. She's in danger because of this evil man. And there's this whole sort of narrative about what she had made. And the evil man hit a clue on Instagram so you could catch him. That's what he did.

He's like, I'll let people know secretly. One of my favorite, like, side plots of this absolutely insane story is when Shari Finn gets, like, half canceled for maybe being secretly conservative. It's so fucking stupid, even to describe it. It would be usually, like, her, the rad movement has a logo that's like a riff on the Gadsden flag. And so they started spitting up this conspiracy theory that it was like this secret conservative movement. And then they found like a quote about how she carries like a gun in her purse. It's like, yeah, I bet the anti-trafficking woman has a gun in her purse. That sounds right to me, actually.

Yes. And the anti-trafficking woman who lives near the U.S. border is also afraid that immigrants are committing crimes and trafficking people. So that all checks out. Very, very many years ago, I did a story about, do you ever like encounter like Hunter Moore on the MySpace? in the Myspace era? I don't think so. He was known as the revenge porn king. Oh.

And he basically had a website that was like crowdsourcing revenge porn and he went to jail. Wow. And then I like profile, not profile, but like was doing a big story on these kids that were trying to like keep his like legacy going by like still working for him while he was in prison. And I interviewed this, this woman who was a lawyer and she was trying to basically change revenge porn laws in California to help her daughter who had been a victim of revenge porn like during Hunter Moore era and her politics were out of control. Like, I still follow her on Twitter. Her politics are indecipherably confusing and it honestly doesn't matter because what

she's doing is very specific. And it's like, okay that she has totally incomprehensible politics as far as I'm concerned. But those are the kinds of people that like you meet in situations like this. Yeah, especially when there is this like personal sort of motivation like they're right for Shari because she says this happened to her daughter, which is something that I wasn't able to confirm, but it is like her origin story of the organization. I think it's like you see everything through the lens of like someone is trying to traffic us, you know? And people online, I think like they were discovering these sort of like conservative iconography and they were

posting about it as if it was like a revelation, right? And then I talked to her and she's like, yeah, of course I'm conservative. Like duh. You know, like her office, her husband had like a mouse pad that says like pedo hunter. You know, like they're really into that kind of. stuff that you might hear about in QAnne of like everyone is a pedophile, you know. Yes, it's just how the world works. Those are the kinds of people that you meet when stuff happens. I don't want to like pull the rug out from under our listeners, but I guess it's time to talk about how you found out that Hannah wasn't being trafficked and that she wasn't missing.

Yeah. It's so. Sorry to laugh, but like it's just, it's like unbelievable to me. Like the whole thing is just, it's wild. So yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. And I was like, it seems like so much happens in the story. And then when I thought about it, I was like, oh, my God, all this happens in like two or three weeks where it just goes completely viral and everyone loses their mind over it.

So like, well, just for the timeline. So December 2nd, the LAPD announces that they're closing the investigation. So this story basically goes from what, like November 8th, 9th to December 2nd. It was like not even a full month. But it's like this total pandemon. And at some point, yeah, LAPD has this press conference. They're like, we think she's in, we think she's missing voluntarily. And the family, of course, refutes that.

Okay. So I assume that the internet is like totally fine with this. Yeah? Yeah. Again, very normal. No one has any reaction. They're just like, yes, queen, go enjoy Mexico. We're here for you.

We're all done now. Yeah. Well, there's this like feeling of betrayal among people who followed her case because they were just sort of like, you know, I. think that true crime as a genre has kind of like predisposed us to imagine the worst, you know, or to imagine some like harrowing thing has happened to somebody. And I think like people were relieved to find that that was seemingly not the case, but they were also like, we need to actually know what happened. Like what the hell was going on? And there was no explanation. And so people were just

kind of losing their minds over that, you know, and that's another point where they sort of turned on Hannah. Like, how could she do this to us? And in your article, you know, at this point, you write, in a news nation TV interview, news nation, yeah, fantastic. Good stuff. The older sister, Sydney, argued that they hadn't seen the footage of Kobayashi crossing into Mexico and didn't believe that she would have done so voluntarily. They say that they've seen her alone and that doesn't discount the fact that someone could be watching her from afar, knowing how big this case has gotten and maybe controlling her

or telling her what to do, Sydney told Hawaii News Now, which seems like a mess. And then also to make it even messier, the aunt says she's quote unquote splitties. Is that, is that right? With the family. The rest of the fam. Okay. It's all a mess. The family's fighting.

