But then why don’t those people speak out against the firings earlier and more often? More typically, the incendiary denunciations are voiced early, while the quiet reservations about academic freedom or workers’ rights come late — after the juggernaut has already gathered too much momentum to be stopped. At best, this indicates that people are thoughtlessly contributing to an outcome they don’t desire. At worst, it suggests their protestations aren’t entirely sincere.

A cynic might note that the great innovation of our crowdsourced cultural revolution is the near-perfect deniability it offers: Anyone who knows what buttons to push can convene a peer-to-peer prosecution that will inevitably call for the career death penalty, while never having to suggest it themselves. Because everyone is a little bit responsible, no one has to take responsibility. And ultimately, this explains both the firings that no one really wants and the ones that are quite intentional — as well as the gruesome effect that both kinds have on our political debates.

Enthusiasts for these mass shamings talk about holding people accountable for the intangible harms their words cause. Yet they fail to take responsibility for the very tangible harms they inflict when they launch the first fiery salvo, or furiously click “retweet.” Sometimes they are obviously intentionally hiding behind the mob, but just as often, I suspect, the mob’s responsibility-diffusing machine makes the moral satisfaction of a righteous condemnation feel completely separate from the moral harm of an undeserved firing — even though in aggregate they are clearly causally linked.