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…