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.
***
Vanessa Santos is a political communications specialist and the president and CEO of Renegade D.C.

Hundreds of pink-clad supporters gather at courthouse ahead of Lindsay Clancy trial

Lindsay Clancy TikTok Is Melting Women’s Brains

lindsay clancy

misinformation

opinion

social media

tiktok

true crime

History is one big struggle of various groups fighting against the big, bad white man.
Here’s the harsh truth of it: We, the Boomers, Gen Xers, and older Millennials, thought we were doing good by teaching our children about the world through this lens. Some of us felt guilty about being white and privileged, so this was a correction for it.
We Boomers, Gen Xers, and older Millennials sent our children to school without really looking into what was being taught. We had a profound lack of interest in the moral values our children failed to learn. After all, our parents were hands-off, and we turned out alright. But our parents weren’t parenting in the 21st century. It’s an entirely different playing field. We didn’t have teachers who spewed terrible ideas or social media that echoed them.
And now we see that because we were hands-off, because we were passive and blindly trusted the school system, young people are lost and confused and have backward ideas about the world. They are leading the charge when it comes to the deterioration of the West.
Who can blame them? How can young people feel good about the West when they learn that it’s just an evil oppressor? This is reinforced when they log onto TikTok, where victimhood saturates every single video. Heck, young people were sympathizing with Osama bin Laden in November of 2023, when his “Letter to America” — which demonized the U.S. for funding and carrying out military operations in the Middle East — went viral. Things have become so bad that Osama bin Laden, a mass murderer who killed thousands of innocent Americans, is now seen as a victim by some young people.
We need to admit it: This is our fault. We didn’t teach young people the full history or give them real knowledge. We focused on the oppressor vs. oppressed and let social media handle the rest. Now, we cannot pretend to care about the West unless we start by caring about what is being taught in the classroom.
Over the past few years, there has been endless talk about progressive ideologies infecting college campuses.
Students at Columbia held an anti-Veterans Day protest called “Martyrs Day” to honor Middle Eastern martyrs; several professors have been fired or faced other forms of retaliation for going against progressive talking points; and only about 1 to 3% of professors at Harvard identify as conservative, with the rest of the staff being liberal to outright leftist.
While what’s happening on college campuses is shocking, the truth is that the problem with our education in the West starts much, much earlier. It begins as soon as children enter the school system.
From an early age, they learn everything through the lens of the oppressor and the oppressed.
The early U.S. settlers were bad white male colonizers who did horrible things to the native population.
Women were oppressed, and through the suffrage movement, they defeated the patriarchy and gained the right to vote.
The white man has repeatedly and exclusively enslaved Black people.
The good news? There is still time to turn it around for the younger generations.
Parents: Now that you know the dangers of being passive, be proactive about your children’s education. See what they are learning in school. Don’t be afraid to question it. Switch schools or homeschool if you have to. And for goodness’ sake, monitor what they are looking at on their phones. Or give them a dumbphone so you don’t have to worry.
If you are considering a new school, look at their curriculum and how the children behave in that school. Are they respectful towards their teachers — and each other — in the classroom? Do they go from class to class quietly? Do they stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and know it by heart?
Teach your children the “small c” conservative values your grandparents taught you: Personal responsibility. Duty to others. Loyalty to country. Respecting elders and authority. Being a good citizen.
Do not teach the world through the oppressor/oppressed lens. Teach your children not to emphasize victimhood. Show your children they are responsible beings with agency, no matter their race or religion.
This is a civilization failure that belongs to us. We did this to our children.
But it isn’t too late. Instill in them knowledge, truth, and values, and care about what goes on in the classroom. Then, we won’t have such troubles by the time they hit college and then go out into the real world.
If we save our children, it’s clear: we’ll save the West, too.
***
Katharine Birbalsingh is headmistress and co-founder of Michaela Community School. She is known as Britain’s Strictest Headmistress and hosts the podcast &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@StrictlyEdPod">Strictly Education</a>.&#8221;