The cops have said there's nothing to investigate. Can you explain how Jess Chu, our lead internet detective, kind of cracked this? Yes. So from the beginning of her obsession, as Jess got deeper into the case, she reached out to Hannah's sister, Sydney. She also reached out to Hannah's Aunt Laurie. And she was kind of like having phone conversations with them texting. trying to gather information, trying to, you know, give updates to her own followers at the same time.

And she was also following the tweets of this private investigator named Steve Fisher, who was very involved in the case. He was not officially hired to work on it, but he, like everyone else, who kind of got sucked into the mystery of it and obsessed with it. And so at one point, he said something about, like, I know where Hannah is. Like, I know her location. I have contacts in Mexico. They've told me they've seen her. But she doesn't want to be found. If the family wants to find out, that's fine. They can contact me. Not verbatim, but he sort of said something to that extent. And so Jess saw this and she immediately was like, oh my God, I have to be the person to tell Hannah's family that this man knows where she is. So Jess then contacted Lurie,

Hannah's aunt and is like DMing her being like, dude, this guy knows where she is. You have to go find her. And so Jess is kind of like a cheerleader behind the scenes, like egging people on. She gets a hold of Lurie. Lurie makes this video saying like some guy says he knows. where he is and Jess basically connects them. And she's like, how are you not in touch with this guy? Like, and in some ways, Jess is also testing Lurie because Jess is a little skeptical too. She's like, if Lurie genuinely doesn't know where Hannah is, you know, if she's, if she's real about all this and she's not in on it, because there was this theory that like she was somehow in on it, presumably to get.

Everyone's a suspect. Everyone's a suspect. Everyone is doing this to get clout. That's always the accusation. Like if you're legit and you're actually concerned about your niece, here's where she is. Contact this guy. Yeah, so this all sort of reaches this big culmination. I think it's like that first weekend of December. And I was following the aunt's Aunt Marie's TikTok. And honestly, the content that Marie was putting out, I have to say just as like a spectator was like pretty riveting, even though it was very like simplistic. It would literally just be a video of her like, you know, she did this video of the open road, presumably driving down to Mexico.

There's like her dog is resting on the dashboard. And the caption just says something like, Mexico, here I come. We're going to get Hannah. And it was like, it felt very cinematic because, like, as someone who viewing that, you're, like, rooting for her. Like, oh, my God, yes, she's going to get her. Because, like, we don't know what's going on at this point. Of course, this is exactly how things work in real life.

What did the hero Auntie find, I guess? And then she just went dark. There was nothing. There's no updates. People were thinking worse, but they were also, like, tell us what the hell is going on. Right. So to this day, it's all clouded and mystery. But as we put a pin in this story, what does that?

do we know and what as an expert do you think actually happened? Finally, Hannah, through Lurie, who has sort of become like her de facto spokesperson, puts out this statement, I think, to like People magazine saying, you know, Hannah crossed the border yesterday. She's, she's fine. We're recovering. We've been through a really traumatic situation. And it sort of uses this language that talks about trauma and, you know, says this is very

difficult, but doesn't actually reveal what happened, what went on. And that was, it was like the most anti-climactic thing where everyone was kind of like, what? Like, what did we just follow? Maybe she was getting cheap dental surgery. But, you know, supposedly she was on a spiritual journey. She reemerged, I think, in January. She all of a sudden came out with a new Instagram page that, of course, the sleuths immediately found, totally different username. And it was just a photo of her sitting on a boulder in Joshua Tree.

And she had this caption about, you know, how everyone's judging her. and they don't know her story. And again, here, let me read it actually. When the whole world is looking to you for answers, what would you say? That's iconic. What an incredible way to open that. How would you feel if your entire existence was put on display for the world to judge you without knowing your truth? To say you were at fault for your father taking his own life, are we so quick to put a magnifying glass at the life of another that we forget our humanity?

which is very shady, really appreciate that, but also I think quite astute. I think it's a fantastic way of summing up basically everything that happened. Yes, yes. And it's like she's sort of positioning herself at like, yes, I'm at the center of the story, but also I don't know you guys anything. I don't need to explain myself. Like I didn't ask for this kind of a thing, you know? And of course, people acted very normal about that caption too, you know, about like,

well, where's your humanity? You know, why did you do this to us? So what happened to our girl, Jess? How's she handling all this? You know, Jess is upset about the whole thing. And so she feels completely let down. She feels like Hannah owes her an explanation, which she has still not gotten. And she feels like, you know, I invested my time.

