It was the tweet that launched a thousand trolls. When Adria Richards tweeted out a picture of two men she overheard making sexual jokes behind her during open-source conference PyCon, the internet erupted.
Much has already been discussed about the “Donglegate” incident, from how everyone lost (both were fired) and what Richards should have done instead, to the very dangers of asking what could have been done differently at all. The resulting brouhaha is the kind of zeitgeisty moment that only happens when inflammatory topics combine: sexism in tech, social shaming, and the potential of social media to generate intense and unwanted publicity.