Anti-ICE rally outside Columbia University in New York

Why The Next Generation Sees The West As The Enemy

education

parenting

progressivism

western civilization

Technology is scary.
Sometimes it&#8217;s scary for a very good reason — and sometimes it&#8217;s scary just because it&#8217;s scary.
But we have to tell the difference between the two, because if we don&#8217;t, we&#8217;ll either destroy our own brains or we will destroy our entire economy.
New technology is always scary because we&#8217;re not sure exactly what to do with it. The temptation is always to kill it — to burn it with fire. Sometimes I&#8217;m sympathetic to this particular temptation.
The World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing look creepy and weird. There were gigantic lines of robots dancing and walking in unison, with varying levels of competence.
One robot fought another robot and then broke out into a victory dance. One of the robots fell down and broke, which, I have to admit, made me laugh.
But the robots will get better — and creepier.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep-2494?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
On Wednesday, Facebook signed a gigantic settlement with 29 states to put some new restrictions on the use of its technology for children.
Let&#8217;s be clear. Social media is disastrous for kids’ brains. It acts like a drug; it addicts them.
That&#8217;s what it&#8217;s designed to do, in much the same way that nicotine is addictive. Social media is addictive. It has hacked our brains and found dopamine-release features with access to dopamine with a few easy hand motions.
Kids pick up on this stuff quite rapidly. If you ever leave a two-year-old child in proximity to an iPad, the kid will find it, start manipulating it, and become addicted to it. Their eyes glaze over. They turn into little zombies.
It&#8217;s a real issue. Many brain studies document this.
You know this yourself if you have ever doom-scrolled X. It was literally training you to get that small dopamine release so that you&#8217;d want to do it again and again.
But all of this is making you stupid. It was designed to make you stupid because it was designed to be addictive and make you want to watch more.
The algorithmic feed is dangerous; it feeds you what you want to see. It&#8217;s one of the reasons why if you click on a particular video on YouTube, you get fed a bunch of similar content. It&#8217;s how you end up down crazy rabbit holes in the online space.
It&#8217;s why young people seem so siloed in their information, everything from news to entertainment.
I think there should be heavy-handed regulation on social media; you should be banned from social media completely until you are of age. I do not think minors need or have the right to social media.
Social media is a disaster area. It&#8217;s terrible for kids in every way. It&#8217;s up to the parent to make sure our kids don&#8217;t engage in it.
My 12-year-old constantly says she wants nothing to do with it. As she gets older, I hope that remains. But lots of other parents just aren&#8217;t as involved.
A weird residue of how people currently perceive technology is that they&#8217;re actually warmer toward Facebook and Instagram than toward technologies that will transform the American economy.
There&#8217;s an overall unease about AI. Even though artificial intelligence could save the American economy. AI boosts productivity. 
You know this yourself if you use ChatGPT or other AI avenues. The time it would take me to research particular data questions through things like Google is so much longer than simply using ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity.
It boggles the mind. It is significantly more efficient to synthesize information using AI. This is true in a wide variety of arenas. The uses for AI are legion and often excellent.
According to the Dallas Federal Reserve, quoting Goldman Sachs, you could see a massive boost in American productivity somewhere between 0.3 and 3.0 percentage points a year over the next decade, with a median estimate of 1.5 percentage points.
Yet, at the same time, you have a lot of people who are catastrophists about technology and often favor centralized control. Bill Gates is ripping AI and suggesting that mass numbers of jobs will be wiped out.
We have not seen mass numbers of jobs wiped out, and my suspicion is that you will see jobs lost, but you will also see an enormous number of jobs gained. Jobs will change.
I think that this technology will bleed into the public gradually, a little bit slower than people think. Gates said in an interview, “The technology has crossed dangerous thresholds in biology, cybersecurity, white-collar work, and human relationships.”
Three years ago, he said that the coming bumpy AI job disruption would lead to a manageable transition in technology and would help people work efficiently. Now he says it will wreak economic catastrophe with far fewer jobs than exist today.
He says that if AI continues unchecked, society will turn against it entirely. But Gates has spent his career since founding Microsoft dooming and gloom-mongering. It took him years to acknowledge that his doomsday view of global warming was unrealistic.
He was wrong about the climate accords. He was wrong about the widespread Covid vaccine. He was wrong about a bunch of things. But now people are jumping on the bandwagon with him.
We should acknowledge that a bunch of people in the AI space want the government to step in and heavily regulate AI so they can capture the market.
The effect of all this is that people get freaked out because you have the heads of these AI companies telling you to be doomers, and you have a bunch of politicians who are going around catering to the freaked-out rather than trying to explain what exactly is happening.
You end up in politics with this bizarre increase in hatred for data centers, which are simply places that process an enormous amount of data. Because people are afraid of AI, they are afraid of the data centers, and because politicians are afraid of the people, they respond by cracking down on the data centers.
There is good tech, and there&#8217;s bad tech. Not all tech is created the same.
The promises of social media were basically a giant lie. They promised more friendship. They delivered far more antipathy. They promised more information, and they delivered a bunch of misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and slop. They promised connection. Instead they often delivered addiction.
Kids have been feeling the consequences of this for a decade and a half, and it&#8217;s been a disaster.
But I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s true of AI. If we would like to destroy ourselves, what we should do is free up social media and restrict AI. We should be cracking down on social media for the sake of particularly young people who are vulnerable to the addictive qualities.
We should ensure the worst excesses of AI are avoided, but we should not try to hamstring AI so we lose to the Chinese. They are not stopping for a moment.
AI can work for us in ways that help all of us.

