C. D. Hermelin shares a touching story that illustrates the pain associated with becoming an internet meme:
Each time I went, I’d walk home, my typewriter case full of singles, my fingers ink-stained. Lots of people were worried about copycats—what if I saw someone “stealing” my idea? I tried to soothe them. If every subway guitarist had fights about who came up with the idea to play an acoustic cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the underground would be a violent place. More violent than it already is. Others, perhaps drawn by the sounds of the typewriter, would stop and just talk to me, watch me compose a story for someone else. Then they’d shake their head and tell me that the idea and the execution were “genius.”
Of course, the Internet could be counted on to take me down a peg.
Group-think, entitled internet anger, stereotypes, and an out-of-context photo changed Hermelin’s life for the worse. Perhaps we should all think twice before being a part of the internet hate machine.