A Kidney Donor Who Wants To Know Why You Didn't Like Her Facebook Post About Her Kidney Donation And More Of This Week's 'One Main Character'
Every day somebody says or does something that earns them the scorn of the internet. Here at Digg, as part of our mission to curate what the internet is talking about right now, we rounded up the main characters on Twitter from this past week and held them accountable for their actions.
This week's characters include a CEO who argued that spending $46,500 a month really isn't that extravagant, a billionaire millennial who lost $7 billion dollars in one day after his site crashed, the subject of a New York Times profile who really wanted everyone to know she donated a kidney and an award-winning author who is hung up on the pronoun "they."
Saturday
Molson Hart
The character: Molson Hart, CEO of an educational e-commerce toy company, friend of one or more rich guys.
The plot: On Saturday, Hart joined in on the discourse about whether earning a six-figure salary made someone rich by observing that he knew someone in Manhattan who was struggling to get by because he was spending $46,500 monthly on various expenses.
The repercussion: Hart's rich-guy defense did not go over well, and he got ratioed by dozens of incredulous Twitter users who picked apart his friend's so-called "not extravagant" budget.
Hart's tweet also prompted people to "defend" the rich guys in their own lives.
Monday
Mark Zuckerberg
The character: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, sixth richest man in the world, smoked meats fan.
The plot: On Monday, Zuckerberg had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were all down for over six hours. Shares of Facebook plunged 5 percent and Zuckerberg ended up losing $7 billion from the outage.
The repercussion: The internet had a field day as people around the world trolled Zuckerberg, with numerous schadenfreude-laden tweets roasting the billionaire for the widespread outage.
The Facebook outage sent millions of social media castaways to Twitter to joke about Zuckerberg's misfortune. Even brands came together in solidarity.
However, the saltiest response came from Myspace founder Tom Anderson, who assured everyone he wasn't responsible for the outage.
Tuesday
Dawn Dorland AKA Kidney Donor AKA Friend Of Bad Art Friend
The character: Dawn Dorland, prolific writing workshop attendee, litigious kidney donor.
The plot: On Tuesday, The New York Times published a nearly 10,000-word story by Robert Kolker, entitled, "Who Is The Bad Art Friend?" It's a saga of betrayal, resentment and revenge spanning six years between Dawn Dorland and Sonya Larson, two writers based in Boston who met through a writing workshop. In the lengthy yarn that gripped a nation (or at least Twitter) for several days, Dorland donated a kidney to a stranger and later publicized it in a private Facebook group. Dorland noticed that Larson (whom she previously believed was a close friend) had not reacted to her post, which prompted Dorland to email Larson. "I think you're aware that I donated my kidney this summer. Right?" she wrote.
According to the article, a few months later, Dorland learned on Facebook that Larson was working on a short story, entitled "The Kindest," about a woman who donated a kidney. The clincher was when Dorland discovered that Larson used her Facebook post about the kidney donation almost word-for-word in an early version of the story. Both filed lawsuits against each other, with Larson alleging defamation and Dorland accusing Larson of copyright infringement. Drama ensued — and continues to this day.
Celeste Ng, the author of "Little Fires Everywhere," who is friends with Larson, revealed that Dorland originally pitched the story to the Times herself.
The repercussion: "Bad Art Friend" captivated much of Twitter and became a trending topic, with the vast majority of readers taking Larson's side and riffing on Dorland's over-the-top reminders of her kidney donation.
The Bad Art Friend discussion later turned to whether the male author of the story was drawing enough scrutiny.
But after awhile, people became completely exhausted by the discourse.
Wednesday
Joyce Carol Oates
The character: Joyce Carol Oates, award-winning author, former Princeton University professor, opponent of skeleton-based Halloween decorations, infamous foot pic tweeter.
The plot: On Tuesday, Oates shared an op-ed by John McWhorter about the usage of they, and argued, "'They' will not become a part of general usage, not for political reasons but because there would be no pronoun to distinguish between a singular subject ("they") & a plural subject ("they")."
The repercussion: Oates's broadside on the singular-they pronoun went viral, sparking outrage as people pointed out that this isn't a new convention and numerous trans/non-binary people calling out the author's disrespect.
After much blowback, Oates later back-tracked and said she would be happy to refer to any person as "they" if they asked her to.
She additionally apologized to people who felt hurt by her comments.
Read the previous edition of our One Main Character column, which includes Ellen Pompeo with an anecdote she really should have kept to herself and more.
Did we miss a main character from this week? Please send tips to [email protected]
