Throwback – How an internet mob falsely painted a Chipotle employee as racist

CNN

Dominique Moran knew something was wrong as soon as she awakened that Friday morning. She turned on her smartphone and saw the first of what would become a barrage of texts and voicemails.

“Are you okay?””

I just wanted you to know there’s a video of you going around with you and this person…””

Hey, you’re on Twitter.”Only the night before, Moran was an unknown 23-year-old student in St. Paul, Minnesota. She had moved there from Southern California to attend college on a softball scholarship. Living alone in a new city, she worked at a Chipotle to make ends meet and attended a Lutheran church.

That morning, though, she discovered she had become someone else. Strangers were calling her nasty names on social media. Her photo was plastered across internet news sites. A video was circulating online, and she was its villain. In it, she could be seen refusing to serve a group of black men at the restaurant the previous evening.