I remember exactly where I was when the not guilty verdict came in… I was almost 18: in fact, 7/5/11 was 3 months to the day before my 18th birthday, and I was at my first job working the first window at a McDonalds. To those younger than me, this will really date that era… it was so long ago that I’d just started using the oldest web or app version on an ancient iPhone, my very first & one of the first models ever made. The vast majority of my peers as well as full adults didn’t yet have a smartphone. Before that, since I’d made a twitter account in 2009, I’d sent SMS texts to tweet on Twitter. But I was able to view my timeline and what was trending at work, what a concept… I cannot convey just how much of a madhouse even primitive “twitter mobile” became in the aftermath. People were stunned and absolutely furious. I want to say it broke a usage/server record back then.

When I think of the Anthony case, I think of People magazine: the decade leading up to & surrounding that era, essentially the parts of my childhood I remember best, were dominated by the faces of Laci Peterson and Casey and Caylee Anthony next to celebrities somewhere on the covers of almost all the magazines at grocery stores, usually within one of the 3 little square blurbs on the side panel of People magazine. It’s incredibly sad & strange that so much time ahead gone by. There are people barely younger than I was at the time who were born around when the verdict came out, and plenty of adults in their 20s who have no memory of any of that crazy case or the media firestorm around it. I can’t believe Casey is still trying to still be in the public eye…