You Know You Love It

In the NYT Magazine, Jon Ronson recounts how one stupid tweet blew up Justine Sacco’s life. Sacco’s tweet was pretty stupid. But at the time, she had fewer than 200 followers. How did a bad joke in an essentially empty room come to dominate the Twitterverse? To answer that question, you need to read the key line of the piece: “The furor over Sacco’s tweet had become not just an ideological crusade against her perceived bigotry but also a form of idle entertainment.” This is true, except not necessarily in that order. It was almost all about fun and entertainment. If we really examine what’s looking back at us from the other end of the selfie stick, we’d admit that we love destroying people and piling on during their worst moments. Social media has turned Schadenfreude into a bloodsport.

+ Facebook is now giving you the the chance to name a legacy contact. That’s the person who will have access to control certain elements of your account after you die. I don’t know if I want to burden anyone with that amount of deleting.