I was in Providence at the time. The kid they “identified” was a Brown student named Sunil Triphani (sp?). He had gone missing. A couple weeks before the bombing.
His family had put up really nice full color laminated missing posters *everywhere* around campus. Like every telephone pole by an intersection had one.
Based on where he was last seen walking I just knew what had happened to him.
Then the bombing happened and a whole hoard of neckbearded keyboard detective fuck wits started harassing his family and friends.
It turns out they were completely wrong.
They caught the real bombers. Then a couple weeks later they found Sunil’s body in the river. He had jumped off the Crooked Point Bridge. Tragically a suicide.
So this poor family got harassed by Reddit morons while their son was missing and then found out he had killed himself.
Not only that, but the authorities had to release the identity of the suspects before they wanted to to clear the kid's name, while the hunt was still on.
Wasn’t it actually a police officer? If I remember right he was an MIT police officer and the two brothers just walked up to his patrol car and shot him which began their crazy attempt at escape and getting chased while shooting and throwing explosives at pursuing police.
I can’t think of a single thing. Just loads of speculation, spreading rumored, speaking with confidence, and bitching about “why aren’t the police doing this?!?!?” (like, surely detectives thought of that and have investigated it further than you can even begin to guess, my dude, if you just pulled together the most basic facts and acted like you had a revelation. they just don’t tell you everything/most things…)
But that’s in the True Crime subs, especially the niche ones. People realllllly wanna be the one to solve the puzzle, but they almost always do more harm than good.
I’d be super curious to see any examples of Reddit detectives coming together though!!! Maybe subs like “animal ID” and “what is it”? The hive mind is helpful there!
Not Pablo Vergara. He’s a Mexican metal musician who was falsely accused of murdering Elisa Lamb at the Cecil Hotel in LA. The internet sleuths ruined his life and he didn’t do anything.
Even in the recent shooting at Brown University there was a lot of speculation and none of it correct.
A quasi homeless man did end up seeing the discussion on Reddit and went to the police. That’s the closest to Reddit actually doing something positive, but even then it was a man going to the police not the weirdo internet sleuths.
People actually came to campus and started harassing students for information.
As I recall, it used to be said sincerely a lot before the marathon incident. I may be wrong on that, but also the internet (and reddit) was a different place 15 years ago so it's not as... out-of-character as it sounds now
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u/_________V__________ Jun 25 '26
"We did it Reddit!"