What One Night in Idaho Taught Me About Internet Culture, Grief, and Respect
Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece. It contains strong emotion, hard truths, and an uncomfortable realization about what happens when real tragedy meets internet obsession. If you feel called out, that is intentional. I am calling myself out, too.
In November 2022, the headlines didn’t feel real.
Four University of Idaho students were found stabbed to death in their off-campus home in Moscow. No forced entry. No suspect. No motive.
It sounded like the beginning of a Netflix series. But it wasn’t fiction. It was the brutal murder of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin.
Like millions of others, I did what the internet taught me to do: I consumed. I read everything. I found the address. I watched drone footage. I paused TikToks. I dissected surveillance clips and followed breadcrumbs that didn’t belong to me.
I told myself I cared. But somewhere along the way, empathy got replaced by obsession.
Where the internet spiraled into spectacle, the documentary returned to what mattered most—grief, and the people carrying it.
One Night in Idaho doesn’t deliver a twist. It doesn’t chase suspense. It centers the families.
Ethan Chapin’s parents speak with a kind of clarity that doesn’t demand attention but absolutely deserves it. They are composed, deeply human. They talk about their son with a love that feels radiant but never sentimental.
Their presence breaks you. Not because they perform grief but because they refuse to perform it at all.
Maddie Mogen’s mom and stepdad are achingly gentle. You watch them speak and realize grace isn’t soft. It’s sharp. It cuts through the noise with honesty. Their words stay with you because they’re not trying to go viral. they’re just trying to survive.
We said we cared. What we really wanted was resolution.
The internet did what it always does. It turned grief into entertainment and called it engagement.
Every person associated with the victims was scrutinized. Survivors were analyzed like suspects. TikTok creators built entire followings off speculation. Reddit threads mapped out minute-by-minute timelines. Everyone online became an expert in body language, criminology, and what grief is supposed to look like.
We told ourselves we were helping. That we were invested. But we weren’t present for the families. We were present for the plot. We were more interested in a satisfying conclusion than in sitting with the horror of what had actually happened.
How empathy morphs into obsession
The more I watched, the more I convinced myself that consuming everything was an act of care.
But One Night in Idaho made it impossible to keep pretending.
The documentary didn’t just show what happened to Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin. It showed what we did. How we filled the silence of grief with noise.
And how that noise became part of the violence.
Madison Mogen’s parents showed grace that didn’t ask to be admired.
Madison’s mother and stepfather appear throughout the documentary with calm presence and devastating honesty. They are not performative. They are not bitter. They do not soften their grief, but they don’t weaponize it either. They speak about Madison as she was—loving, grounded, and fully alive.
They share memories without trying to impress anyone. Their dignity comes from truth, not from trying to model the “right” kind of grief. They are surviving. That is enough. That is more than enough.
Ethan Chapin’s family were the voice I didn’t expect and the one I needed to hear.
Ethan’s mother, father, brother, and sister, speak plainly and powerfully. His mother, Stacy Chapin, holds space with a kind of maternal strength that is hard to look away from. Her love is not fragile. It is solid and unwavering. She talks about Ethan with warmth, but without romanticizing what happened. She doesn’t ask for sympathy. She demands perspective.
His father is quieter but equally powerful. He speaks with a steadiness that lands deeply. You understand, instantly, that his grief does not need explanation. It just is. Their shared strength as a couple, as parents, as survivors of something that should never have happened, is one of the most moving parts of the entire documentary.
They are not trying to go viral. They are trying to protect their family. And they do it with extraordinary grace.
The friends were grieving too. We didn’t let them.
People like Hunter Johnson, Emily Alandt, Dylan Mortensen, and Bethany Funke were more than names in someone else’s theory. They were close friends of the victims—and among the first to arrive at the house that morning. Hunter discovered Xana and Ethan. Emily, Dylan, and Bethany received frantic texts they didn’t know how to respond to. They found their friends dead and had to keep functioning through shock and horror while the rest of the world watched and speculated.
They didn’t fail any test. Yet they were treated like suspects in a true crime forum rather than survivors in mourning. Social media threads analyzed their body language. TikToks asked why they hadn’t cried enough or responded fast enough. Reddit forums hypothesized their motives. For saying less, they were judged. For showing pain, they were branded suspicious. That’s not curiosity. That’s cruelty.
Some of them speak in the documentary—not to exonerate themselves—but to honour the people they lost.
Bryan Kohberger wasn’t a criminal mastermind. He was a coward.
He is not the main character. He never was.
Yes, the documentary covers him. Briefly. Enough to acknowledge his role, but not enough to give him the power he wanted.
He is not brilliant. He is not mysterious. He is not misunderstood. He is a man who wanted to feel important and used violence to force the world to see him. He stalked, intruded, and destroyed lives, not for revenge or ideology, but for ego. That is not complexity. That is cowardice.
And the film makes that very clear without needing to linger on him.
The case was solved by forensics. Not by hashtags.
This is the part the internet doesn’t want to hear. The killer was identified through DNA evidence, cellphone data, surveillance footage, and actual investigative work.
Not by Reddit threads. Not by TikTok sleuths. Not by people like me who thought refreshing timelines and speculating in group chats was somehow useful.
We did not crack this case. We just added noise to a space already filled with pain. And while the families were planning funerals, we were dissecting their Instagram posts.
What the families deserve now is not curiosity. It’s quiet.
They do not need more clicks. They do not need more commentary. They need peace. They need space to mourn their children without a hundred strangers interpreting their facial expressions or turning their pain into podcasts.
They are still living with this. Still walking into bedrooms that are too quiet. Still answering emails from reporters. Still carrying names the internet only remembers in fragments.
They never asked for our opinions. What they deserve—at minimum—is our silence.
What we should remember
Kaylee Goncalves was 21. Madison Mogen was 21. Xana Kernodle was 20. Ethan Chapin was 20.
They were not plot points. They were not cautionary tales. They were people.
Kaylee was bold and full of momentum. She had this way of pulling others in not because she needed attention, but because her confidence gave other people permission to be louder too.
Madison was calm and grounding. She was the one people turned to. The one who made things easier just by being there. Her steadiness wasn’t quiet. It was magnetic.
Xana was electric. Her presence took up space in the best way. She was all-in, unapologetically herself, and didn’t dull her light to make other people comfortable. She was fun, but she was also fierce.
Ethan was joy in motion. He was the youngest of triplets and deeply loved. He had that rare kind of warmth that made people feel like they belonged without having to earn it.
They were students, roommates, best friends. They were in the middle of their lives. And they should have been allowed to stay there.
Their families never asked for attention. They didn’t step forward because they wanted to. They did it because they had to. Because someone needed to speak over the noise and remind the world that these weren’t just names. They were people who were deeply loved and still are.
The documentary doesn’t offer closure. It offers clarity. It strips away the speculation and shows us what we chose to ignore: that grief is not content, and lives like these don’t exist for our consumption.
So maybe the most respectful thing we can do now is nothing. No more guessing. No more commenting. No more trying to turn someone else’s nightmare into our curiosity.
Let the families speak if they choose to. Let the story end where it always should have—with the people it actually happened to.
And this time, let’s mean it.
