Police are scouring a vast Florida preserve in search of Gabby Petito's fiance

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45. A throng of Internet sleuths are on the Gabby Petito case. Why has it sparked so much interest?

National

A throng of Internet sleuths are on the Gabby Petito case. Why has it sparked so much interest?

By Caroline Anders and Meryl Kornfield
Yesterday at 6:11 p.m. EDT

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“You’ve got this beautiful young couple, supposedly in love, making this romantic adventure across the country, and then something goes very bad,” said Scott Bonn, a criminologist who studies why certain crimes become cultural touchstones.

Though interest in this case has been particularly fervent on social media, Bonn noted the public’s preoccupation with the unknown predates the Internet. If Petito were a woman of color, he added, the national fixation on the case would not likely exist.

“It’s about our culture and our society,” he said. “We place a priority on whiteness. We place a priority on youth and on our expectations of physical beauty.”

Petito’s age is the prime age of TikTok users, said Amanda Brennan, senior director of trends for XX Artists, a digital marketing agency. That could be another reason more users would identify with her case, Brennan said. She compared the case to that of Elisa Lam. Amateur investigators pored over her Tumblr page after she disappeared from a Los Angeles hostel in 2013.

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By Caroline Anders
Caroline Anders is a reporting intern on the General Assignment desk. Twitter https://twitter.com/caroIineanders

By Meryl Kornfield
Meryl Kornfield is a staff writer on the general assignment desk of The Washington Post. Twitter https://twitter.com/merylkornfield