Getting fired by the internet

Sometimes I wonder if there really is this much more crime, violence, pedophilia, corruption, etc. going on in the world today than there was in the past, or has modern technology just enabled us to be more aware of it? Certainly, being able to record audio, video, and take pictures with our phones has made it much easier to generate evidence when catching someone in the act, then use social media to spread that information virally. I wonder if this is somehow an abuse of the technology.

People share videos and articles all the time. Mundane, moderate, and boring stuff gets quickly buried under the avalanche of more attention-getting headlines. It seems to me that the more radical they are, be it favorable or unfavorable, the more likely they are able to spread virally. Things like puppies and achievements in physical fitness are super favorable, while videos of street fights, racist people, and police brutality are unfavorable. The most recent unfavorable reaction provoking video I know of is a cop who arrested a nurse for not drawing blood or something. Recent headlines indicate that this cop has been fired only a day or two later.

In almost every 'unfavorable' event or surfacing of information that spreads virally, it's usually followed by some sort of necessary consequence. Someone makes a public apology, retracts a statement, gets fired, is forced to resign, a company stops a program, shuts down completely, investors pull their funding, or something else absolute.

There's too many different events that have happened for me to look into every circumstance with a fine-toothed comb. Often, the big picture is immediately clear, but sometimes more important determining details are obfuscated. News articles are sometimes poorly reported, or has some sort of bias that influences it. People share each other's posts, which amplifies the volume of the reaction, but not the credentials of the speaker. Many of the shared posts are just well-articulated responses to the coverage of the event, and not firsthand witnesses of the event. Sometimes videos are modified or cut apart or started recording too late, which hides important context clues towards the escalation of the situation. The culmination of all of this is akin to a "whisper down the lane" exchange of information rather than irrefutable evidence.

Yes, it's more than likely that the events portrayed happened exactly, or at least close enough to how they are portrayed in the given material. Perhaps there is enough behind the scenes investigation into the event and the boring details don't spread virally through the internet before the story is over. But that, I'm usually unsure of.

What I have observed is that many people are starting to see the power of organizing and revolting against things that are bad. I've seen picketing, protests, riots, marches, and more lately about more and more nuanced things. I've also seen more people react in a manner that seems disproportionate to the toxicity of a thing. The Occupy Wall Street movement had a very unclear objective and was very disorganized. But when the massive weight of responsibility can be pegged on a single person, or organization, there are consequences that come from it.

So I'm confused. In terms of deciding how to respond, it seems as though there is a blurry line between factual documented evidence testifiable in court, and the desire to restore peace. When a storm of comments read people shouting that this person needs to be fired, or this company needs to be shut down, etc., are people generally better at predicting the course of action that takes place, or does the virality of it have some sort of influence on the outcome?

Sometimes I wonder if this decade of social networking would have changed the fate of Doom and the lineage of shooter games if it existed twenty years ago. Would Doom have even stood a chance when angry stay-at-home moms dominated twitter before PC gaming really took off? Violent video games and movies were desensitizing our youth and breeding them into criminals! Would distribution chains cave to the pressure and take Doom off it's shelves? Would the spokespeople defending these games become demonized on the internet? Would there even be enough time for anyone even consider the evidence that these games have no negative influence on the psychological development of the children that play them?