I deserve to know what happened. It feels kind of like a punch in the face. I believe she's also now recapping other missing persons cases. She's doing now a mix of like restaurant reviews and local sort of Hawaii travel stuff. You know, she did get criticism of like, why don't you actually look into cases where people are actually missing? So I think she's done that, but none of it has quite hit that level of like the hand at TikToks, you know? First, doing a mix of like local restaurant reviews and like missing women cases is an incredible snapshot of the way the internet works in 2025. But yes.

And I want to talk more about sort of the way the Panopticon sort of forces people to perform for it. because this is not, you know, this is not an isolated incident. Like this is sort of just the way things work now. And we're going to talk about all of that after a word from our sponsors, true crime crews. It's a cruise ship where you can talk about all of your favorite murder victims, I guess. We'll be right back. Try not to get thrown overboard.

The thing you sort of mentioned about, like, why did you do this to us? Like the internet users who feel victimized, I think is so crucial. because no one in these situations wants to admit their own agency in a way. Like especially the influencers, especially the random internet users, they all have this sense that they were compelled to do this, which, you know, I don't know if I buy, but it's an interesting like reaction that you see every time. Yeah. I think that sense of agency kind of oscillates too, because like there are definitely detectives,

quote unquote on this case who are like who do feel this real calling and this sense of agency where like it's up to me if I don't do this no one else will and so like you do see people really owning that and feeling responsible and it's almost like they're projecting that same sense of responsibility on this person that they've invested time into even though that person has not asked for all of these things to transpire you know so it's like it's like there's this expectation that it's reciprocal when it's really one-sided yeah no we were we were trying to look back at like, you know, four examples of, you know, how true crime has evolved. Are you familiar with the, uh, the more, the more, Mora Moray case?

Oh, tell me about it. So, uh, it was a woman who was going on a trip to Vermont. She crashes her car in New Hampshire. She's never seen again. This is in February 2004. Facebook launches at Harvard, basically around the exact same time. Um, there's like a bunch of like local chatter about it. And there's a bunch of suspicious stuff.

Like she packed up her entire room. There were reports she had a big fight with her boyfriend. And then people start speculating about her essentially forever. You know, there's theories that she committed to. There's theories that she killed herself. There's theories that she wandered into the woods. A theory that like a killer picked her up, like the killer. I don't know.

Or that she like started it. Yeah. Or that she just like fled and started a new identity. But Boston Magazine in 2014 looked back at it and they wrote, In February 2005, members of the DIY detective message board, web sleuths.com. Man, old internet branding was so good. I love those. Love it.

Web sleuths.com. Jumped into the fray, anonymous posters with names like grassy knoll too. Fuck yeah. Once again, conservatives love this stuff. Like, they really do. And cyber law, sick. Whoa. Attempted to piece together a timeline, wondering why Mora would have partied on Saturday

and I or what made her so upset at work. In 2007, pages on Facebook and MySpace were created in the hopes of gathering tips, which is crazy because that's like three years later. And in the Franconia City Forum on the small town message board, Topics.com, more than 42,000 comments have been posted on a thread in just the last four years. And for 20 years, there's just been conspiracy theories circulating. Wow. That to me proved that this isn't inherently an internet thing.

but what your story, I think, illustrates so perfectly is that like when everyone is sort of being driven by internet traffic, the behaviors, I think, move faster and they get stranger. Yeah. And I think it's all happening in this climate where like this idea of authority gets flattened where everyone is an authority. You know, it's like, we don't trust what the cops say. We don't trust what the news reports. And like, here I'm going to tell you what happened on my TikTok. And so I think everyone is listening to these and it. comes this like game of telephone where it just like amplifies everything.

Exactly. Even crazier, there was a development in Moore's case last month. A man named Stefan Baldwin was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a scam where he took money from animal shelters and killed the animals. Oh my God. And apparently he dated more when they were in school together before she went to Amherst, which is where she went missing from. And his DNA was in her car and it's being treated like a new development in the case.

Yeah. Crazy. I think people on the internet. forget that like crimes take a while to solve like the wheels of justice turn very slowly i feel like the trump era is sort of like maybe help hopefully reminding people of this that like it just takes a while um if you like sort of zoom all the way forward to i think probably the biggest most like sort of defining missing person's case of our current internet age gabby patito like that to me I remember following it as a journalist at the time.

And I think the major difference, and I've been trying to figure out how to say this all episode, I think the major difference is that social media and particularly social video has convinced people that everything they need to solve the case can be found within those images and videos. Yeah. That's the difference.

