Why the 'Beckstein files' are captivating TikTok — Top Comment Podcast

[0:00] if you have been scrolling on the side of tick tock that i am on you will have been hearing [0:04] a lot about hayley beck um hayley beck is uh the sister of a really popular influencer called noah [0:11] beck he sort of shot to fame on tick tock in that first round of influences during the pandemic um [0:16] doing dancing videos being part of kind of influencer houses all that kind of stuff he's [0:20] really into soccer football as well so he does a lot of content about that kind of thing um and [0:25] the reason that his sister is popping up is because she and another teacher have been accused [0:32] of having um a relationship with at least one student and there are also allegations relating [0:40] to inappropriate behavior with other students police have recommended that a charge of pandering be brought [0:44] against hayley beck we'll obviously say from from the top from the get-go that she hasn't been charged [0:49] yet um and her lawyers have said that she has committed no crimes all right before we get into [0:55] the whirlwind of tick tock reinterpretations of of what's now been called the beck steam files [1:00] what are the actual facts what do we know about this so what we know at the moment is there was [1:05] an investigation that was conducted by the police under arizona state law into hayley and this other [1:11] teacher as well and it was looking into allegations of um encouraging a person to engage in prostitution [1:18] so allegedly giving a student over 600 um and then what happens in uh arizona is the police have got [1:26] to propose whether they think that the person or people should be charged and what they should be [1:32] charged with and then it's up to prosecutors to decide what they want to do in this case they kind [1:37] of did an initial investigation and they were essentially asked to kind of go and investigate [1:41] again and get more evidence and then they brought more evidence sort of to to the to the fore they [1:47] proposed they collated and gathered together more evidence the kind of latest report that they've [1:53] released is just like absolutely jammed with like snapchat messages uh back and forth messages on text [2:01] like um different things that um were said during police interviews like interviews with family members [2:06] all of this stuff um hayley beck doesn't work at the school anymore but matt there are like there [2:12] are like ample students who are coming out now making tick tock saying like this was my experience of [2:17] of being at school with hayley beck one fact i actually grew up knowing who the beck family is [2:21] i went to high school with her and my husband used to be really good friends with her the most interesting [2:28] thing and i guess the content that i have been consuming a lot of while investigating this [2:33] is all like people reading out the police reports like they read out like they're reading out like [2:39] the text messages like in character it'll be like hayley said this and then the alleged victim said this [2:44] she said posty fit check it one compliment gets you five dollars gas money and he said well i'm gonna [2:51] have to shell out about five compliments and she said better start now well no now they're forced i [2:56] don't want them anymore it's like almost like a sort of dramatization of it right that reminds me a lot [3:01] of um the post charlie kirk assassination um in which you had another situation where the police [3:09] released files and evidence including like a chat log between tyler robinson the suspected killer and [3:16] his roommate and uh people were acting that out on tick tock as well so it's kind of like social media [3:21] using police raw police intelligence as a kind of like script for a drama that plays out [3:29] on mass so obviously there's 50 pages of digital communication snapchat messages instagram messages [3:35] i messages but what people really seem to have focused on is this handwritten letter so it's [3:39] this letter that appears to have been written by hayley beck to the alleged victim and um the the [3:45] letter is is like it's almost written like a text like it's written in text slang and so quite a lot [3:51] of people have been sort of taking the mick out of the way that it's written your prob's gonna think [3:55] this is cheesy as hell but you know i'm a words girly i know i know dot dot dot you aren't dying [4:01] plus you're literally just a text away but i have little notes from people when i was always studying [4:05] abroad plus would just read them whenever i was feeling a little lonely there are some really really [4:10] really cringy bits and i think actually i mean so much of the the dissecting of the beckstein files [4:17] quote unquote is people basically like laughing at hayley beck and then kind of coming to all these [4:23] conclusions about what she must be like as a person was she cool in high school was she not cool in [4:27] high school why would you do something like this obviously kind of going way beyond the fact that [4:31] these are allegations there's not been a decision made yet on charges like there are a few tiktokers [4:36] i've seen who've been like i've stayed up all night like you must watch my video here's like a here's [4:40] like a flow chart of what happened and here's more of the evidence and here's what she said to police [4:45] and they will be racking up hundreds of thousands of views for this content because [4:48] it's like it's basically like having a sort of like gossip on steroids um but perhaps the most [4:55] concerning part is that because these open source sort of documents etc include quite a lot of details [5:03] including like the first names of people's parents and things like that very quickly social media has [5:08] identified who they believe the victim to be and are sharing clips of him um in a way that you'd imagine [5:14] the police are probably not so keen on what we're seeing here with the back steam files is a much [5:20] smaller scale version of what we saw with the epstein files where when the government does the rare [5:26] thing of releasing raw um raw evidence raw unfiltered evidence which includes everything some [5:33] legitimate claims some claims of people who may have paranoid schizophrenia and are calling up the fbi [5:39] to say that you know jeffrey epstein is a cannibal and eats babies or whatever it is you know all of [5:45] that is released at the same time to the internet and it's up to the internet to then pour over and [5:50] come up with their own theories and a lot of like blatantly false uh conspiracies came from that recent [5:56] dump of the epstein files um and this is why the the government almost never would release like you know [6:03] unfiltered intelligence to the public you know there's a reason that they don't ever do this i mean it's i [6:08] think the epstein files is unprecedented in terms of the scale of that unfiltered intelligence being [6:13] released to the public to pour over but in this you're kind of it's turned into like a hobby for [6:19] people on tick tock to to go through the files which you know it's impressive because like i struggle [6:25] to get people to watch like a 20 second tick tock video they're going through like pages of police [6:30] reports and for some people some reason people are eating it up there are positives to that open [6:34] source thing right because there is you know transparency can be good it's good if people [6:38] can see the evidence but particularly when you've got a huge amount of evidence like this so it's a [6:43] lot to go through most people won't go through it they're then relying on tick tockers who are [6:46] essentially collating it for them it's not really getting mainstream coverage because there's not been [6:50] a decision on charging yet so you know the media wouldn't necessarily cover it until there's a decision [6:55] made about whether this amounts to a crime or not ultimately the allegations here are really really [7:00] serious that are being leveled at these teachers and really serious accusations of abuse of power [7:05] and the seriousness of it all feels like it kind of disappears and then you've got like kids popping [7:10] up who are you know only just 18 understandably wanting to kind of like get involved and say oh [7:15] look this is my experience of it this is what happened but but without even necessarily maybe [7:19] realizing the impact of that too especially on on the people at the center of this like imagine going [7:25] on your tick tock feed and and you are the person who has is at the center of these allegations um and [7:31] you find that there are just like endless videos about you or about your family member who's been [7:35] affected or whatever and you can't really do anything about it and also i imagine it affects um [7:41] any kind of future jury trial right yeah because i mean most of although a lot of these tick tockers [7:46] are just reading stuff out and saying this is the evidence ultimately like people are pretty much [7:51] making up their minds live on video or on camera about like what they think has happened and who [7:56] they believe to be guilty and you know it's like a lot of this evidence is really quite shocking like [8:00] some of these conversations you are are quite shocking and you can see why people are responding [8:05] to them how they are and she also obviously pops up in quite a few of noah beck her brother's tick tocks [8:10] um and so people have come and you know they've gone and dug out like any video where she talks [8:15] about being a teacher or school suspects best friends are students they're nice to me [8:21] teachers can have connections with kids and i feel like that's one of the most important parts of [8:25] teaching because at the end of the day you never know like i might be the only person in someone life [8:29] that does care and then there are also videos of like students filming her making tick tocks [8:34] and so it's like there's so much content about her which also explains why she's being focused on [8:43] rather than the other teacher who there are also allegations made about but who is not the sibling [8:48] of a tick tocker nor post seems to post very much online themselves so centennial high school [8:53] which is the school where hayley beck was working um have dismissed her she's not working there [8:58] anymore and hayley beck's lawyer matthew long had said um that their client quote respects the criminal [9:05] justice process and looks forward to the conclusion of the investigation which will reveal she committed [9:08] no crimes like any individual subject to investigation miss beck is entitled to due process [9:13] we're confident that a complete review of the facts will confirm her innocence