We turned tragedy into sport

Several forces are converging right now, and the result is a perfect storm of confusion, misinformation, apathy, and — most dangerously — runaway conspiracy thinking.

For a long time, I was consumed by true crime: real-life stories filled with mystery, fear, and emotional whiplash. I wasn’t alone. The genre became a full-blown cottage industry, complete with massive conferences, prestige documentaries, podcasts, and feature films.

The problem isn’t asking questions. It is speculation and insinuation masquerading as insight.

At first, I saw little harm in it — especially when victims or family members were included in the storytelling. But once Hollywood began churning out sensationalized, “based on a true story” dramatizations of real-life horrors, something felt wrong.

Then I heard the victims’ loved ones speak out.

They described the pain these projects inflicted — how strangers dissected their trauma, speculated about their grief, and turned the worst moments of their lives into consumable entertainment. In some cases, families practically begged studios to stop profiting from their suffering. The pleas went unanswered.

There is little sign that Tinseltown plans to slow down. Personal tragedy is no longer treated as personal. We’ve crossed a line into a world where strangers don’t just demand access to these stories — they claim ownership of them.

That entitlement hardens quickly. It manifests as amateur investigations, armchair sleuthing, and the conviction that someone online can solve what professionals could not. Too often, that obsession mutates into wild conspiracy theories — narratives untethered from evidence that deepen the damage inflicted on real people already living with loss.

Fueling all of this is another force: social media addiction.

Millions of Americans live on their phones. Filters are gone. Boundaries between public and private have crumbled. Every tragedy becomes content. Every rumor becomes a reel. Every high-profile event risks turning into a true-crime nightmare, complete with TikTok theories and Instagram speculation.

Not all of it is malicious. But much of it is steeped in a moral carelessness that should unsettle us. And while content creators deserve scrutiny, they aren’t the only culprits. Plenty of us are liking, sharing, and amplifying the madness.

That dynamic reached a horrifying peak on September 10, when conservative and Christian commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

Almost immediately, conspiracy theories spread — many debunked within hours. In one case, a popular Christian apologist, a friend of Kirk who had been filming him speaking at Utah Valley University that day, was falsely accused of signaling the shooter through hand gestures. The claim was nonsense. It collapsed under minimal scrutiny.

No matter. The damage was done.

Other theories followed. Some insinuated betrayal by those closest to Kirk. Others implied inside involvement without evidence. Each claim compounded the grief of a family and community already reeling from an unspeakable loss.

The problem isn’t asking questions. It’s speculation and insinuation masquerading as insight.

If someone is going to promote conspiracy theories, basic decency demands evidence. To date, none has been produced. And yet the claims persist — entertained, shared, and believed.

RELATED: ‘Conspiracy theory’ is just media code for ‘we hope this never comes out’

Photo by Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images

I can’t entirely blame people for their skepticism. In 2016, I wrote a book called “Fault Line” warning that media bias carries real-world consequences. When trust erodes, people stop listening to official narratives altogether. Combine that with the government’s incoherent and often dishonest messaging during COVID, and the ground was primed for disbelief.

For years, progressives dismissed concerns about institutional credibility. Now we’re living with the consequences. A toxic cocktail of distrust, trauma, and algorithmic amplification has left many people — especially the young — drunk with suspicion and untethered from reality.

Add in social media saturation, obsession with true crime, collapsing trust in institutions, and the undeniable presence of evil in the world, and you have a generation raised inside a pressure cooker of dysfunction.

We need to cling to truth. We need to model discernment. We need to help people learn how to question responsibly — without tumbling into conspiracism — and how to rebuild boundaries that preserve perspective and humanity.

Truth-seeking should guide us, not digital frenzy or the dark impulses of the human soul. If we fail to make that distinction, the damage will only deepen.

We must be better.