This all started like four or five days ago. How many followers have you gathered in that amount of time?
I went from, let’s see, I haven’t honestly been on TikTok in hours. I went from 6,000 to 576,000, so I’ve gained 570,000 followers.
[Editor’s note: As of this writing, she now has 1.6 million followers.]
Geez.
This is insane. That’s the first time I’ve looked and seen it. This morning, I was at 200 something, so just today I’ve gone from 200,000 something to half a million people. That’s the first time I’ve looked.
I’m sorry I made you look, to be honest.
No, it’s so insane.
I’m interested in the sleuth aspect. I know because you’ve said in a couple of your TikToks that you are a true-crime aficionado.
Absolutely.
I’m sure you understand the sort of impulse of why people do this, but it seems like a reversal to now be potentially the center.
I feel like I’m in an episode of Crime Junkie. I usually just listen to it as I drive to work, and now I feel like I’m in an episode, so I’m like, where’s Ashley Flowers? Where is she at? We need to talk. Yeah.
I was alone for the first time, just now, for a minute without my phone blowing up. I just took a deep breath and I’m like, I’ve watched this happen to other people in movies, and the fact that it’s happening to me is blowing my mind.
Maybe this sounds like an obvious question, but does it feel different? There are a lot of conversations about the impact of people’s fascination with true crime. Has there been a moment where it got more real, in a way?
So when I was on the Live, I was singing Jeopardy! songs, because between the detectives getting here and the dogs getting here was 45 minutes. So I kept saying, “This is the commercial break,” and I full-on thought not a chance in hell was this going to happen. This was a fun ending to a crazy story, and what a cool way to end this whole thing. The dogs see nothing. They leave, case closed. That’s what I was expecting.
Then the dogs smelled something.
Yeah, that first dog sat, and I audibly in the video, you hear me go and I start shaking, and that’s when it became real to me. The second that white dog sat, I was like, “This just got so different.”
I bet.
You see things like this on social media and you’re like, “Oh, that’s so insane. One in a million.” To be that one in a million, I can’t even put it into words how out-of-body … I keep feeling like I am just going to wake up, and this was all just a crazy dream.
A couple days ago you were making T-shirts.
Well, back when we, I think we had just hit 10,000 followers, we made T-shirts that said, “Just keep digging.” Again, it was a joke. Then other T-shirts that said, “I’m just here for the update.” Pretty much what every comment on my videos would say.