Diane in 7A

The thing was this is that it was totally believable. A woman complaining about a delay on an airplane and wanting to get home. I can see why people bought it.

To me it was someone tweeting about doing something we've probably all wanted to do (but personally I thought he came off as more of a jerk than "Diane").

 

That was amazing.

 

Of all the things wrong with America, worship of college football is very near the top of the list.

 

Kardashians.

 

Here is what I think is going on.

I think that society - American society, specifically, but perhaps all of Western civilization - is currently dividing itself into two camps.

In one camp, people will go about their business, oblivious to "viral" stories, memes, and videos. They will get their news from the networks, maybe the local paper, maybe the regional paper or the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.

In the second camp, people will shame and troll and pass cat memes around. I hope that camp begins to shrink eventually, as civilized, empathetic human beings increasingly find it distasteful. I'd love to see the Buzzfeed culture marginalized.

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/02/elan_gale_diane_and_the_age_of_public_twitter_shaming/

(N)o action one undertakes can be considered safe from being broadcast to the entire world. That a purported breakdown at an airport ticket counter merited Gale’s repeated harassment is curious. That it became the object of fun across the entire Internet says less about Gale than it does about our collective appetite for public shaming, for a straw woman we can flog to remind ourselves that we, of course, know how to behave in society. It’s everyone else who doesn’t.

There will be many more “Diane” stories; the Web’s combination of proscriptive demands on how people must behave and its chilly lack of empathy already embolden its users even before Gale became a viral superstar.

Also, more people being assholes on the Internet:

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/my_embarrassing_picture_went_viral/

 

That's pathetic. People can be so hateful. She seems pretty cool, though.

 

A reality teevee show producer is full of shit, what a shock.

Too bad somebody couldn't have taken him out on the tarmac and pumped a bullet into his dome.

Problem solved.

 

What's troublesome is that in his telling of it, he was being a total asshole back - it's inexcusable to send someone a note that says, "Eat my dick."

The commentaries I've read on this attribute the cheerleading to the fact that he was acting out people's revenge fantasies for them on difficult people. I don't think it's that. I think it's this: People love to cheerlead for a famous person, even a Z-lister like this guy. Actually, people like to cheerlead for anyone on their feed. I've seen Facebook posts by friends and acquintances in which they are ranting and raving and clearly in the wrong, and they get 80 "likes" and 30 "You go, girl!" comments.

 

Orson Welles has been doing this stuff since the 1930s. The internet just makes it easier.

 

Yep. Them too.

 

I'm sure she's a very nice person, and she didn't deserve to be made fun of on the internet.

But, she sure was fast to point out that being fat wasn't even her fault:

But, neither of the conditions she says she has, conclusively causes obesity:

So, if we're discussing what internet stories I'm going to believe, without more evidence, add hers to the list of those I'm skeptical about.