Yellowjackets and "citizen detectives"
The most obsessive investigators just want a little bit of control
Friends have been urging me to watch Yellowjackets for a while now, and I’ve done it, I’ve fallen into their trap.
To be clear, it’s a stunning show and I recommend it. I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as classic horror, but it leaves me feeling like excellent classic horror does: raw, impressed, and full of questions.
Yellowjackets is also highly disturbing and haunting, so you have been warned. The show has a dream-like, brutal logic — the things that happen on screen make you wince, but the writing is so tight that you have an abiding sense that the events unfolding before you could not have happened any other way.
I would love to muse endlessly on the art of this show, but this is a newsletter with practical applications and as its author, I was immediately struck by Christina Ricci’s character, the adult version of Misty Quigley, a chipper Nurse Ratched type who also moonlights as a “citizen detective.”
(I really hate the phrase “citizen detective,” by the way. But marginally less so than the awful “digital Sherlock.”)
Since Don’t Fuck With Cats became a phenomenon, I’ve been waiting for a character like Misty — someone who pays attention to detail, who is obsessive, and for whom the internet is a place where obsessions are fed and crusades are fought.
Some people have pointed out to me that Misty is an OSINT type, but of course she goes much further than that. Misty isn’t just interested in information that lies on the surface, or is publicly available. She loves to spy on people, for example, though she thinks it’s “for their own good.” She’s not above breaking the law. Actually, she enjoys breaking the law tremendously.
In the new season, Misty meets Walter, played by Elijah Wood, who tells her that he’s just a Moriarty who has been waiting to meet his Sherlock Holmes (if you don’t get the reference, see here).
It’s interesting, because Moriarty and Holmes were enemies. Is this foreshadowing? I have no idea. As I’m writing this, episode 4 of season 2 has yet to come out.
What’s even more interesting is the cultural criticism the show levels at amateur investigators and they ways in which they wield their power.
I’ve done a lot of investigative work in the last few years, some of it public-facing, most of it very much not, and I am not trying to flex on people who do this stuff for free.
Quite frankly, a lot of these amateur investigators are better than I am. They’re more agile. Quicker on their feet.
However, therein also lies the problem: Many of them are not bound by ethical or reputational concerns.
Since everything is digitized and information is easier and easier to get, we’ve discovered a fundamental fact: A lot of people are great at detective work! The question is this, who is influencing them? How do they channel their energy? Do they have good mentors?
I began growing concerned about this when I noticed a trend among some of my crowdsourced OSINT contacts circa 2020/2021: They kept encouraging me to do borderline amoral and illegal things. When I pointed out that this wasn’t possible, they got incredibly mad at me. They thought I was being unreasonable. “I’ll just go to someone else, you’re boring, you don’t care, you’re cold, you have too many rules.”
This brings me right back to Misty’s character on Yellowjackets. Her younger version, played by the fantastic Sammi Hanratty, starts out as alienated and bullied, a girl who’s desperate for control. She begins to gain that control, albeit in horrifying ways.
This is why the older Misty is obsessed with breaching other people’s privacy under the guise of being a detective and a concerned citizen: She is still lonely and aching to be in charge of someone else. Because if she’s in charge, the other person can never leave her.
As technology has brought us together, it has also alienated us from one another. This is true for a lot of people in the investigative community, both professionals and gifted amateurs alike. When we’re alienated from each other, we’re more likely to dehumanize other people and to harm them. It’s terrifyingly simple.
I think we need to do more to address this harm. I don’t have all of the answers but here are a few points for further discussion:
We should address the intersection of mental health and open source investigations more.
We should have guardrails for people who are just starting out in this space.
“Is this in the public interest?” is a good question to ask when launching an investigation, and while it seems blindingly obvious, people tend to forget.
We should maybe be kinder to each other?! I know, I know, how cringe and girly of me to even point this out.
In-person meet-ups for investigators are sometimes a good idea, because as much as everyone talks shit online, we tend to be more decent to each other when face to face.
People who are having their privacy unduly invaded by open source investigators should have recourse/should be allowed to speak up.
If you have more suggestions, I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
And let me know what you think of Yellowjackets when you have the time. It’s such a darkly gorgeous bit of television.