This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Ty wen was living in Virginia when he heard some news halfway around the world.
In Australia, people on social media were saying awful things about his parents.
So I'm sitting there on the computer just reading through all these horrible comments, you know, you stupid.
Having Asians and racially laced comments about boycotting their shopping.
Tai's parents owned a takeaway fast food shop near Brisbane.
The outcry on social media had grown out of what Ty says was a misunderstanding with a customer.
Somehow, one of the largest australian publications picked up on the story, and it just created this absolute storm of negativity on social media.
These dirt bags need to be named and shamed.
Their business page on Google just got bombed with all of these negative reviews.
They are self absorbed snobs with no respect.
And it just.
It caught on.
It went viral.
Feeling sick with anger and worry, Tai called his mom.
He expected she was going to be.
Devastated, and she responded, no, things are fine, really.
I saw the article in the newspaper, but really wasn't able to understand all of it.
Thai's parents were not native english speakers.