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- The Gabby Petito subreddit has grown to over 100,000 members since it was started last week.
- The forum has grown alongside the massive public interest in the case.
- "It is sudden, but this growth is unseen, at least for me," one moderator told Insider.
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Theories about the disappearance of Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old woman who went missing while traveling the US in a van with her fiancé, have spread like wildfire on social media since Petito's mother reported her missing on September 12.
On Reddit, a forum titled r/GabbyPetito has amassed 100,000 members since it was created on September 13. Redditors have been using the page to discuss the case and collect clues about Petito and her once-fiancé, Brian Laundrie, who returned home to Florida without her after their trip and declined to speak with authorities on Petito's disappearance.
Laundrie was named as a person of interest in the case and has been missing since last week. The FBI said on Sunday that "human remains were discovered consistent with the description" of Petito in Grand Teton National Park.
Moderators locked the subreddit on Sunday night to avoid overwhelming the page after the FBI's announcement.
It's not the fastest-growing subreddit of all time, with r/WallStreetBets earning over six million subscribers in one week in January, but it does appear to be the fastest-growing subreddit dedicated to searching for a missing person, a popular genre on the platform.
"It is sudden, but this growth is unseen, at least for me," Sunzu, one moderator of the subreddit (who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the privacy of identity on Reddit), told Insider.
The page gained more new subscribers than any other subreddit across the site on Monday and became the second-fastest-growing subreddit of the last seven days, according to the data collection site frontpagemetrics.com.
"This is absolutely the fastest case of growth I have ever seen on Reddit for any type of missing persons case," said another moderator who goes by u/Petiterunner and also spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The subreddit was formed amid the massive attention on the Petito case
The Gabby Petito story has become a massive, viral moment, with content about her and her story trending on multiple social media platforms over the last week.
The subreddit's creator told Insider that they started the page to "collate and distribute information" when they noticed there was not yet a subreddit dedicated to analyzing Petito's story. The user, whose Reddit handle is u/Accurate_Tip7017, also requested anonymity as they consider their Reddit activities private.
The subreddit went from 400 subscribers on September 13 to 9,000 two days later, according to the frontpagemetrics.com.
The creator then put out a call for moderators, or volunteers who help keep the subreddit in accordance with Reddit's community guidelines and free of off-topic posts.
Sunzu and u/PetiteRunner, two of nine volunteer moderators on the forum, also moderate r/UnsolvedMystery, a true-crime subreddit with 1.4 million subscribers. Another r/GabbyPetito moderator, u/Alienkween, moderates r/TrueCrime, which has 6,000 subscribers.
r/GabbyPetito became a hub for conspiracy theories about Petito's disappearance
North Port Police Department
Over two dozen posts with theories were linked in a "megathread," or collection of posts.
There was a large amount of discourse about the van Laurie was driving, with people debating whether it was dented, whether a cargo bag seen on the top of Laurie's van had vanished, or whether the van was opened in a viral clip from camping vloggers who spotted the vehicle on the side of the road.
These threads each have hundreds of comments, with further comment threads pulling in thousands of comments apiece.
Sunzu told Insider they hoped the online attention on the case would help authorities in their search efforts.
"I would hope that people use this enthusiasm, passion, interest, curiosity - whatever it is - to support search and rescue organizations nationwide and share other missing persons information far and wide," Sunzu told Insider.
Reddit did not respond to requests for comment.
Read more stories from Insider's Digital Culture desk.