I Tried To Be A Good Person For A Week—Here’s How My Life Fell Apart
Look, I get it. The internet is a cesspool of performative virtue signaling, where everyone and their emotionally unhinged aunt is posting about how they “practiced radical empathy” at the grocery store or “held space” for a stranger who cut them in line. It’s exhausting. But last week, I decided to become the problem. I decided to test-drive the concept of being a genuinely decent human being for seven days. No sarcasm, no rolling my eyes at every sob story on Nextdoor, no passive-aggressive notes on poorly parked cars. Just pure, unfiltered, maybe-even-wholesome goodness. Spoiler alert: It backfired so hard I’m pretty sure I’m now on a neighborhood watch list, my therapist is charging me double, and my cat looks at me like I’m a stranger who smells of desperation.
Let’s set the scene. I’m your average cynical Reddit lurker—the kind of person who can spot a fake sob story from a mile away, who knows that 90% of “unpopular opinions” on r/unpopularopinion are just people trying to get validation for being mildly racist, and who has memorized the exact ratio of “thoughts and prayers” to actual action on any given tragedy. I live in a city where the only thing more passive-aggressive than the traffic is the way people fake smile when you let them merge. My baseline personality is “tired IT support guy with strong opinions on bad UI design.” So when I decided to be a good person for a week, I was basically asking for a universe-sized middle finger.
Day one started innocently enough. I held the door for a woman at Starbucks. She walked in, didn’t say thanks, and immediately started a FaceTime call with her friend about how her boyfriend’s “vibe was off.” I smiled through gritted teeth, thought about the five different ways I could have subtly tripped her, and moved on. I then complimented a coworker’s haircut. He spent the next hour telling me about his divorce, his cat’s autoimmune disease, and his deep-seated fear of public speaking. I nodded, offered platitudes, and internally screamed into the void. By the end of day one, I had a migraine, a growing resentment for everyone in a five-mile radius, and a deep suspicion that “good people” are either secretly on benzodiazepines or are just better at lying.
Day two was when things got spicy. I decided to “volunteer” by helping an elderly neighbor carry her groceries. She lived three floors up in a building with a broken elevator. I thought, “This is my good deed, my one-way ticket to a karma boost.” I grabbed her bags—two of them, heavy as my crushed dreams—and started the climb. She followed me, breathing heavily, and proceeded to narrate every single item she bought: “The yogurt was on sale, but not as good as the store-brand, but the store-brand is now owned by the same company, so what’s the point?” By the time we reached her door, I was sweating, my back was crying, and she said, “You’re a nice young man. But you should probably eat less bread. Your gut is… prominent.” I smiled, said “thank you for the unsolicited health advice,” and walked away. I spent the rest of the day googling “how to politely tell someone to shut up” and “is it possible to lose weight through pure spite.”
Day three was a Saturday. I decided to “be present” in my community. I went to a local park to pick up trash. I saw a discarded McDonald’s bag, a half-eaten hot dog, and what I’m pretty sure was a used diaper. I put on gloves, grabbed a stick, and started collecting. Within ten minutes, a guy in a “Make America Great Again” hat walked up and said, “You know, we don’t need people like you cleaning up our mess. The government should handle this.” I stared at him. He stared at me. I wanted to say something about how the government is a bunch of geriatric clowns who can’t agree on what day it is, but I remembered I was being “good.” So I said, “I’m just trying to help.” He snorted, took a photo of me with his phone (I assume for a Facebook group about “woke litter pickers”), and walked away. I found three syringes in the bushes and decided that was my limit for the day.
Day four was the turning point. I decided to engage with a viral Twitter thread about a “lost dog.” The owner was crying, the dog was cute, and everyone was sharing it. I retweeted it, added a “praying for a safe return” comment, and felt a brief, fleeting moment of cosmic alignment. Two hours later, I saw a follow-up tweet: “UPDATE: The dog was found. It was actually a cat that the owner had mistaken for a dog. She is now asking for donations for her cat’s emergency surgery.” I laughed. I laughed so hard I cried. Then I realized I had been duped by the internet’s favorite pastime: performative outrage over a pet that didn’t even exist. I deleted the retweet, blocked the account, and spent the rest of the day staring at the wall, questioning everything.
Day five was a workday. I decided to be the “nice guy” in the office. I offered to help a colleague with a project. She handed me a 90-page PDF of “compliance updates” and said, “Just summarize this by noon.” I had another meeting in thirty minutes. I tried to read it, my brain started melting, and I ended up writing a two-sentence summary that was basically “Laws exist. Don’t break them.” She was not impressed. She complained to my manager that I was “not a team player.” My manager, a guy who still uses Comic Sans in official emails, gave me a lecture about “synergy” and “
Final Thoughts
After reading through the coverage of Jonathan Swan’s career, it’s clear that his value isn’t just in breaking news—it’s in his refusal to let power bluster past tough questions, a rare discipline in an era of stenography. His reporting serves as a quiet indictment of the pack mentality in Washington, where access often trumps accountability. In a town full of insiders jockeying for influence, Swan has carved out a role as the necessary adversary, proving that the best journalism still comes from asking the question everyone else is too comfortable to pose.