Marina Joyce: How the world decided a cryptic YouTube video meant the vlogger had been kidnapped

It really began with a short video, apparently intent on advertising some dresses. There had been others before – but it was a two-minute long YouTube clip titled “DATE OUTFIT IDEAS” that set off the internet’s biggest ever mystery.

In that video, 19-year-old Marina Joyce speaks to camera about the clothes she is wearing, advertising an online shopping platform. But it was how she did it that concerned fans – she appears distracted and slightly confused, repeating herself looking slightly off camera with some apprehension.

Within hours, the video had become the centre of huge concern. Some argued, based on small clues in the video, that Joyce was held captive and forced to make the video – and even that the meetup she was asking fans to attend was going to be used by Isis as a way of rounding up victims.

Hours after the video was posted, fans started a hashtag – #SaveMarinaJoyce –that flew around the world. Hundreds of thousands of people tweeted it, and many called Scotland Yard.

Those calls led officers to visit Joyce’s address, at about 3 in the morning. They tweeted that they had found the YouTube star safe and well, and did not respond to further requests for comment.

That was far from the end of it. By the time that morning had arrived, the conspiracy had taken full shape.

Internet detectives – with the same kind of furious, specific attention to detail that they showed in other big events like the Boston bombing – poured through the posts to find evidence. Those included specific things like a gun that appeared in one of Joyce’s videos to what they said was somebody saying “help me” very quietly in the “DATE OUTFIT IDEAS” post.

From there, they pored through old YouTube videos and other posts to put together a story that whoever was holding Joyce had been doing so for months. The videos might not even have been uploaded by her, said some, who suggested that they were being assembled out of old footage.

The frenzy looked similar to the internet phenomenon of creepypasta, where people assemble chilling stories out of what is claimed to be footage, audio and other multimedia to tell a story. Except this included a real woman, who if not in danger before appeared to be at risk depending on where the story went.

In its most extreme form, the bruises, strange behaviour and person directing Joyce in the video was someone from Isis, who was said to have captured her. She was being used to lure people to an event on 3 August – now cancelled – that mirrored the way that the Munich gunman tricked teenagers into coming to a McDonald’s where the shooting happened.

The concern about the event was buoyed by numerous posts, some real and some fake. Famous vloggers including Alfie Deyes and Daz Black said that the event wouldn’t be safe, and told fans not to go; and apparently fake posts claimed to be sharing videos that were taken down where Joyce had told people not to go to the event.

By that time, nothing much beyond the video had been heard from Marina. She posted to say that she was fine in the days between uploading the video and the police visit – but fans had heard nothing since.

Searching for clues, fans trawled through tweets that Joyce had liked in the meantime, and claimed that some showed that the kidnap theory was correct.

Joyce then began one of what would become a number of lifestreams on the Younow website, where viewers can send questions that a streamer can see live.

She said that she hadn’t been captured, and that she was fine. For the first time, she implied that something she wanted to keep private had happened in her life but that she was well.

The livestream was apparently intended to reassure viewers, but actually had the opposite effect. Even before the video had finished, fans had found clues in it and were taking snippets of the footage and sharing it as further proof.

But it wasn’t purely the internet detectives who were spurring on the hunt for clues. Joyce herself didn’t seem entirely intent on putting the rumours to rest.

“I can’t tell you what happened, but I am okay and I really do love you guys,” Joyce said in the livestream. She also said that her bruises were related to a sad story that she couldn’t tell, though has since gone on to say that they were the result of an accident in a forest.

Joyce has spoken about alcohol abuse in the past, and other vloggers indicated that they had spoken to Joyce about personal troubles. But she made no specific reference to that or anything else in the new videos.

And she seemed distracted and confused in something of the same way as the original video. As discussion erupted online, on the livestream – which had now got tens of thousands of people watching it at once – Joyce asked that people send her “wisdom quotes” that she could read out to her fans.

She’d then directed people to her Facebook page, where she said she would answer questions. But those answers also left many people confused.

In one question, for instance, a fan asked Joyce why she had bars on her window, apparently in reference to what actually seem to be blinds. She answered that they were there for protection and didn’t elaborate.

There then followed a series of livestreams, which featured interviews with different vloggers and an appearance from Joyce’s mother, Cheryl. They followed a similar format, with Joyce appearing somewhat dazed like in earlier videos but telling fans that she wasn’t endangered and was OK.

Those livestreams had much the same effect: apparently reassuring, but actually serving as just more evidence for those that wanted to believe something was wrong.

But they also offered a hint of what some had claimed from the beginning: that the entire story was a calculated publicity stunt. In one of the videos, Joyce said people should head to her Facebook, which has had fewer subscribers than her other channels.

But even if the events weren’t a stunt, they’ve driven up Joyce’s subscribers hugely, and she has used the platforms she has been given to both promote her channels and to delight in the attention they are getting.

What seems fairly clear is that Joyce hasn’t been kidnapped and isn’t being held under duress. But it’s far less obvious how people came to believe that she had been – or how it can be stopped in the future.

Fans still have no more answers to their questions – and every attempt to give them from Joyce or people around her tends to spur even more attempts to work out what truly is going on.

It began with a video. But, it seems, a video won’t be able to bring it to an end.