Mm-hmm. It's like, if you see a video of Gabby Petito, you're like, okay, if I watch this video a thousand times, I will find all of the clues because this is all I have. but like the context collapse of the internet has convinced me that this is all I need. Yes. Yes. I mean, and the, you know, the same way that people were looking at Gabby Petito's YouTube videos and trying to figure out like what campsite she was at. I mean, the same thing was happening with this Hannah Kobayashi case where like people were, I mean, Jess, for example, was zooming in on, you know, photos of itineraries that Hannah had written and like comparing her handwriting to another document and just, yeah, convinced that like if you look hard enough, the truth will reveal itself. How do we balance that, yes, it is crazy to think that because everyone is so all of the crimes can be solved by looking at somebody's online profile, with, because we live in a surveillance state, and also we do document enough of our lives that, like, actually a lot of crimes can be solved by like a large amount of people online, seemingly sometimes better than the police.

you can have to hold both at the same time, right? Yes. You do. I agree. I agree. It makes me kind of spin out because it's like it's so frustrating because I want to be like, this feels bad that it's content. And also you're like, oh, look, they like, they found the boyfriend. That's incredible.

So I think, you know, I want to hear Jen's take on this. But my immediate take is that like the times that it works. works we hear about because we're like, oh, it worked. It's confirmation bias in a lot of ways. Sure. And the reason you're hearing about like, you know, oh, the internet solve this crime is because there's, I'm going to say, trillions of crimes a day that the internet can't solve. I think that's right.

And I think like also as someone who quick, shameless plug, but like I am doing a podcast now about a group of teenage girls who did help solve a crime. I am via TikTok. And I think like one of the amazing things about that story is how remarkable and how unique and how rare that is. I think that like it is true that like in the same way that Hannah randomly showed up in this vlogger's YouTube video of this event of the Grove. Like sometimes people do catch suspects or they catch evidence just by total happenstance because they happen to be filming everything and uploading everything online. And like that can be evidence. And I think there are cases that show that. And then you know, conversely, the danger is that, you know,

you can spin your wheels being like, everything is a clue when it's not. So I think, like, yeah, definitely both things can be true of, like, it can lead to evidence, but, like, sometimes it's totally random. We know when it works because it's, like, a big deal. Totally. If a woman had gone missing, I mean, we have a couple examples here, but, like, which we can sort of bounce off of. Like, we have a story here from 2017. Linda O'Keefe, an 11-year-old girl who was found dead in Newport Beach, California, in the 70s.

Because of DNA advancements, the cops were able to get a new sample, and, you know, they needed the public's help to find a match. And tech advancements and crowdsourcing can certainly help, but no one back in the 70s would have thought her diaries and photos of her had the clues that could solve the case. Right. And so it's such a new idea that. that, and it's almost exclusively young women, the idea is that young women are documenting their lives so extensively online that we can put all of their social media data together in a timeline and figure out exactly what happened, which is just like not how anybody lives their lives, I don't think, other than maybe streamers.

Well, and there also is this sense that, like, you should have access to everyone at any given moment, especially in this case where people weren't sure whether, you know, I think they assumed that she was alive, which thankfully she is. but like I think there was this element where like people were commenting and DMing her. And like, you know, even just once she was located in Mexico, people were sending her like money on Venmo, you know. And so I think like people really felt like we should have access to this person who has become in a way this public figure. Like we should be able to give her our own advice or like tell her how we feel about this all. And people want to be able to like communicate.

And in that way, I mean, people were communicating with her aunt Louise. She put her cell phone number on TikTok. And so people were just calling in and being. Like, here's my theory. And so people, I think, took it a step further of, like, wanting this closeness to that person of, like, not just close reading their Instagram, but also being like, oh, I need to DM you. And, like, if you're reading this, like, do X, Y, and Z or whatever, you know.

Yeah. And I think to sort of circle back to the question I posed at the top of the episode, like, you know, how is true crime brain rot destroying the world? Like, I think by turning these stories into entertainment, to turning them into a serialized podcast or documentaries on Netflix that are sort of just algorithmically generated. Like we are creating a culture where the woman at the center of the case, even if she's still alive, like has no real agency in how big this story gets. And the people who are consuming it feel like they are owed more and more because it's,

it's entertainment. It's something that they're connecting with. It's like it's emotionally satisfying. And, you know, I think that is really bad. I just think that that's really fucked up. Yeah. And like I think there is this cynicism, even among true crime fans where I think that like they are smart about how these mechanisms work in the genres and in the industries where like, you know, there's all this chatter on Reddit about like, when is the Netflix documentary coming out and like who are we going to cast in the movie version of this? And so I think like people have this expectation that like, oh, this is going to be IP for X, Y, and Z.