ben technology

How America’s War On Technology Is About To Backfire

artificial intelligence

big tech

child safety online

technology regulation

TikTok Parents

It’s Time To Mansplain Parenting To TikTok Moms Who Resent Their Own Kids

motherhood

Northerners are paying upwards of $12,000 for &#8220;rush coaches&#8221; to get their daughters into a Southern sorority. It may sound crazy, but that&#8217;s just the price of admission to college&#8217;s most prestigious social clubs.
Now before you call me &#8220;dumb&#8221; or &#8220;out of touch,&#8221; I did not pay for any type of sorority coach, but I didn’t need to. I was from the South, went to school in the South, and had connections out the wazoo with girls already in sororities at Auburn University. But to be clear, I still got dropped by some sororities I liked (I’m looking at you Chi O).
It’s already hard enough to get into a sorority at the University of Alabama, Auburn University, or Ole Miss if you are from the South. You need spotless social media, recommendations from friends, an over-filled resume, and frankly some luck to get in. Coming from the North? Who are you? That’s what these sorority girls will be asking. So yes, these “rush coaches” give the skills needed to have a chance at joining one as an out-of-state girl eager to live that SEC sorority girl life.
Here is some inside ball. Sororities know exactly who is coming through those doors during recruitment week — if you are from Birmingham, Alabama; Atlanta, Georgia; Montgomery, Alabama; or Mobile, Alabama. Before rush even starts, the girls on the other side of the sorority house have been locked up for a week, without sunlight, learning everything about the top girls who will walk through that door once rush week starts.
But not every PNM (that stands for potential new members — sorority slang) gets spotlighted. Only the girls who are known to members already in the sorority or come highly recommended by an alumna are in this slideshow where the current members can get to know your face and some fun facts about you.
It always cracked me up that if you were from a small town you were grouped with other small town girls and affectionately called &#8220;small town trash.&#8221; Was that just my school? Probably not. Look, not everyone can hold it down in Birmingham or Atlanta; someone has to hold it down in Alex City.
Now if you are coming from far out-of-state, especially out-of-the-South, you are starting this sorority journey already down by a touchdown. (We love a good football metaphor down here.) And only if you make a splash during rush are you then known as a &#8220;discovery,&#8221; and boom you have someone on the other side fighting for you, which is huge. But that is not the rule; it’s the exception.
Girls up North have known this for a while thanks to the absolute TikTok mania that surrounds rush every year, and now the parents are catching on. Lindsay Lookingbill is a teacher from Maryland who at first thought her daughter was silly for asking for a professional rush coach, but the mother later told Bloomberg it was necessary.
&#8220;You’re not going into another world. You’re not going to Mars,&#8221; she told <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-10/what-is-sorority-rush-and-why-are-parents-paying-6-500-for-coaches">Bloomberg</a>. &#8220;But you are going into a different culture.&#8221;
Growing up in Alabama, girls know how big of a deal it is to get into sorority. In Birmingham even high schools have them!
We had mock &#8220;ice water tea&#8221; parties (what the first rounds of sorority recruitment used to be called) after church on Sundays, résumé classes, a handbook telling you everything you need to know about the sororities and how to get alumni to write you recommendations — it was intense.
<blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db4C-ygu5yD/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14">
<div style="padding: 16px;">
&nbsp;
<div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;">
<div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div>
<div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;">
<div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div>
<div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div>
<div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div>
<div style="padding-top: 8px;">
<div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div>
</div>
<div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div>
<div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;">
<div>
<div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div>
<div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div>
<div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 8px;">
<div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div>
<div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: auto;">
<div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div>
<div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div>
<div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;">
<div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"></div>
<div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"></div>
</div>
&nbsp;
<p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db4C-ygu5yD/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Lynden Blake Balyo (@lyndenblake)</a>
</div>
</blockquote>
Trisha Addicks, the author of &#8220;The Rush Bible,&#8221; understands the amount of prep that goes into sorority recruitment. It’s why she started her business, It’s All Greek To Me, back in 2017 long before &#8220;RushTok&#8221; (sorority videos on TikTok) was even a thought. This company charges $6,500 for a one-year coaching program. Starting this fall, she’s launching the two-year Legacy Mentorship package for $12,000, and people are buying.
&#8220;The response has been overwhelmingly positive,&#8221; Addicks told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Clients tell us again and again how relieved they are to have found &#8216;The Rush Bible&#8217; and/or our team at It&#8217;s All Greek to Me, especially our clients from the North.&#8221;
There has always been a need to prep for sorority recruitment for us ladies below the Mason-Dixon line, but with the influx of Northerners sending their kids down South after the pandemic (hello 30% increase in five years <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/sorry-harvard-everyone-wants-to-go-to-college-in-the-south-now-235d7934">per</a> the Wall Street Journal), businesses like Addicks&#8217; have exploded.
&#8220;RushTok and social media completely changed the landscape of sorority recruitment,&#8221; Addicks said. &#8220;Girls are seeing the hype online and they want in, and our business has grown exponentially because Northern families know what they don&#8217;t know.&#8221;
&#8220;Rush is hard everywhere, especially in the South. Most Northern families haven&#8217;t navigated it before, and even families who think they know rush from their own experience find the Southern process is a different world.&#8221;
A rush coach like Addicks is going to clean up your social media, wardrobe, accent, manners, and résumé. Yes, Southern sororities do care about what you wear, how you talk, and what is on that résumé. No one knows who you are, so you have to nail the first impression.
&#8220;Rush is a high-stakes goal like any other, and you cannot show up and wing it,&#8221; Addicks said. &#8220;You prepare for it the way you would for any major interview or competition.&#8221;
Now before you say this is stupid, let me make one thing clear: Sororities provide structure, accountability, community, and connections during formative years. You have to have good grades and cannot be caught making out with everyone at the bar or posting alcohol on social media when you’re under 21. Put that drink in a red cup!
&#8220;At the end of the day, I didn’t pay Mindy to help my daughter through rush,&#8221; Lookingbill said. &#8220;I paid Mindy for life skills development that will help [my daughter] throughout life.&#8221;
Once you know how cutthroat the process is, it’s no surprise that parents are paying so their daughter isn’t the one during recruitment talking to a member that gives the “come rescue me signal.” Yep, that’s how calculated rush is. Members have a distress signal that basically means, &#8220;I can’t talk to this person anymore, come relieve me.&#8221;
My friend put it simply: &#8220;I would pay $5,000 just so my daughter doesn&#8217;t have to be the girl no one wants to talk to.&#8221;
Here is my rush advice: When a girl asks about your summer during the first rounds, you better sound busy. Volunteer work, summer job, playing sports, competing in pageants — sound like you were filled to the brim with commitments. No one wants a couch potato anti-social weirdo.
Use manners. Look the girls in the eye, ask questions back to them about what they like to do, say thank you, and just be polite. Nothing says “cut” like talking to a PNM with an attitude.
Dress respectfully. This is not a nightclub; it’s a sisterhood with standards. Cover up and look nice and modest.
And here is some advice from Addicks herself.
&#8220;For rush, highlight that you are a girls&#8217; girl, a genuine friend, and someone who wants to be involved and active in your sorority,&#8221; Addicks said.
&#8220;Do this through intentional, thoughtful social media posts. Show yourself with friends and family and participating in activities you love. Avoid too many photos alone or with a significant other, and archive the solo bathing suit photos.&#8221;
Boom. And all that was for free.
***
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Sorority Rush At Auburn

I Survived Southern Sorority Rush. Here’s Why Parents Are Paying $12,000 For Help.

college greek life

lifestyle

sorority recruitment

southern culture

university of alabama

City Of San Francisco Announces Lawsuit Against Food Manufacturers Over Ultra-Processed Foods

Mom Tries To Police Kid Lunches And The Group Chat Goes Unhinged

school policy

viral trend

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker dropped a bizarre self-aggrandizing video on X Monday night, featuring himself posing awkwardly, captioned “Governor-maxxing.” As if that weren’t enough to make internet users spit out their coffee, the clip declared, “When you’re in an aura farming contest and your opponent is J.B.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Governor-maxxing. <a href="https://t.co/KUZRJc9ANF">pic.twitter.com/KUZRJc9ANF</a>
&mdash; JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) <a href="https://x.com/JBPritzker/status/2091993783478919327?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 24, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“Aura farming” is slang for intentionally acting cool or confident to stack up invisible clout points. But for the billionaire Democrat with zero street credibility, the attempt to use Gen-Z slang backfired rapidly.
Social media users immediately pounced on the clip, serving up a brutal reality check to the governor’s delusional post.
Critics quickly flipped Pritzker’s forced language against him. One viral response laid out the billionaire’s actual track record in Illinois, listing his real specialties: &#8220;Property-tax-maxxing,&#8221; &#8220;Gas-tax-hike-maxxing,&#8221; &#8220;Pension-debt-maxxing,&#8221; and &#8220;Fiscal-instability-maxxing.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Gov. Pritzker&#39;s record speaks for itself:
Property-tax-maxxing Property-tax-task-force-maxxing State-and-local-tax-burden-maxxing Cell-phone-tax-maxxing Gas-tax-hike-maxxing Automatic-tax-indexing-maxxing Toll-hike-maxxing State-spending-growth-maxxing Pension-debt-maxxing…
&mdash; Brian Costin (@BrianCostin) <a href="https://x.com/BrianCostin/status/2092006673363734880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 24, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Former nuclear scientist for the US Department of Energy Matt Van Swol didn&#8217;t mince words about the state of Illinois’ first city, noting, “This is literally what is happening on the streets of Chicago on a nightly basis &#8230; You are a joke. Everything is fake, you don’t give a damn.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
This is literally what is happening on the streets of Chicago on a nightly basis by Black teens. 
You are a joke. 
Everything is fake, you don’t give a damn. <a href="https://t.co/19t93E8v8R">pic.twitter.com/19t93E8v8R</a>
&mdash; Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) <a href="https://x.com/mattvanswol/status/2092064670861447361?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 25, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Others simply pointed out the laws of physics, cracking, “To everyone making fun of this just remember, to generate aura you must generate gravity. And in order to generate gravity, you need a large amount of mass in one object. And no other object has more mass then JB Pritzker.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
To everyone making fun of this just remember, to generate aura you must generate gravity. And in order to generate gravity, you need a large amount of mass in one object. And no other object has more mass then JB pritzker.
&mdash; John The Sheep (@JohnthesheepNAT) <a href="https://x.com/JohnthesheepNAT/status/2092081425835258169?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 25, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
And more:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
 <a href="https://t.co/31wDvxSFZa">pic.twitter.com/31wDvxSFZa</a>
&mdash; Jenna Ellis 🐊 (@realJennaEllis) <a href="https://x.com/realJennaEllis/status/2092087437367394681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 25, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The &#8220;aura&#8221; campaign comes as Pritzker lays the groundwork for a potential 2028 presidential bid. Despite polling in single digits among prospective Democratic candidates, Pritzker has been desperately trying to build national resistance credibility. He made headlines in April by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pritzker-calls-for-mass-protests-destruction-says-gop-cannot-know-a-moment-of-peace">bellowing</a> calls for “mass protests” and “disruption” at a New Hampshire dinner, while previously comparing the incoming administration to 1930s Europe.
Yet back home, the Pritzker’s policy blunders are giving taxpayers grief. Pritzker recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bears-leaving-illinois-pritzker-says-an-out-of-state-republican-is-to-blame">threw up his hands</a> over the Chicago Bears, allowing the iconic charter NFL franchise to consider packing its bags for Indiana after he refused to grant tax relief to keep them in Illinois. Pritzker claimed he wouldn&#8217;t use public money for billionaire sports teams, which was ironic since his administration <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2025/02/26/jb-pritzker-healthcare-costs-adults-without-lack-legal-status-illinois-auditor-frank-mautino?utm_source=chatgpt.com">massively understated</a> the cost of state healthcare for illegal immigrants by a staggering $1.6 billion.
Add in a history of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mr-hypocrisy-pritzker-bashes-texas-maps-forgets-his-own-power-grabs-in-illinois">signing off</a> on partisan district maps after repeatedly pledging to veto them and a legacy of <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/498263-illinois-business-owners-could-face-fine-jail-time-for-reopening-in/">COVID-19 lockdowns</a> that threatened small business owners with jail time, and Pritzker&#8217;s post looks even more ridiculous.
Pritzker’s latest stunt didn&#8217;t “farm” any “aura,” just total embarrassment.

