Jennifer Swann

So it does raise the question of, like, did anyone know where she was going?

Did she have a parent involved?

Like, yeah, I mean, I think at every stage of it, she was just failed by the adults themselves.

I mean, I think she, so she realized within, I think, like weeks of Celeste being identified, like she kind of, she knew like, oh, this is real, something's up.

And like, I think by that point, people, just to backtrack a little bit, people were really kind of like digging into her and accusing her of...

So there's this thing that happened where once people were convinced that Celeste was in fact in the Discord and people knew who she was and knew that she was underage, everyone began pointing fingers because it was this vigilante investigation.

Everyone was accusing one another of enabling or facilitating this.

And so she was someone who took tons of heat because people thought that she knew something just because she had made a reference to Celeste.

um or like being in a live stream and that kind of thing so she basically like took it upon herself to go on reddit and like actually respond to people and defend herself that went pretty poorly at first but like there were definitely people who are like okay we get it she's a fan who's kind of hurt and feels betrayed by this artist that she loved and she's maybe not handling this well she maybe posted some shitty things but like you know she means well so she definitely like came around being like david did it this kind of thing she's but she's definitely someone who like

she has spent so much of her life on the internet and i think now she's kind of like this is too much this whole experience i mean i felt bad even like talking to her for like fact checking and stuff because she was like traumatized by this whole thing it was kind of like i'm kind of like i'm so glad he's arrested like i kind of can't keep talking about this but the other the thing that really struck me too like once i had more conversations with like sophia and with sarah and there's you know there's another detective they you know detective in quotes they worked with yeah may the thing that i was really struck with is that like

a lot of these young women had all had experiences with grooming online.

And so like, I think that was, that was really interesting to me to be like, oh, they're not, they're not just people who like true crime and are inserting themselves into this case, which like, sure, those things are true.

But also I think for them, it felt like, oh, like I've been in Celeste's shoes.

And luckily that wasn't the way things ended for me.

But like all of them had these deep stories that kind of like came out on multiple conversations.

And like, Sophia was definitely one of them.

That's like,

oh yeah like i kind of feel i know what she was maybe going through and i feel like i wish i had known so it's it yeah it was interesting because she was made into like this monster online and then it turned out she kind of had her own her own story too you know it is interesting to me that like at the same time that gen z is so vocal about like age gap discourse that they're also like

yeah and there's this other thing i mean again i feel like for me like it was this like anthropological experience of like hey kids like what are the kids up to and like it was also surprising and like just strange to me to learn how like some people just identified so much with like their screen name or their avatar that i'd be like hey like do you feel comfortable using their name they're like yeah yeah of course i don't care and i'm like oh so what's your name they're like

my screen name.