Ding Ruoning had chosen to expose the people who had assaulted her daughter online because she wanted to use the power of the internet to punish those three and their families.
What she had not expected was that public opinion online would take a different turn. Someone had steered the narrative, and someone had exposed her family's circumstances too.
Ding Ruoning's family was wealthy. They lived in a mansion and drove luxury cars, so people began saying that a family as rich as hers had probably done plenty of immoral things, and none of their money was clean.
Others said that rich people's children made a fuss over nothing. Probably nothing had happened at all, just some minor horseplay between children, but rich people loved bullying the poor.
Once comments like that appeared, there were bound to be hordes of people jumping on the bandwagon.
No matter the era, poor people were always in the majority, and even more people hated the rich. A large crowd of them began attacking Ding Ruoning's family online. Some even edited the family's pictures into black-and-white memorial portraits and left funeral wreaths at the entrance to their residential complex.
But those comments and actions were not even what I found most outrageous.
What came next was even worse.
Someone posted Sun Jiayu's photos online, accusing her of dressing provocatively at such a young age and having loose morals. They claimed she had probably been deliberately seducing men, only to attract three broke losers, then lashed out in humiliation and anger by pinning the crime of "assault" on children from poor families...
Those photos were actually in the file too. I took a look and found nothing inappropriate about them, just a short-sleeved shirt and denim shorts. Sun Jiayu simply had the poise that came