US-POLITICS-CRIME-TROOPS-CHICAGO

Dem Governor Tries Speaking Gen Z. Gets Absolutely Cooked

2028 presidential election

chicago bears

illinois

j b pritzker

politics

When I hear the phrase “Southern hospitality,” I immediately think of a hearty meal and pleasant conversation — all that Cracker Barrel and other southern-themed restaurants are supposed to represent. The last thing that comes to mind is a &#8220;No Soliciting&#8221; sign. Yet from my experience, it seems that these signs are becoming more and more common.
Over the last 15 years, I’ve had a lot of reasons to visit strangers’ homes. Fast food, groceries, and Amazon packages all ended up on southern doorsteps with my help. I led a door-to-door outreach ministry in college for years, and I even went house-to-house fundraising.
And as would be expected, I experienced a lot visiting random homes: kindness, annoyance, nasty dogs, and lots of crazy people. Along with a weird collection of stories, I also saw more and more &#8220;No Soliciting&#8221; plaques — not only on businesses and apartment entrances, but on subdivisions and private homes. At first, I did not think much of it. After all, it is a free country, and &#8220;No Trespassing&#8221; signs have been around forever.
But a lot of these signs were more pointed, less focused on keeping salesmen or strange and dangerous people out, and instead more intent on keeping anyone from stopping by. For example, political candidates and religious groups are often considered to be exempt from &#8220;No Soliciting&#8221; requests. However, more pointed signs such as &#8220;Distribution of Literature is Prohibited&#8221; suggest otherwise.
The most memorable sign I saw seemed designed to stop just about anyone: &#8220;No Soliciting. Seriously, Don’t ring the bell, don’t make it weird! Our kids take all our money, you can’t beat our TV, internet, or phone service. We have found Jesus, and won’t lose him. We know who we are voting for. We kill our own bugs. My kids work for free. Solar Panels are ugly. Nobody can get my lawn greener than my husband. We love our vacuum. We don’t clean, so we never run out of supplies. Unless you are bringing me a package from Amazon, flowers, are here to clean, or from Publishers Clearing House with a BIG check, Please Go Away! Our dog is hungry and our trigger finger’s twitchy.&#8221;
Though signs like this attempt to be funny, if you take a step back and think about it, it actually screams of societal decay. Rather than being willing to talk to anyone, the point that is being communicated is, “Stay away! Don’t talk to me. Unless you were invited, leave.” And this attitude is terrible for American society. Our culture is historically known for its warmth and acceptance, while &#8220;No Soliciting&#8221; stands in sharp contrast.
Again, are &#8220;No Soliciting&#8221; signs inherently bad? No, of course not. In America, everyone is entitled to their personal preferences, especially in regards to their private property. Businesses cannot function if they are regularly being interrupted, and with the ever-rising number of spam calls and endless advertising, it is understandable for people to appreciate their privacy. However, the rise of &#8220;No Soliciting&#8221; culture also demonstrates a shift away from traditional marketing methods.
America is built on ingenuity and gumption, the willingness to go out and make a name for yourself by hard work and putting yourself out there. Take a look at successful entrepreneurs, and you will often see they got their start going house to house. Spanx founder Sara Blakely sold fax machines, motivational speaker Zig Ziglar sold cookware, entrepreneur Mark Cuban sold garbage bags, and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison sold encyclopedias. How different would their stories be if they ran into endless &#8220;No Soliciting&#8221; signs?
Beyond shifting business opportunities, &#8220;No Soliciting&#8221; further demonstrates how we as Americans are shying away from meaningful discussion, instead cocooning ourselves in our own little worlds. Rather than enjoying civil debate in the literal public square, or even from our doorways, we primarily communicate by text or from the anonymous safety of social media. 
Even setting aside the angry, vile discussions permeating online platforms and their bottomless comment sections detached from real-world consequences, the danger of only interacting digitally is that the algorithms feed on what we like, dragging us deeper and deeper into an echo chamber of our own making, often without us even realizing it. Rather than being challenged often by real people with different viewpoints, we are sheltered and comfortable in self-aggrandizement and single-mindedness.
Perhaps the most concerning effect of a &#8220;No Soliciting&#8221; culture is how it affects all areas of our lives. Rather than engaging in open discussion about medical practices, we are hushed and told to “trust the science.” Yet even scientists, though they claim to be unbiased, are often caught up in their own echo chambers, convinced that their research must be the next big thing, unwilling to look deeply at the opinions of others.
Politically too, we see a shift away from rational conversation to an emphasis on name-calling and extremism, whether it be from the right or left side of the aisle. Again, trapped in our algorithms, we only seek affirmation from those we agree with, blocking anyone who leaves a controversial comment, and putting up virtual &#8220;No Soliciting&#8221; signs just as we slap them on our homes. 
The more we tout our value as a tolerant society, the more &#8220;No Soliciting&#8221; demonstrates our intolerance. We want to be left unbothered with our own convictions, regardless of whether we are right or not. We have become so set in our ways that we are unwilling even momentarily to set aside our opinions and listen to someone else’s thoughts or suggestions. And when we can no longer acknowledge and appreciate another person’s value and different point of view, we also cease to be a united country. 
If America is going to heal, we need to be willing to meet other individuals where they are. For example, as many Christians emphasize, America needs God. But until people are willing to listen to one another, it is going to be difficult to reach the individuals who need God the most. Everything, including sharing your faith, politics, or new business idea, is predicated on someone being willing to listen to you. And if you expect someone to listen to you, you should probably be willing to listen to them too. Regardless of where you stand religiously or politically, you can still learn from those who think, vote, and live differently than you.
Of course, this does not mean we have to accept everything — or even anything — that someone else believes or sells. The key part is our ability to have an open-minded conversation. That is how friendships are made and mindsets are changed. It is how our country was designed and expected to operate. And though we should use caution when we open our doors and arms, it is worthwhile to take a chance, lower our guard, and see someone else’s opinion on a topic. We might end up realizing those solar panels are not quite so ugly after all.
***
Cory Von Eiff holds a doctorate in biological sciences from the University of Southern Mississippi. Besides writing, Cory enjoys traveling, scuba diving, and spending time with his wife and three children.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Gemini_Generated_Image_qhwarsqhwarsqhwa

