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The Most Active Threads since Friday
The topics with the most engagement over the past three days included a missing — but now found — woman, overrated travel destinations, names due for a comeback, and DCUM B-list celebrities.
The most active thread since my last post on Friday morning was titled, "Woman missing after reporting seeing a toddler on the highway" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. This thread was started Saturday based on a report that 25-year-old Carlee Russell had gone missing in Alabama in mysterious circumstances. While driving home Thursday night on Interstate 459, Russell had phoned 911 to report that a toddler was walking alone on the side of the road. Russell then pulled over and phoned a family member. Russell was heard asking someone if they were okay and then screamed, after which only noise from the road was heard. Police arrived to find Russell's car running with the door open and her phone and other belongings near by. But, there was no sign of her. Posters in the thread seemed convinced that Russell had been a victim of human traffickers who may have used a toddler as bait. A few posters found the idea that Russell was lured in to stopping unbelievable and proposed alternative ideas such as she was running away, had stumbled into a bad situation of sorts, or had even been attacked by a bear. Eventually the thread was mostly taken over by armchair detectives who appeared convinced that the mystery could be solved through Internet discussions. They would hustle back and forth between the WebSleuths website, Reddit, and DCUM, posting information from WebSleuths and Reddit without an ounce of skepticism. This led to considerable discusion of topics that don't appear to have any source beyond "a poster on Reddit" or similar. Seventeen pages into the thread, reports emerged that Russell had returned home and been taken to a hospital. The police eventually released a statement confirming that Russell was safe, but saying that they were holding off on questioning her in order to give the family some space. As such, almost nothing is known about what happened while Russell was missing or the circumstances under which she arrived at her home. This led to 20 more pages of theories and allegations, basically none of which had any factual basis. While many posters expressed joy that Russell had returned home safely and quite a few praised the handling of the situation by the police, a number of posters seemed determined to paint Russell as a sort of culprit in this situation. As of this morning, almost nothing has been released publicly about what happened to Russell, but that is not stopping rampant speculation.