This is a great follow up to our discussion last night, and is a phenomenon that we can at least come to a reasonable suggested explanation as to why this happens and answer "what is wrong with people." I hate threads but it's going to take me a couple tweets so bear with me.

On the surface, the trolls attacking Mike are exhibiting an intuitive reaction to his story and he's still seeing it through a logical lens.
Mike's perspective: there are facts that were presented. They are out of context through misleading interpretation and poor word choice.

The troll's perspective: Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) = bad. Mike not agreeing with someone saying they are bad. Therefore, Mike = bad. In addition to this being a logical fallacy, it's also a conclusion based on emotion - it's highly intuitive.

Because the two aren't using the same basic perspectives of critical thinking, it's like they are living in two different realities.

But it goes deeper than that as we learned last night (almost done, I swear)

The trolls are not only acting intuitively but they are starting to form an in-group. There's vindictive protectionism (coming to the defense of an unassuming victimized American public) and virtue signaling (I'll angrily tweet at bad man Mike too).

We know where this is headed.

It has all the hallmarks of a witch hunt. The accusations against Mike are trivial or fabricated (in this case, fabricated since his numbers are rock solid), they are crimes against the collective (American public), and so far I haven't seen many people come to Mike's defense.

It's also confusing to outsiders, and in this case, especially confusing to Mike since they are in two distinctly different realities of critical thinking. Fortunately for him there's the last hallmark of a witch hunt: it's popped up quickly and will dissipate quickly as well.

Although his story tomorrow, which I'm excited to read as well, will likely keep it around for at least one more news cycle into the weekend.

This is media ethics in real time, and it's why what we learn in class is so important to understanding the world around us.

in the second tweet: trolls'**

Apologies to my media writing students for my misplaced apostrophe.