How ‘No Soliciting’ Culture Is Poisoning The American Mind

american culture

echo chamber

polarization

The Lindsay Clancy murder trial is generating a wide variety of reactions, very few of which are grounded in reality. From online crime fighters thinking they’ve <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-tiktok-sleuths-turned-a-horrific-child-killing-into-a-twisted-online-soap-opera">sussed out</a> the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-wine-mom-delusion-of-turning-real-murder-into-internet-content">real story</a> to the “<a href="https://x.com/DefiantLs/status/2089812076613034211">same, Lindsay</a>” trend on TikTok, social media is once again proving that the internet was probably a mistake. What initially held the promise of a vast, instantly accessible super-library has morphed into a medium more focused on ignorance and outrage than on information. 
This quest for clicks also means some mistakes are going to be made, such as this post on X claiming that there’s a new trend of moms filming themselves <a href="https://x.com/jackunheard/status/2090098201927811097">throwing ice cubes into their tubs</a> as a way of getting their anger out. The implied message is that this is in response to the Clancy trial. Except it’s not, at least not the video in that post. That particular ice-throwing mom uploaded her video in 2024, several years before the trial began. She also followed it up with a post about not bottling up your emotions and instead finding non-destructive ways to get them out of your system so you can move on without causing actual harm. That’s a position even Cosmo Kramer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYWE7QgYGvM">agrees with</a>. 
The difference between Kramer and the MomToker, though, is that actor Michael Richards was following a script in his portrayal of Kramer’s breakdown, and the audience was in on that fact, whereas the mom on TikTok was a little more oblique about the fact that she was also performing for the camera. One doesn’t have to watch much of her content to realize that it’s all an act. Sure, she is a mom, and being a mom is stressful, but the involved husband and father pops up here and there. Her parents are close by and serve as a support network. Most of her videos aren’t even that over the top and are instead of her doing mundane things like grabbing a latte before heading to the playground with her daughter or making a few hot dogs for her husband and daughter while the two of them jump on the trampoline. 
Granted, she did comment on the Clancy case, saying “I see you,” which is therapy-speak for recognizing the pain and despair that Clancy was and likely is still experiencing. She did not offer a “same, Lindsay,” though. She didn’t comment on what verdict she’d like to see. Generally, she just posts videos of the online persona she’s created, which is another issue altogether and has nothing to do with gruesome murders. Chiefly, it’s fine to get frustrated or to project an idealized image to the world. Most everyone does. Serenity now may not be the answer; filming yourself actually losing it is definitely not. 
Unless the question is, How do I get clicks? Which brings us back to the destructive nature of the modern internet. We could be reading great works of literature, seeing vivid pictures of paintings we might not ever be able to visit in person, or figuring out how to solve problems. Instead, we’re mostly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY">the baddies</a>. 
And this is too often true regardless of which side of the debate, whatever the debate is, we find ourselves on. To stick with Clancy, yes, the insane conspiracy theories positing that her husband Patrick murdered the kids and framed her with an elaborate plot involving a body double and a stolen Apple Watch, because Patrick had to spoof her location, are not our finest work as a species. Similarly, the armchair shrinks, suggesting that the reason Lindsay is garnering sympathy from so many moms is that they all sometimes think about killing their children, though some of her supporters are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY">providing fodder</a> for that hypothesis, which is at best unhelpful.
At worst, with the opposing sides of the argument bringing back the “<a href="https://www.thegazelle.org/issue/198/not-all-men-patriarchy-misogyny">yes, all men</a>” arguments from a few years ago and adding “yes, all women” for good measure, we’re getting to a point where it’s increasingly hard to <a href="https://youtu.be/wRVtws_Pz-Q?si=dL81eyZF3NN1qpw6&amp;t=32">have a civilization here</a>. With birth rates declining, and with all the concomitant <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-most-dangerous-thing-ai-may-replace-isnt-your-job?author=Rich+Cromwell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=13&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+Most+Dangerous+Thing+AI+May+Replace+Isn%E2%80%99t+Your+Job">issues</a> that bring, heterofatalism is not the answer we’re looking for. 
For those who don’t spend too much time online, heterofatalism is <a href="https://lampoonmagazine.com/heterofatalism-straight-dating-women-desire-men-survival-instinct/">the idea</a> that it’s over for normal relationships. Men are too needy, women are too spoiled, and there’s no hope for any of us should we give in to the trap of traditional couplings. It’s best to just accept that we’re cooked and go back to doomscrolling our preferred apps. Except it doesn’t have to be this way. 
Writing in the New York Times, Magdalene J. Taylor argues that there is much in the world of dating and romance for men and women <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/opinion/heteropessimism-straight-dating-love.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6lA.zye9.M4xnEtdBT8pz&amp;smid=url-share">to be optimistic about</a>. Despite claims to the contrary, married people are the healthiest and happiest. Having a support system at home, as the ice thrower does and Lindsay Clancy did, makes life easier, not harder. We’re living in a time of unparalleled freedom, abundance, and choice, so, Taylor writes, “Let’s not squander that freedom, giving it all up in favor of spending more time getting angry on the internet.”
One part of that is staying bound to those around us, the ones we can see and smell and hug, instead of hitting “record.” Another is not to extrapolate one woman’s psychotic break into generalizations about every woman on the planet. And yet another is to accept that sometimes both men and women can and will do bad things and that there’s rarely a true crime twist waiting to shock us in the third act. 
Mostly, though, it’s to remember that people working for clicks aren’t working for connections or even for understanding. 
All people are going to have days when they’re down, when they feel compelled to hurl a few swears, when they pop off in embarrassing and counterproductive ways. There’s really no reason to create a permanent record of that, so stop it. And if you come across someone who can’t help themselves and must do so, remember that they’re not representative of entire populations. The girl you meet in the produce aisle is highly unlikely to become a murderer. The guy you start talking to while waiting in line to drop off an Amazon return is probably not a tyrant who wants to subjugate you and drain your life force. 
There will always be the temptation to make sense of the wholly irrational. There will always be the desire to place blame, to find the bogeyman to serve as the source of all the bad, but that’s rarely how life works. Rather, life works by talking to one another and remembering that the pixelated representations we see of people online are too often <a href="https://youtu.be/pAQ3JuXkDkU?si=z0n-bpi3Py88f5u9&amp;t=11">a copy of a copy of a copy</a>. The trick is to see past the copies, the sacrificial lambs upon which we place our fears, and remember the humanity of the people standing all around us. And the first step toward accomplishing that goal is to look them in the eyes instead of looking at them on a screen. 
***
Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the Cookin’ Up a Story podcast, which you can listen to <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cookin-up-a-story/id1624969096" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>. You can also follow him on X: @rcromwell4.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

