Who's the Cunt Here? What the Lindsay Clancy Trial Says About Our Obsession With Blame

There is something deeply Australian about wanting to know who the cunt is.

Someone cuts into the traffic? Cunt.

The bloke at the pub who says he'll shout the next round and mysteriously disappears when it's his turn? Cunt.

Your boss sends an email at 7:27pm beginning with "Sorry to bother you..."? Absolute fucking cunt.

We like our problems categorised.

Good cunt. Ordinary cunt. Massive cunt. Legendary cunt.

And, ideally, one clearly identifiable cunt responsible for whatever has gone wrong.

The trouble starts when real life refuses to cooperate. Because sometimes there isn't one.

Sometimes there are dozens of decisions, circumstances, failures, warning signs, misunderstandings, human weaknesses and institutional shortcomings tangled together into something so complicated that shouting "THAT CUNT DID IT" feels wonderfully satisfying while explaining absolutely nothing.

And that is one of the uncomfortable things emerging from the Lindsay Clancy trial.

Everyone wants to know who the cunt is.

The problem is that the answer may be considerably more complicated than the internet would like.

The internet has never met a complicated situation it couldn't simplify

The Lindsay Clancy case has attracted enormous public attention.

Clancy is on trial in Massachusetts over the 2023 deaths of her three children. She has pleaded not guilty, while her defence argues that severe mental illness, including postpartum psychosis, affected her criminal responsibility. Prosecutors argue that the killings were deliberate and premeditated.

The trial is now well into its fourth week. The prosecution has presented its case. The defence is presenting another.

Experts disagree.

Witnesses have described different aspects of Clancy's mental state. Family members have described warning signs. Medical professionals have offered competing interpretations.

And millions of people online are watching, analysing, diagnosing, speculating and deciding what they think happened.

Which is when the internet does what the internet does best. It picks a side.

Because uncertainty is fucking exhausting. Certainty is much easier.

"She's evil." Done.

"The doctors failed her." Done.

"Her family should have known." Done.

"The system failed." Done.

"She knew exactly what she was doing." Done.

Put it on TikTok. Add subtitles. Move on to the next tragedy. Except human beings don't work like that.

We fucking love a villain

There's a reason stories have villains. They make everything easier. If there's one bad person, everyone else gets to remain comfortable.

The villain did it. The hero tried to stop it. Everyone knows where they stand. Real life is considerably more annoying.

Real life contains people who can be loving parents and deeply unwell people. People can seek help and still deteriorate. Professionals can try to help and still get things wrong.

Families can see warning signs and misunderstand what they're seeing. Friends can care deeply and still fail to recognise how serious something has become.

Institutions can have procedures, policies and entire departments dedicated to helping people while still failing spectacularly when somebody actually needs help.

None of that makes what happened less horrific. It makes understanding it harder. And humans fucking hate hard.

Enter the armchair expert

The modern internet has created a remarkable new species:

The Forensic Facebook Cunt. You know the type. They have watched 11 minutes of a livestream. Read three comments. Seen a screenshot of a text message. Watched a TikTok from someone who claims to know someone who once went to school with the defendant.

And now they're absolutely certain they've cracked the case.

They know the motive. They know the diagnosis. They know what the family should have done. They know what the doctors should have prescribed. They know what the lawyer is thinking. They know what the jury will do. They know everything.

They are, in fact, sitting on the couch eating Shapes. But they know.

The Guardian recently described the phenomenon around the Clancy trial as "forensic fandom", warning that amateur sleuthing and viral conspiracy theories can distort public understanding of serious mental illness.

And that's the intriguing part. 

We've somehow turned criminal trials into participatory entertainment.

Not because people are necessarily bad. Because humans are curious. Humans want answers. Humans want justice.

And humans absolutely fucking love being right.

But what if there isn't one cunt?

This is where things get uncomfortable.

Suppose a person is desperately unwell. Suppose they ask for help. Suppose people around them notice something is wrong. Suppose professionals become involved. Suppose treatment doesn't work. Suppose the person deteriorates. Suppose some warning signs are missed. Suppose other warning signs are recognised. Suppose everyone involved makes some decisions that, at the time, seemed reasonable.

Then something catastrophic happens. Afterwards, everyone looks backwards. Suddenly every decision seems obvious.

It's called hindsight. And hindsight is one of the biggest cunts going around.

Because after the explosion, everybody knows exactly where the petrol was.

The cunt we should perhaps be talking about

There is a temptation, whenever something horrific happens, to ask:

"Who failed?"

That's a reasonable question. Sometimes somebody genuinely did. Sometimes systems genuinely fail. Sometimes individuals genuinely make terrible decisions.

Those questions matter. But there's another question worth asking:

"Why did the situation become possible in the first place?"

That's a much less satisfying question. Because it doesn't produce one villain. It produces a fucking spreadsheet.

