Somewhere along the line, we forgot that this drama
concerned an actual human being. Justine Sacco did not express empathy
for her fellow human beings with her insensitive tweet. It is something,
though, that the Internet responded in kind, with an equal lack of
empathy. We expressed some of the very attitude we claimed to condemn.
....As I watched the online response to Justine Sacco’s tweet, I thought
of Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery,” first published in 1948
but quite prescient. In a village there is a ritual that has
gone largely unquestioned for generations. There is a box and in the box
are slips of paper. Each year, the heads of each family draw slips of
paper. One will be marked and then the members of that person’s family
draw slips again. Whoever selects the slip with a black mark is the
sacrifice. Everyone takes up stones and sets upon the unlucky victim.
Every citizen is complicit in the murder of someone who, just moments
before he or she was chosen, was a friend, a neighbor, a loved one.
Justine
Sacco was not sacrificed. Her life will go on. We will likely never
know if she learned anything from this unfortunate affair. In truth, I
don’t worry so much about her. Instead, I worry for those of us who were
complicit in her spectacularly rapid fall from grace. I worry about how
comfortable we were holding the stones of outrage in the palms of our
hands and the price we paid for that comfort.
- "The Cost of Twitter Outrage"
descensus Averno facilis est