GettyImages-2211585794

The Dark Side Of America’s Lindsay Clancy Obsession

dating and relationships

The internet doesn&#8217;t like being called <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DcMobm6STj4/">weird</a>. I made the grave error Tuesday of calling certain corners of it exactly that, in light of their weirdness. Namely: women on TikTok participating in the <a href="https://x.com/LukaLev/status/2089696345539899636/video/1">&#8220;Same, Lindsay&#8221;</a> trend, posting videos of themselves crying, holding their babies, being mothers, implying they&#8217;re standing in the same shoes as Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother of three who in 2023 strangled her children — Cora (5), Dawson (3), and Callan (8 months) — with three separate exercise bands in the family&#8217;s basement, after sending her husband out to run errands.
&#8220;Same, Lindsay.&#8221; Because they feel for her. They get it. They&#8217;ve been there.
These women are racking up hundreds of thousands of likes for expressing sympathy with a child killer, theorizing about what &#8220;prompted&#8221; her, or floating conspiracies about who actually did the strangling.
<a href="https://x.com/dyingscribe/status/2088452216021467551">&#8220;You&#8217;ll never make me hate Lindsay Clancy.&#8221;</a> &#8220;Me when I had to ask the neighbor to bathe her because I thought I would drown her.&#8221; &#8220;NEW THEORY: He killed the kids.&#8221; &#8220;I had my first dream about little Cora, she was being SA&#8217;d by him (the father). <a href="https://x.com/GPMLLC/status/2088933970633253318">Hopefully Lindsay gets justice.&#8221;</a>
This is super weird, because she is on trial for murder; neither the defense nor the prosecution disputes that she did it. What they&#8217;re debating is punishment: prison or a psych ward.
Though the outcome is binary, the online reaction has splintered into half a dozen conclusions about a horrific, unimaginable tragedy: those who believe she committed cold-blooded, premeditated murder; those who believe she did it but isn&#8217;t criminally liable because she was in a state of psychosis; those who believe she did it but bears no fault at all, because the medical system and her husband failed her; and those who believe she didn&#8217;t do it at all, insisting the real culprit is her husband.
Let’s examine each.
The prosecution argues she wasn&#8217;t, beyond a shadow of a doubt, &#8220;crazy&#8221; — that she engaged in deliberate premeditation and rational planning before following through. They point to the fact that she functioned normally on the day of the murders, January 24, 2023: she took her daughter to the doctor, played with her kids in the snow, texted her husband to grab takeout and pick up her daughter&#8217;s MiraLax, placed a coherent phone order with the restaurant, and returned her husband&#8217;s call from CVS to answer a question about Cora&#8217;s medication. She also mapped the driving distance to the restaurant, prosecutors say, to calculate how much time she&#8217;d have. Her DNA was on each exercise band.
The defense argues she was in the grip of an acute mental break and can&#8217;t be held criminally liable. Her attorney said in his opening statement that she has bipolar disorder, that her medication made it worse, and that on the day she killed her children she heard a man&#8217;s voice telling her, &#8220;This is your last chance. Kill the children so you can kill yourself.&#8221; She kept a detailed list of every medication her doctors had prescribed and was on six antipsychotics at the time, including Seroquel, which can cause hallucinations. She also kept a diary documenting her insomnia, paranoia, and delusions, and had told her mother and husband beforehand that she&#8217;d had thoughts of killing her children.
Internet sleuths looked at all of that and said: IGNORE.
Instead, it&#8217;s become another episode of &#8220;let&#8217;s blame everyone but the perp.&#8221;
Begin with the group that claims &#8220;the husband did it.&#8221; The facts: Patrick Clancy left the house around 5:15 p.m. to pick up takeout and grab MiraLax from CVS. Surveillance footage shows him arriving at CVS at 5:32, walking to the pediatric aisle, and calling Lindsay to ask if the generic brand was okay. (A very &#8220;typical man&#8221; thing to do.) She didn&#8217;t answer; about a minute later she called back, answered his question, and hung up — he later testified she sounded busy. Patrick then left CVS and is seen on video walking into the restaurant, ThreeV, at 5:54 p.m. He went home, found the bodies, and called 911 at about 6:11 p.m. Some are claiming, absurdly, that Patrick did it — either by hiring a body double or by making sure he was caught on camera at CVS, sprinting home to commit the murders, changing his shoes, and sprinting back out to grab the food. I&#8217;ll concede his shoes look different between the two videos, and he may have changed them; that could be due to any number of things, including the fact that it was snowy and wet outside. Hello, Massachusetts in January. Everything else he&#8217;s wearing stays the same. No body double. Logistically, it would have been impossible for him to zoom home at 5:35, throw his wife out a window with no signs of struggle, strangle three children for four minutes each, and still make it back to the restaurant, eleven minutes away, by 5:54.
Unless he also has a secret time machine.
The Candace Owens-inspired camp also points to her body temperature: 82 degrees, hypothermic, when recorded at South Shore Hospital. How could that have happened?! She must have been pushed out the window at some unspecified point in time by her husband after 5:34 and before 5:54! Or, more plausibly, she cut her wrists and neck, jumped out a second-story window, landed in the snow, severely injured her spinal cord, and lost the ability to shiver, inducing poikilothermia, a condition where the body can&#8217;t regulate its own temperature. Add blood loss, the shock factor, and common sense, and suddenly the low reading isn&#8217;t mysterious at all.
Debunked.
But even if he didn&#8217;t do it, the theory goes, the medical system is to blame: the doctors, the hospitals, even the first responders all failed her. I&#8217;d concede that the cocktail of medications she was prescribed, and was taking, could have caused a reaction severe enough to make an unthinkable act feel rational in the moment. That&#8217;s tragic, and it&#8217;s something Lindsay, in her current lucid state, will have to live with for the rest of her life.
But in the noise surrounding this horror, the conversation isn&#8217;t really about the children, or about medication and overprescription. It&#8217;s about how the man in her life wronged her, and how postpartum struggles can spiral into atrocity.
Even Lindsay&#8217;s former coworker Susan Davison, a nurse, <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/unsealed-court-documents-reveal-dozens-100925404.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlZnAuY29tLw&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFARRfhT3yF1dz2w7BQMESITfqL24R5mYCAj75CglskLT30n7IhZKpaD8FrtyfbLc0oyMcQoT4SydhfQCBUoCeIM9spCyqq_qNciFsJpEfxe2_EAEM8Xwqq2qPZRm_XJoHAOGV0LyCiGHaDjpubQg4PpyVditb0CkmknJhxxuK_A">wrote in a letter</a> of support: &#8220;I could have been Lindsay. Any one of us could have been.&#8221;
Um, I couldn&#8217;t.
It&#8217;s evil. It&#8217;s the worst imaginable thing a person could do. It&#8217;s painful to think about the fight her eldest may have put up, the confusion on those little faces as the person they trusted most choked the light out of their eyes. To most of us, it&#8217;s unimaginable — which is exactly why so many people are trying to shove this case into a tidy box. She&#8217;s a murderer. She didn&#8217;t mean to. She&#8217;s the real victim.
But it isn&#8217;t that simple, and it&#8217;s weird that so many people are pretending it is.
It&#8217;s weird that her <a href="https://x.com/i/trending/2088991064514232368">GoFundMe</a> has raised almost $900,000 from “millions of women supporting [her] right now.”
It&#8217;s weird that women are simultaneously insisting that if only females ran the world we&#8217;d have peace and harmony, while also arguing that having a baby makes all of us crazy and unaccountable for our own actions.
It&#8217;s weird that we&#8217;re pretending mental illness doesn&#8217;t exist everywhere else — in lieutenant governors who fatally shoot their wives and themselves, in the homeless men who stab strangers on trains, in the young men who shoot CEOs in the back of the head, in the trans-identifying activists who cross the country to try to kill a treasury secretary.
It&#8217;s weird that feminists have grown so anti-men that they&#8217;ll ignore the basic facts of a case to protect a preferred narrative.
It’s weird that TikTokers are divining the true killer based on astrology charts.
It&#8217;s weird to joke about your own postpartum anxiety on TikTok in the same breath as a postpartum psychosis that left three breathing, innocent babies dead.
And I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s weird to point any of that out, or hope she goes away for a long, long time, because Cora, Dawson, and Callan don’t get a trend or a hashtag. They just don’t get anything, ever again, and it’s weird that we made it about everyone except them.