And it's unclear whether Hannah actually wants anything to do with it. You know, like that is the question that all of these production companies are racing to see if they can get Hannah. And meanwhile, Hannah is seemingly just living a quiet life somewhere seemingly in the Pacific Northwest with her. And no one actually knows what's going on with her, but she has given no indication that she wants this kind of like Hollywood treatment, you know. Also, what would the movie be? It's four days and a bunch of Reddit posts. This is the thing that like drives me totally nuts about this stuff. is that like and you can always tell it when you're talking to somebody who's like consumed too many posts about something and they're about to like tell you like oh my god like the craziest thing happened online and you can watch the light kind of go from their eyes as like almost like they're describing a dream to you because they realize that what they're describing is just like they read a lot of posts and like they read a lot of posts and like they read a lot of posts like this isn't anything like um and i i i think it's a really

testament to like how easily you can be swept up in this stuff and feel like you're part of this thing that like there is no center to yeah not you you actually did the work to like figure out what's going on but i'm talking about like the people on reddit yeah i mean and i it's weird because i feel like i have this like paris social relationship with all of them too where like once i started digging into this it like i get it like i get the appeal i can't judge anyone like this is i thought it was fascinating like i probably had this glaze look over my face as i was you know digesting every single thread because Like there is this sense of mystery to it. You want it to resolve in some way.

And I think at the end of the day, the fact that like maybe she was just someone who needed a break or like didn't want to respond to her family's text messages. Like there is this interesting question at the end of it too of like at what point can a woman like a grown adult woman just decide to kind of walk away from her life or like do we need to be beholden to our phones at any given moment? You know? and like there is this question of if this had happened 20 years ago, like probably none of this would have happened because she wouldn't have been on Instagram. She wouldn't have been on IMessage, you know, she wouldn't have been geolocated on Find My Phone. And so like, I don't know, in some ways I do think it is this fantasy too of like, whoa, like she really escaped off the grid and like no one knew where she was. And like there is something sort of amazing.

And like I don't know. I think there's something envious about that. Like that's so cool that you just didn't like it's horrible. like she put her family and friends through hell. But I think there's something enviable about the fact that she was actually able to go off grade. Again, I don't know. It sounds like she really did go through something traumatic. I don't know what was going on.

But it did feel like she embodied this fantasy of losing touch with modern technology. I do love that this story effectively boils down to a woman like did something for herself. And it was so catastrophic to society that it sent several. people into like deep psychological tail spins. The police were called and it became a national news story for like an entire month. I think that's really beautiful. A woman went on a vacation to Mexico and didn't tell anybody and the entire country shut down for like a month. Yes, it was like her self-care journey became total pandemonium, trafficking fears, like America's worst nightmare. That's the real crime if you ask me as a woman going on vacation by herself.

Yes. If a woman does not respond to her mom's text message within two days, like should they Call us her. Call the police. Like, I don't know. I should have a with this. Her aunt and her mom will never speak to each other again after going on a national manhunt for her. It's incredible.

They're really sad and really comical. Like there are, yeah, it's a really, I don't know, it's really crazy. Every person's life is messy. Everyone's family is definitely messy. And the internet, like, is very seductive in how it lies to us about that not being true for everyone else. Like we assume that the person who's now been put in the viral pedestal has a perfect life and won't have the inconsistencies that we have. And every single time, like, we discover that that's not true.

Like every single time we find out that somebody's flawed and they've got some weird aunt that lives in a van and their lives are a mess. Like it's just, that's just everybody. Yeah. I did see, side note, I did see that Lurie was selling her RV and I'm very curious about what's happening. See, I'm like deep in it too because I was like, oh, she's. Panic world. Our Patreon is $5 a month. If you can hit our next goal, our stretch goal, we will buy the van.

We will buy the van and drive around the country. That would be incredible. You could do tour stops. You could podcast from the van itself. We could podcast for the van. I think that's exactly the way to do it. I want to thank you for coming on the show. This was as delightful as a conversation about a missing woman could be.

So just really, where can people follow you online? You know, I've started a substack that I've, like everyone else, that I have yet to actually write on, but someday this will be aspirational, gen swan.com, and listen to my podcast, which is also about online detectives called My Friend Daisy. So if you want to hear a bit of an extended cut of this episode, you can join our Patreon at patreon.com slash panic world. And for just five books, you get more episode. You also get ad-free episodes and a whole bunch of other stuff. Patreon.com slash panic world. Panic World is a Garbage Day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at Garbageday.

Email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our derange logo was created by Gabby Cash. Please give us $5 at patreon.com slash Panic World. Please give us products to sell by contacting Multitude at multitude.

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