Internet Freakshow

Bianca Devins

Internet Freakshow - Bianca Devins

This is the story of Bianca Devins, a young woman who put too much trust into a man she’d met online, and a man who used a murder to elevate his social media clout. We’ll go over the role technology played in this crime and the distribution of the horrific photos taken at the crime scene, how always looking for more internet influence can sometimes lead to bad decisions, and how the internet was used to stalk and ultimately murder a young Instagram Influencer. But if we dig a little deeper into this freakshow, I think we’ll find that this story is also about how, sometimes, the good of the internet can overpower the bad.

But let’s start at the beginning. Bianca Devins was a fairly typical 17-year-old. A recent high school graduate, she was very active on several social media sites and services, namely Instagram where she had amassed a small but growing following of about 2000 people.

Through Instagram, she came to know one of her followers. His name was Brandon Clark, and he was a few years older than Bianca. He was 21, and she was 17. Brandon came from a difficult and complicated background. His home life was sometimes abusive and dangerous. He was placed into foster care at age 10 following an incident where his father held his mother at knife point.

Still, Brandon and Bianca became friends and ended up meeting in real life. Despite his unstable upbringing, most reports of people who met Brandon describe him as polite and charming. However, something was brewing just under the surface for Brandon. He obsessed over Bianca, constantly visiting her social media accounts, saving her photos, and continuing to contact her via the many social media accounts she had, much to her annoyance.

Their relationship was complicated. Brandon obviously wanted more from his relationship with Bianca, but she seemed to keep him at arm’s length. While he sometimes referred to himself as her boyfriend, she would correct him that they were just friends.

While Bianca never reported any abuse in their relationship, there’s some evidence to believe that Brandon pressured her sexually, sometimes while they were doing drugs together. It’s unclear as to whether they were intimate or if she ever truly considered him her boyfriend. This angst and anger in trying, and failing, to pursue a deeper relationship frustrated Brandon. He was a member of several online communities dedicated to being “incel”, which is short for “involuntary celibate”.

“Incels” are a relatively new internet phenomenon, and on its surface, seems harmless enough. These are just men who want girlfriends and can’t get them. But if you dig deeper into their communities, you will see they are overrun with misogyny, anger, resentment, and endorsements of violence.

Incels are too big a topic to dive deep into with this podcast. They’re probably worth doing another full episode of Internet Freakshow on, really. But for the purposes of this podcast, all you really need to know is that they are an extremist group in the US, whose writing and online communities have been described as a domestic terror threat. “Involuntary celibate” is really too friendly a term for these guys. They are not nice guys trying to find a girlfriend, as the name would imply. Bianca herself had been a victim of the incel’s online antics for a couple years before her murder.

But back to Bianca. Like Brandon, she had a complicated past and suffered from several mental health issues like anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, and more. She had graduated high school and was pursuing psychology at the local community college at the time of her death. She was trying to turn her trauma and her understanding of mental health issues into good for her community.

On July 14, 2019, Brandon and Bianca made the trip from Utica to New York City to see a concert. They did the things there that young people do at concerts. They met some friends, enjoyed a little weed, and overall had a good time. At the show, Bianca and a friend they’d met there, Alex, started kissing. Brandon saw this take place and was not happy about it.

After the show, Brandon and Bianca got back into the car to make their way home. Bianca fell asleep in the back seat. Brandon pulled off the road in a deserted dead-end street. He went to the back seat and woke Bianca up, confronting her about the kiss. Bianca reiterated that not only was she and Brandon not monogamous, but they weren’t really involved at all. This got Brandon very angry. He grabbed a large, knife that he’d hidden in the back seat, and killed her violently and ruthlessly.

After killing her, he started calling Bianca’s friends and family in a manner similar to a suicide note, confessing what he had done. Then he started taking pictures of Bianca’s dead body and spreading the pictures through a chat platform called Discord. After posting the photos, many people, including Brandon himself, called law enforcement about the crime. By the time the police showed up, Bianca was dead and nearly decapitated. Brandon had spray-painted a suicide note. As the police showed up at the scene, Brandon took the knife and shoved it in his neck. His suicide attempt failed, however.

The images Brandon posted on Discord took on a life of their own. The users on that service started spreading them around to more mainstream services like Instagram and Facebook. The users even, quite cruelly, sent the images to Bianca’s family. To their credit, Discord, Facebook, and Instagram acted quickly to censor the images, remove the offending accounts and servers, and added the images to a digital fingerprint library to prevent further spread.

Other services didn’t act so responsibly. 4chan celebrated the pictures, excited for yet another 4chan murder to be made public. Incel message boards also cheered on Brandon’s actions. People used the murder and the photos to further their own influencer ambitions, offering to share the photos for likes or follows. Some users even started fundraisers where the photos would be re-released at certain thresholds.

It was a dark and disturbing phase of this story. While I stand by the point that the internet can be used for good purposes and good people, it’s hard to make that argument in the wake of Bianca’s death. This showed the worst side of the internet. Social media used to bully the family of a girl who was just brutally murdered, using painful images of death to make money or gain internet followers, spreading lies about Bianca posing nude to drug money, and more. It was sad and disturbing.

But let’s not end this internet freakshow on a note like that. While the internet communities that Brandon and Bianca frequented did not act responsibly in the wake of her death, in the year that followed, I think the internet worked to resolve this.

The hashtag, #ripbianca, previously used to spread lies and the photos of her death, was hijacked by much kinder internet users, who used the hashtag to spread their condolences, positive stories, and artwork inspired by her Instagram photos. As new hashtags popped up to spread the photos taken of her death, internet users fought back to flood those hashtags with positive images and messages instead as the social media companies worked quickly to remove the photos and posts.

The internet was also used to set up a scholarship in Bianca’s name, set up and attend candlelight vigils for her, and more.

Brandon had emergency surgery for his self-inflicted knife wound on his neck, and was promptly taken into custody. He initially pled not guilty to 2nd degree murder, then he confessed, then he tried to retract his confession and his guilty plea. The case was long and involved whether or not his crime was premeditated or a crime of passion. He’d brought along the knife, some rope, and other elements that leads people to believe he’d always planned to do this, but his mother says he brought those along for his own suicide, not to kill anyone else. I’ll let the courts figure out how true that is, but as of November 10, he was sentenced to XXXXX and, for the time being, the internet and the real-life community is safe from Brandon’s influence. However, the communities that encouraged and celebrated the murders are still around.

I’ve brought this up on other episodes of Internet Freakshow, but I think it is telling of our current place on the internet when terrible crimes are committed and used for internet points. Likes, follows, upvotes, or whatever your social media terminology uses, become important currency for some users. These fake internet points become more important than money, time, other hobbies and interests, and for some, the fake points are more important than their own lives or the lives of others. Social media companies struggle to allow people freedom of expression without censorship, but users exploit this with cat-and-mouse games, trying to cash in before the large companies can properly suppress harmful content. Some use social media to spread good, some use it to encourage and exploit death. Social media companies develop algorithms to discover your interests, get you to join groups of like-minded individuals, but without regard to the fact that some of these groups are toxic and harmful to the public. Maybe without social media and these algorithms, Bianca would still be alive and incels would have 1 fewer victim.