Screaming mouth on laptop screen with speech bubbles

I Called A Corner Of The Internet Weird. They Got Mad.

postpartum psychosis

It’s increasingly common to see films slated for big-screen releases get <a href="https://variety.com/2026/film/news/madden-movie-prime-video-streaming-release-nicolas-cage-david-o-russell-1236829167/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://variety.com/2026/film/news/madden-movie-prime-video-streaming-release-nicolas-cage-david-o-russell-1236829167/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1786461952363000&amp;usg=AOvVaw38zmQ9HEUOkXFBBo3Or6o6">relegated</a> to streaming service premieres. Rarely, if ever, do we see things go in the opposite direction, which makes “The Amazing Digital Circus” all the more notable.
The final two episodes of Glitch Productions’ popular YouTube series got a theatrical release after two years of streaming on the video-streaming platform. The show takes place in the titular Digital Circus, a realm controlled by a godlike artificial intelligence bot named Caine.
That the heroes are teenagers is enough to explain why the show became popular with my generation. But not everything popular among teenagers is destined to blow up like this. What explains the show’s success?
The episodes released in theaters offer a clue. In the finale, we learn that the show’s protagonists are merely the social media avatars of real people. We see those people living happy lives, outside the Digital Circus where the main character, Pomni, and her friends face challenges at the hands of Caine and his world. The characters we’ve come to know are shown to be different from the people controlling them.
This fact — the dissonance between how someone is in real life and how they appear online — speaks to teenagers today. In fact, throughout its run, “The Amazing Digital Circus” deals with issues that young people face as they attempt to strike a balance between the real and digital worlds and struggle with what happens when humans lose humanity.
A kid may be a straight A+ student in school but a wannabe criminal online, or an F student in real life and a nerd online. Maintaining both identities can be hard to manage, something we see in the film. By the end of the movie, the characters have discovered and accepted that they are merely digital, and they choose to move forward with their lives in the Circus. Watching these digital characters accept their artificiality reminds those of us watching the importance of accepting our humanity.
But the protagonists don’t always have an easy time. When a character is overwhelmed with emotion, they experience “abstraction.” Their brain stops functioning and they become a black mass of rainbow eyes, acting like a feral animal in terror.
The fear comes from the idea of being seen as less of a person or being socially dehumanized. In the Circus, this fear is rooted in the fact that the characters are cartoon avatars. But this is, of course, a fear real people have. Do my parents, teachers, or friends see me as less of a person and more of a problem? Something fragile to be avoided? So often we worry about expressing emotions or being vulnerable around our friends out of fear that we too could be reduced to our issues, nothing more than an abstraction.
“Digital Circus” also deals with the lack of control young people often feel. The show begins with Pomni awakening in the Circus, with no idea how she got there and no ability to change her course. This is certainly a common feeling among teens, one I’ve felt myself.
With its theatrical release, “Digital Circus” did more than just give voice to the alienation young Americans feel. It also gave them an opportunity to break free from the digital world and connect with each other in person. I felt quite underdressed in a flannel and sweatpants, surrounded by screaming fans in full cosplay and “Digital Circus” merch.
The staff repeatedly warned the crowd to be quiet. No one listened. There was singing, screaming, crying, and cheering — and that was just my friends.
For any other film, this would have made for a terrible viewing experience. But here it made sense. We weren’t there for the cinematic experience, but the camaraderie. We were there to mingle with other fans, break the anonymity of the internet, and have a social life off-screen.
For two years, “The Amazing Digital Circus” has helped its fans grapple with, and even escape from, the abstraction and oppression of digital life. By premiering its final two episodes in theaters, it provided a real-world opportunity for fans to come together as a community. That’s why it’s breaking the industry and why so many teens, and maybe even some adults, love it.
***
Charles Marcus is a high school student in West Virginia who writes about the unique challenges his generation faces.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Gemini_Generated_Image_st4chrst4chrst4c