It means looking at healthcare. Training. Access to treatment. Communication. Family support. Workplace pressures. Social expectations. Mental health services. Professional judgement. Cultural attitudes. Funding. Follow-up. Warning signs.

And all the other boring machinery of society that nobody wants to talk about until something goes catastrophically wrong.

We prefer villains.

Villains are much easier to sell.

Australia has its own version of this

We're particularly good at pretending people are fine.

"She'll be right." "He's just going through a rough patch." "Everyone gets stressed." "He'll bounce back." "Don't make a big deal out of it."

There's a certain Australian talent for turning emotional distress into an inconvenience.

We're fantastic at mateship when the bloke has broken his leg.

We'll drive 400 kilometres to help someone move house. We'll bring a ute. We'll bring beer. We'll bring a trailer. We'll stand around in the driveway discussing exactly how fucked the situation is.

But ask someone:

"How are you actually doing?"

And suddenly everyone becomes a cunt.

"Yeah, good mate." "Can't complain." "You know how it is." And we all nod.

Because that's the social contract.

Nobody asks the second question.

The Good Cunt Test

Being a good cunt isn't about being the bloke who turns up with a carton when someone buys a new house.

It's not about having 17,000 Facebook friends.

It's not about posting "Checking in on my people. Remember it's okay not to be okay." Then ignoring the person who clearly isn't okay because their emotional crisis is inconvenient.

A good cunt notices. A good cunt asks again. A good cunt doesn't need someone to produce a PowerPoint presentation proving they're struggling before taking them seriously. A good cunt doesn't immediately reach for advice.

Sometimes they just fucking listen.

And sometimes they say "Mate, I'm actually worried about you."

That's it. No inspirational quote. No podcast. No wellness seminar. No LinkedIn post about resilience.

Just a human being paying attention to another human being.

The Worst Cunt Isn't Always the Person Everyone Is Looking At

This is where things get really uncomfortable.

Because sometimes the biggest cunt in the room isn't the person everyone is staring at.

Sometimes it's the culture that taught everyone not to ask questions.

Sometimes it's the system that makes help difficult to access.

Sometimes it's the mate who says "don't be a pussy".

Sometimes it's the family that says "she's always been a bit dramatic".

Sometimes it's the person who sees something wrong and decides it's somebody else's problem.

Sometimes it's the algorithm that turns a human tragedy into entertainment.

And sometimes? Sometimes there isn't a single cunt to blame.

There is just a long chain of ordinary human decisions that ended somewhere nobody wanted to go.

That's a much harder story. But perhaps it's the more useful one.

The Internet's favourite game: Diagnose a stranger

There's another particularly strange habit we've developed. We diagnose people we've never met.

Psychopath. Narcissist. Sociopath. Narcissistic abuser. Gaslighter. Monster.

The internet has become one enormous waiting room where everyone is simultaneously a psychiatrist, criminal psychologist, relationship counsellor and detective.

Qualifications optional. Context irrelevant. Evidence negotiable.

Confidence absolutely fucking mandatory. And that's dangerous.

Because mental illness isn't a character flaw. Psychosis isn't a synonym for evil. And being mentally unwell doesn't automatically explain every terrible thing a person does.

Those things can simultaneously be true.

That's precisely why serious cases require courts, evidence, experts and due process rather than 45 second TikToks.

So who's the cunt?

Honestly? That's the wrong question. Or at least it's an incomplete one.

The better question is:

What happened? What was missed? What did people know? What did they not know? What systems were available? What systems weren't? What could have been different? And what can we learn before the next family finds itself in an impossible situation?

Those questions aren't nearly as entertaining as identifying a villain.

But they're considerably more useful. And perhaps that's the difference between being a spectator and being a decent human being.

Because everyone's a cunt

This is, ultimately, why the title of our book is both a joke and slightly more serious than it sounds.

Everyone's a Cunt. Not because everyone is terrible. Quite the opposite.

It's because we're all complicated.

We're selfish sometimes. Generous sometimes. Petty. Kind. Lazy. Brilliant. Hypocritical. Loyal. Self-absorbed. Magnificent. Occasionally fucking unbearable.

And every now and then, unexpectedly, someone does something that reminds you why mateship exists in the first place.

The challenge isn't working out whether someone is a cunt.

The challenge is working out what kind.

And perhaps, when something horrific happens, our first responsibility isn't to find someone to call a cunt.

Perhaps it's to resist the urge to simplify something we don't understand.

Then look around our own lives. Check on the mate who has gone quiet. Ask the second question. Notice when someone isn't themselves. Take people seriously.

And, when necessary, be the good cunt who actually fucking turns up. Because that's the sort of cunt worth being.

And if you've read this far, there's a reasonable chance you already know several. You probably live with one. Work with three. Are related to two. And have one saved in your phone under a name that would get you fired if your boss ever saw it.

That's life. Everyone's a Cunt.

The trick is making sure you're one of the good ones.