Given the public/private crossovers all our lives have become online, it’s hard for people to find the boundaries these days between personality and brand; between what’s appropriate and fun and what’s being a needy whiner.

This is the story of three white men who lost their jobs. SBS sports reporter Scott McIntyre, for a series of critical tweets on Anzac Day; British lawyer Clive O’Connell, for a tirade captured on video against fans of the Liverpool football club, and people from Liverpool generally; Sydney hotel supervisor Michael Nolan, for posting abuse on the Facebook page of feminist writer Clementine Ford. One of these things, of course, is not like the others.

Much has been said before now about Australia’s – and Western media in general’s – assumption that if the victim of an atrocity is not white (and Australian) then it is not news; we are not interested in hearing about it. At the same time, it’s hard not to feel that such selective attention is coupled with an innate and somewhat perverse fear of missing out. Something big is happening in the world, no matter how horrific: how can we be part of it?

The bullets had scarcely stopped flying in Paris before the pressure was on. There were the profile pictures filtered with le Tricolore or changed to show the user on holiday in Paris; the memes with cartoons by Charlie Hebdo illustrator Joann Sfar or words by Martin Luther King Jr; the condemnations of religious fundamentalism and pleas for tolerance on behalf of the peaceful majority of the world’s Muslims. The counter narrative went hand-in-hand: what about Beirut, we were asked with varying degrees of sanctimoniousness, where Islamic State militants had killed 41 people the day before the Paris attacks?

Kanye West’s speech at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards was lengthy, meandering and scattered, at best. At times he was humble, particularly as he stumbled through an expression of nuanced regret over his infamous interruption of Taylor Swift. Invariably, however, he swung back to the heightened dignity that he is so well-known and oft criticised for. There were glimpses of profundity, though often followed by the address ‘bro!’ perhaps scuttling the likelihood of some viewers to take his comments seriously. Despite, or perhaps because of all this, I don’t think anyone saw that bombshell coming.

Interactivity is considered one of the defining features of the online experience, yet the reality of most media consumers today is one defined by interpassivity. And it presents a serious challenge for those of us engaged in online journalism.

I was in Buxton on Black Saturday. My friends and I stood in the front yard of their cousins’ house, almost as if we were in a trance, watching the trees explode as the fire blasted its way down the ridge towards us.

Today, even among the Australian’s core readership of aggrieved grandfathers, almost everyone gets online in some way, shape or form. The same study reveals that, as you would expect, a clear majority of internet users regularly access some form of social media), so much so that, in reality, far more people log into Facebook on a daily basis than subscribe to print newspapers, a comparison that should (but won’t) make the curmudgeon chorus shut its collective pie hole.