It was a sunny morning like any other (it was yesterday) when the shocking news fell on Mediatown: The future of a much-ballyhooed web start-up, Racket, was in Limbo's grasp, due to warring egos, shifting amounts of start-up capital, allegations of harassment, and managerial backbiting.

A girl from the required class for English majors at my college has lately been sharing a lot of posts from the website Humans of New York. I was inclined to dismiss it all as dumb clickbait—this was, after all, a girl who'd responded to the novels of J.M. Coetzee by asking about the South African head of the state "Madea," whom she knew Morgan Freeman had played in "Invictus"—but something more pernicious was at work. Turns out the site is actually popular.