Clay Aiken, the former "American Idol" runner-up turned political candidate, recently found himself in a social media skirmish that had absolutely nothing to do with music.
A stranger felt entitled to comment on his appearance, his choices, and his general right to exist in public view.
Aiken, who has spent two decades under a level of scrutiny most of us would find unbearable, responded with the weary patience of a man who has learned that arguing with strangers online is like screaming into a hurricane.
A man who once sang love songs for a living cannot post a photograph without inviting unsolicited judgment from people who have never met him.
That's a society that has forgotten how to talk to other human beings.
We built the internet to connect us, and we have used it to perfect the art of the drive-by insult.
Teachers, nurses, teenagers, and grocery clerks all live under the same cloud now.
Say something, wear something, exist in a body that someone else finds objectionable, and the verdict arrives within seconds.
The comment section has become our national courthouse, and everyone is a judge.
What makes Aiken's case instructive is how unfailingly decent he has remained.
He has campaigned for office, lost, and kept going.
He has advocated for children with disabilities and for civil rights.
He has absorbed attacks that would send most of us into permanent hiding.
And still, the loudest voices in the room are the ones telling him he looks tired.
It would be funny if it weren't a preview of how we treat everyone now.
This is the part where we tell ourselves we would never do such a thing.
We scroll past a stranger's joy and leave a little mark of contempt because it costs nothing.
We have confused honesty with cruelty and called it "just being real." Meanwhile our neighbors, our coworkers, and our families are quietly deciding that it is safer to say nothing, post nothing, and be seen by no one.
That is a small act of defiance, and it used to be unremarkable.
If a former pop star can endure the daily referendum on his worth with grace, the rest of us have no excuse for treating the person behind the counter, the person in the next cubicle, or the person on the other side of the screen like a target instead of a human being.
Our closing thought: The internet did not make us cruel, but it gave cruelty a microphone and an audience.
Aiken's quiet persistence is a reminder that we can still choose to be decent, even when no one is watching and no one claps.
Final Thoughts
That choice, made daily, is the only thing that keeps a society from eating itself.