Gen Z’s Biggest Digital Obsession Comes With One Giant Irony

gen z

the amazing digital circus

youtube

Who’s gonna tell him? Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed apparently has OnlyFans models appearing every few scrolls in his For You tab on Instagram — according to his interview with <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/db0be6268616c0557b4ebdae8c96d1a38e6bd3bf?w=anN0b2NrZXJAZGFpbHl3aXJlLmNvbQ&amp;u=11850803">The Lever</a>. While pacing his home gym, El-Sayed unloaded on social media algorithms for pushing this content on him, perhaps because it “clocked him as a 40-something-year-old man.” In the weeks following the implosion of <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/65de7685d8350f575d884a56baf245532ff61e2e?w=anN0b2NrZXJAZGFpbHl3aXJlLmNvbQ&amp;u=11850803">wannabe</a> home-invader rapist turned Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner, the Democrats might want to move slowly on bending the knee for El-Sayed. Republican opposition research bloodhounds just picked up on a familiar <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/0e9dfc047c24c4dfc428e21b51b63138159e83c1?w=anN0b2NrZXJAZGFpbHl3aXJlLmNvbQ&amp;u=11850803">pervy</a> scent.
The recent release of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is somewhat fitting. The so-called “thirst trap” side of the algorithmic online world is <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/a07317575802bacf9dce03b81743a54106ce59b6?w=anN0b2NrZXJAZGFpbHl3aXJlLmNvbQ&amp;u=11850803">much like sailing</a> past the island of the Sirens. You’re scrolling out of <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/106de5f2ff516230d04e29a4689abd368a7f4963?w=anN0b2NrZXJAZGFpbHl3aXJlLmNvbQ&amp;u=11850803">boredom</a> and see extra skin, slow down, and in that split second, you have to make a decision whether or not to investigate or flee. We have words for this that are simply out of fashion: lust and temptation. This is widely understood by all of mankind to be a struggle, particularly for men.
El-Sayed is, to his credit, onto something in this viral clip where he expresses concern about pornographic content being fed to young people online. His main claim is that a 14-year-old has an ill-formed limbic system to regulate feelings, mood, and behavior, and they will more easily fall down the soft-porn rabbit hole of influencer content on Instagram. He’s not wrong. The smut is teased on Instagram, then routed out through Linktree and straight to subscription-based porn platforms like OnlyFans.
If you don’t turn away, plug your ears, or figuratively restrain yourself, you’re headed for the sharp rocky coast — the oblivion of porn addiction. The problem with Democrats like El-Sayed is that he can’t bring himself to condemn pornographic content without tacking on, “Should be legal, and I don’t mean to shame anyone…”
Maybe he should suggest shame, or instruct his many followers to live more virtuously. If there’s nothing to be ashamed of, then what’s the problem with the lustful content?
The finger must always be pointed toward an outside nefarious force. In this case, he demonizes the people of Meta who run Instagram and develop parental moderation and teen-safety <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/a6dfe05916450b132f1e70d2823db6c5cb557a97?w=anN0b2NrZXJAZGFpbHl3aXJlLmNvbQ&amp;u=11850803">tools</a>, not the liberal culture that promotes sexual liberation or the individual who seeks out explicit content. It’s not politically popular to tell people they are in control and not the victim of a conspiracy — just ask financial commentator Caleb Hammer, whose show produces hugely <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/6750c45be793df8132115f3c7f4ea55a0f9e5c64?w=anN0b2NrZXJAZGFpbHl3aXJlLmNvbQ&amp;u=11850803">viral clips of young people</a> blaming everything but themselves for financial shipwreck.
That’s the funny thing about the Sirens and the overall analogy provided by Greek myth. The way we talk about “the algorithm” is often like how people in these stories refer to the wrath of the gods. It’s a way of understanding the world in which things happen to you rather than you being a fully active agent in your own life.
El-Sayed isn’t much older than me, and I wanted to be sure his claim about the onslaught of OnlyFans girls wasn’t happening to me, so I took a peek at my &#8220;For You&#8221; tab on Instagram. I’m happy to share that my feed is all Dragon Ball Z-themed exercise content, Linkin Park concert clips, Star Wars prequel memes, and fully clothed women performing drum covers of Slipknot and Korn songs.
Have I seen tempting content on Instagram, similar to what Abdul El-Sayed is describing? Yes. But your feed will reflect what you say yes to. Still, things will pop up every so often that I don’t want to see. There’s a button for that: Not Interested. ​The algorithm <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/4a2adc948c28d9610074b5e64da2b99428b6576b?w=anN0b2NrZXJAZGFpbHl3aXJlLmNvbQ&amp;u=11850803">will</a> respond.
If Abdul takes that action, it will solve much of his OnlyFans model problem, unless he or someone on his staff is simultaneously searching for that content.
The stoic philosopher and Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, said that “Our souls ​become dyed ​w​ith the color of our thoughts,” and while some will contend that you can’t control your thoughts (My mind has trailed off three times to think about my dog whilst writing this sentence), your thoughts are a byproduct of action. What you watch, what you read, what you subscribe to. The things you let in take up residence and slowly shape your character, in their own time. Make better choices.
Abdul, your algorithm is dyed by the color of your search history. Do better, and encourage the same in those who listen to you.
***
Stephen Kent is the media director for the Consumer Choice Center and creator of <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/6d8af80fe41560c0e723d04b502808c2322d78be?w=anN0b2NrZXJAZGFpbHl3aXJlLmNvbQ&amp;u=11850803">GeekyStoics</a> on YouTube.

Michigan Democratic Senate Primary Winner Abdul El-Sayed Holds News Conference Day After Primary Win

Menu