There really is no official title to this tale, as the sources don't offer one. I came upon this tweet from a TV news reporter named Haley Hinds:
Haley Hinds FOX 13 Verified account @HaleyHinds
24h24 hours ago
Here's a tale about how a stranger across the country tried to ruin my reputation with a tweet, the hateful messages brought to me, and the damage it has caused. Truth matters. Please share if you can.
She linked to her own Facebook page, where she wrote about fake black man Shaun King and his like-minded hate-spewing pals:
What would you do if a random stranger on the internet decided to falsely accuse you of being the "star" of a recently viral video of a woman going on a racist tirade at a Lutz, FL nail salon?
And what would you do if, afterward, an Internet mob came after you, from all over the world, threatening you, calling you vile names, even telling you to go kill yourself?
Well, folks... I'll tell you all about it. Because it happened to me.
It's a crummy situation that leaves me not only disappointed in the person who decided to target me for no reason, but also, really concerned about those who blindly went along with it. ...
I soon learned that a Twitter user named @carneashannah posted a screenshot of my personal Facebook page underneath the viral video, saying, "couldn't find a Twitter but I did find a Facebook." She also posted a screenshot of my boyfriend's Facebook page, which included a photo of his family.
Here's how it all snowballed. Though that video had been tweeted by AJ+ to its nearly one million followers a few days before, civil rights activist and writer Shaun King had just retweeted it, asking his nearly one million followers, "What's her name?"
The witch hunt began. ...
The hate messages began.
"You're a racist piece of sh*t for what you did to the nail salon lady... you are a disgrace."
"Kill yourself you stupid b*tch, you don't deserve to be a part of America." ...
Retweet. Retweet. Retweet. Like. Like. Like.
Even after some Twitter users started to realize that the woman in the video looks/sounds nothing like me, and is clearly a few years older, the trolling continued. ...
Days later, the tweet with my photo still remains up for all the world to see, with the likes and retweets piling up. My co-workers, family and friends thought that, surely, by reporting the tweets, they would be removed for sparking this barrage of harassment, not to mention, the damage of my reputation. We thought.
Each of us received e-mails from Twitter saying, "there was no violation of the Twitter rules against abusive behavior." The e-mail went on to say, "Some tweets may seem to be abusive when viewed in isolation, but may not be when viewed in the context of a larger conversation." ...
I'm left shaking my head, wondering how so many people on the Internet are willing to abandon their critical thinking skills, their eyesight, their hearing, and to blindly pull out their pitchforks because they're so desperate to find a villain. They'll believe whatever someone else says, whether it's true or not. Truth just doesn’t seem to matter at the time. ... Her full Facebook post
This is a Facebook post, not a published news article, and I've tried to excerpt it as much as possible.
