Good Girl, Bad Blood

The internet and its vast network of social media sites offer tremendous potential to transmit and receive information. Pip is quick to grasp and exploit social media as a means to conduct her criminal investigations. She can leverage thousands of podcast listeners to provide important clues. However, for all social media’s power to do good, the very expanse of its reach poses a downside. Everybody can know everything, even some facts that are best kept hidden. Pip herself admits, “The whole story was there, contained within those blue lines. From the start of Pip’s project to the very end: every lie, every secret. Even some of her own” (3).

Once she opens a new podcast season to find Jamie, she reminds Connor, “Remember what you asked of me? When I release this, it will go out to hundreds of thousands of people” (75). Hundreds of thousands of listeners are a formidable army of potential witnesses. Unfortunately, not every listener is trustworthy. Pip tells the Reynolds family:

‘I agree that releasing the investigation on my podcast is the fastest way to get media attention for Jamie’s disappearance. […] But with that, you have to accept that your private lives will be laid bare.