There is no mystery about the most important fact in the Lindsay Clancy case: Lindsay Clancy killed her three children.
She admitted that she did it. Her own defense does not dispute it. There are serious questions for a jury to consider about her mental state and criminal responsibility, but who killed these children is not one of them.
And yet, spend enough time watching videos about this case on TikTok, and you can find yourself in an entirely different reality.
Videos circulating on the platform offer an endless stream of alternative narratives. Some accuse Clancy’s then-husband, Patrick, of being responsible. Others claim the timeline points to someone else, or that overlooked evidence changes what happened. There is also a focus on SSRIs and other medications as an explanation that effectively transfers responsibility away from Clancy.
I understand why these theories have found such a receptive audience among women, particularly mothers. This crime is so horrific that wanting another explanation is an entirely human response.
It is almost impossible to comprehend that a fellow mother could take the lives of the children she carried, delivered, fed, bathed, comforted, and tucked into bed. Motherhood is so fundamentally associated with protecting our children that when we are confronted with something this horrific, the mind searches for an explanation that makes it easier to understand.
There must be something else we don’t know. There must be some missing piece that will make this make sense.
I don’t think the majority of women drawn into these theories are stupid or gullible. I think many are confronting a truth so unbearable that they desperately want something else to be true.
And that very human impulse is exactly where social media can become dangerous.
I have spent my career in public relations and new media watching how stories take hold, narratives spread, and repetition shapes public perception. Social media has transformed that process. Algorithms are constantly learning which stories, emotions, and arguments hold our attention and serve us more of them.
TikTok’s algorithm does not know why you stopped scrolling. It does not know that a video suggesting an alternative explanation gave you a moment of relief from something you could barely comprehend. It only knows that you watched.
Pause on another video questioning the timeline, watch one about SSRIs, or spend time reading comments insisting there is more to the story, and TikTok learns what holds your attention. Then, it gives you more.
What begins as an attempt to understand an incomprehensible crime can become an hours-long journey through content reinforcing the explanation you most want to believe. The algorithm doesn’t have to convince you that any particular conspiracy theory is true. It only has to make the truth feel uncertain.
And in the Clancy case, we are seeing that online obsession spill into the real world.
For six weeks, supporters have gathered outside the courthouse, filling parking lots, wearing pink and, in some cases, traveling from as far away as the United Kingdom. A trial about the deaths of three young children has become something that can feel disturbingly like a cause, or even fandom. And in at least one case, that fervor appears to have crossed a serious line. A 56-year-old woman was arrested for alleged jury intimidation after authorities say she filmed and photographed jurors from the restricted parking lot following their dismissal.
As someone who works in media, I find that progression so alarming. A narrative becomes content. Content becomes community. Community becomes identity. And once a belief becomes part of someone’s identity, contradicting evidence can begin to feel less like information and more like an attack.
Another important distinction is being lost. We can have tremendous compassion for someone suffering from severe mental illness while still acknowledging what she did. We can have serious conversations about postpartum mental health and psychiatric medication without treating viral claims as established medical fact. And we can consider whether mental illness affected Clancy’s criminal responsibility without inventing an entirely different perpetrator.
The accusations against Patrick Clancy are one particularly cruel consequence. A father who lost all three of his children has been turned into a character in strangers’ online theories.
But this is bigger than one criminal trial. The same machinery operates across politics, health, parenting and virtually every major cultural debate. An algorithm discovers which emotion keeps us watching and surrounds us with content that reinforces it until repetition feels like corroboration and agreement feels like evidence.
That is why mocking women who have fallen into this rabbit hole misses the point. Their initial reaction is understandable. The danger is what happens when empathy becomes identification, curiosity becomes obsession and an algorithm continually reinforces what we already want to believe.
I understand the instinct to look at this case and think there has to be something else.
But sometimes there isn’t.
Misinformation doesn’t always begin with a ridiculous lie. Sometimes, it begins with a terrible truth we desperately wish were not true. Social media finds that wish, feeds it, and, if we aren’t careful, can turn it into something we believe.
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Vanessa Santos is a political communications specialist and the president and CEO of Renegade D.C.
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