Every now and then, something happens that turns millennials on the Internet from a quirky, meme-sharing entity into an angry mob. Most recently, it was the outing of the Duke freshman porn star.

The story has sparked widespread discussion about if “Lauren” — the Duke student’s chosen allias — deserves the negative attention for working in the porn industry or if this is another example of slut-shaming and sexism toward women.

What no one is talking about, however, is how easily cyber mobs form to attack someone’s lifestyle.

After a fraternity brother at Duke recognized her and revealed her identity, Lauren was at the center of a slew of negative and derogatory comments from online forums and social media. She agreed to an interview for Duke’s newspaper, the Duke Chronicle, and then posted a response on Deville Dish on Feb. 14 to the article after she believed it put her in a negative light. That made the story even bigger and drew more negative comments and criticisms.

Cyber-bullying has been around since the creation of social media. Every year, there are countless stories about teens committing suicide after their classmates bullied them on the Internet. Had Lauren not decided to take her life back from those bashing it, the headlines could’ve run much differently. Because no one got hurt, no one seems to care that this started with a group of people targeting one person — the mob mentality all too common online.

The disturbing thing about that mentality is how easy it is to spread. A few people make hateful comments on an online forum and everyone else realizes they want to share how much they hate this person he or she has never met.

The same goes for Twitter. Another Internet mob formed last December, surrounding the hashtag, “#HasJustineLandedYet.” Justine Sacco, the former director of Corporate Communications for InterActiveCorp, tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” just before she boarded a 12-hour flight to South Africa.

Someone saw her racist tweet and within hours Sacco became infamous, receiving thousands of hateful tweets, death threats and the hashtag started trending internationally.  Though Sacco made the mistake, this is another slightly alarming example of how quickly the Internet can come together to hate one person.

As millennials, we’re the ones who are doing most of the tweeting and commenting. Although the viral stories are usually funny videos or BuzzFeed articles, sometimes a story breaks about someone who we could easily pass judgment on. In Lauren’s case, her choice to do porn to pay for school created a firestorm of judgmental comments even after she released statements defending herself. Before we hop on the bandwagon of collectively judging someone, we need to take a step back and decide if it’s even our place to judge.

Our generation needs to be aware of how easy it is to slip into cyber-mob mentality before someone gets hurt. After all, not every person the mob targets will be able to stand up for themselves as Lauren did.

Kate Beckman is a freshman magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at kebeckma@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @Kate_Beckman.

Published on March 4, 2014 at 1:00 am