It was here that Twitter did what it does best: sink itself into a cauldron of vituperation, inept sarcasm, unreason, non sequitur, reckless allegation, and unchecked hostility. Tweets poured in. “Way to immediately disregard years of scholarly work by demonstrating the white patriarchal frame of your professional org,” wrote @gabrarian, a Ph.D. student in education. The demands kept coming. Magoun should apologize, he should be fired, he was a mansplainer, a sexist, a racist .  .  .

He went to ground.

From what I can tell, no one came to his defense—by, say, pointing out that all Magoun had done was casually test a claim made by a new book. That no one did so is a sign of his instant and total radioactivity. It’s also a sign of Twitter segmentation. The corner of the twitterverse where tweeters chew the fat about “issues of race, gender, culture, and technology design” is probably not a Shangri-La of ideological diversity.