More on the consequences of outrage

Tom Hawking's Flavorwire story on internet outrage illustrates what I've been saying for a while now, especially this:

I’m not defending [the targets of online outrage], but the idea of someone being publicly pilloried and deprived of their means of living in a country with basically no welfare safety net, on the basis of a single Facebook post that may or may not be genuine and may or may not have a Sacco-esque context we’re not aware of — that’s wrong.

This kind of tribalism -- you're either with us or you're a (racist, sexist, rape-apologist, etc.) -- makes criticizing the methods of doing social justice on the internet a difficult but intellectually honest task.