It wasn’t long after the protests got underway that the online attacks and conspiracy theories began to trend. “The sliming — there is no other word for it — of the survivors of last week’s Florida high school massacre is beyond the pale.” WaPo’s Margaret Sullivan argues that the online trashing of Parkland teens is too disgusting to ignore. (Sadly, that’s precisely how it’s designed to work.)

+ “It chose a popular, deeply sympathetic, nonpolarizing political enemy. More specifically, it chose a political enemy effectively born onto the internet and innately capable of waging an information war.” Charlie Warzel argues that the alt right media disinformation experts and conspiracy theorists have finally met their match in the Parkland students.

+ The NYT’s John Herrman: The Making of a No. 1 YouTube Conspiracy Video After the Parkland Tragedy.

+ Wired: Parkland conspiracies overwhelm the internet’s broken trending tools.

+ “The ‘trending’ designation is a worthless metric, but in the online-content economy, it somehow means everything.” Brian Feldman: It’s Time to End Trending.