Andrew Goldman has written a harrowing essay For Slate on how a tweet can ruin your life. He doesn't come off as especially sympathetic in the piece, but I do think he perfectly captures the way the internet can amplify our basest impulses if we make the mistake, in moments of weakness, of casting those base impulses into public language.
In light of what happened after, this is the moment I’ve thought about every day since, the thing that my mind always goes to when I can’t sleep and I need to take inventory of the great mistakes and regrets of my life. How, as a father of two, could I have been so selfish and shortsighted to risk a steady paycheck? It’s been 801 days now and, whenever I see 3 a.m., it’s still there, hanging on to the No. 1 blackest spot in my soul.
Update:
Emily Nussbaum, one of the characters in Goldman's story, has weighed in with a series of tweets arguing that Goldman's offending tweet wasn't as important to his downfall as he thinks.