I probably shouldn’t be leading with this. The truth is that if the incident hadn’t taken place at a well-known company in a highly-covered industry filled with active social media users, there’s no way this story would have even made it into NextDraft or to the front sections of most news sources. A person with a gun walking into a corporate office and opening fire is not, on its own, big news. It’s too common in the US. After spending the morning at a shooting range, Nasim Aghdam (who was reportedly “upset” with the company’s policies and practices) opened fire at YouTube HQ, injuring three people before killing herself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The fact that this event wouldn’t ordinarily make the news is the news. America needs a new meme.

+ “Each new shooting sets off a succession of desires: for a false alarm, for an isolated event, for no fatalities.” David Graham on the cascade of diminishing hopes.

+ “Mass tragedies of this variety have become a common enough occurrence that the online chaos is almost orderly; not only does the internet’s underbelly react to these events with alarming speed, but all sides seem to know their specific roles.” Trolls, hoaxes, hacked accounts; Twitter is the best place for breaking news, but it’s also the worst place.