There is a particular kind of mental exhaustion that comes from spending too much time online.
And I’m not talking about the usual stuff.
I’m not talking about doomscrolling because you spent three hours watching random videos.
I’m not talking about getting annoyed by advertisements or seeing the same stupid meme for the hundredth time.
I’m talking about the exhaustion that comes from seeing people behave in ways that genuinely disturb you.
I’ve been feeling this more and more lately.
I’ll go on social media, scroll through my feed, and encounter people saying things that make me stop and think:
What the fuck is wrong with people?
People celebrating someone’s death.
People making jokes about murder.
People making memes about tragedies.
People cheering when someone they dislike gets hurt.
People defending violence because they don’t like the person who was harmed.
People treating someone’s death like a victory.
And after seeing enough of it, it starts to get to you.
Not necessarily because you personally knew the person who died.
Not necessarily because you even liked the person.
But because you’re witnessing other human beings demonstrate what seems like an almost complete lack of empathy.
And that can be mentally exhausting.
Recently, there was controversy surrounding a moment involving Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the 9/11 memorial. I’m not going to spend this post litigating the political details or trying to determine someone’s intentions from a short clip.
What bothered me was seeing the reaction to it.
And honestly, what bothers me even more is that this is not an isolated phenomenon.
I’ve seen people make jokes about 9/11.
I’ve seen people make jokes about Charlie Kirk’s death.
I’ve seen people celebrate political violence.
I’ve seen people cheer for murder.
I’ve seen people defend people who commit horrific acts because they happen to dislike the victim.
And I’ve seen people from all sorts of political backgrounds do this.
That’s the part that gets to me.
Because eventually you start wondering what kind of world you’re living in.
And maybe this sounds dramatic, but sometimes I genuinely have a thought that scares me:
If these people are capable of showing this much cruelty toward someone simply because they hate them, what happens when they decide they hate me?
What happens if one day they decide I’m the bad guy?
What happens if they decide that I’m the person who deserves to be mocked?
What happens if something terrible happens to me?
Would they laugh?
Would they make memes?
Would they celebrate?
Would they say I deserved it?
Would they turn my suffering into some kind of political or ideological victory?
I obviously don’t know.
And I don’t want to assume that everyone would.
Most people probably wouldn’t.
But when you repeatedly see people behaving this way online, it’s difficult not to wonder.
And that uncertainty can be unsettling.
Because one of the things that makes us feel safe around other people is the assumption that, at the very least, there are certain boundaries most people won’t cross.
You can disagree with me.
You can dislike me.
You can think I’m annoying.
You can think my opinions are stupid.
You can criticize me.
That’s all fine.
But I want to believe that if something terrible happened to me, you’d still recognize that I’m a human being.
I want to believe that my suffering wouldn’t suddenly become funny because you didn’t like me.
I want to believe that my death wouldn’t become an opportunity for you to score points against people who think like me.
I want to believe that basic empathy survives disagreement.
And when I see people openly celebrating death, sometimes that faith in humanity takes a little hit.
That’s mentally draining.
It makes social media feel less like a place where you’re interacting with other human beings and more like you’re looking into a giant room full of people screaming at each other.
And because social media algorithms tend to amplify extreme content, it can sometimes feel like everyone is horrible.
Everyone is angry.
Everyone is cruel.
Everyone is waiting for someone else to fail.
But I know that’s not actually true.
There are millions of people online who aren’t like this.
There are people who see someone die and feel sadness regardless of whether they liked them.
There are people who can criticize someone without celebrating their suffering.
There are people who can disagree without dehumanizing.
There are people who still believe that compassion shouldn’t depend on political affiliation.
Those people just don’t always generate the same amount of engagement.
Anger gets attention.
Outrage gets attention.
Cruelty gets attention.
A horrible joke gets shared thousands of times.
Someone saying, “I don’t agree with this person, but I’m still sorry they’re dead,” probably doesn’t go viral.
And that creates a distorted picture of humanity.
You can spend twenty minutes online and encounter enough horrible behavior to start thinking that humanity itself is horrible.
That’s where I think we need to be careful.
Because constantly consuming other people’s cruelty can affect your own mental state.
It can make you angry.
It can make you cynical.
It can make you distrustful.
It can make you feel hopeless.
It can make you start expecting the worst from everyone.
And eventually, you can start carrying the behavior of strangers around with you.
That’s not healthy.
Their cruelty becomes your anxiety.
Their hatred becomes your stress.
Their bloodlust becomes your exhaustion.
And they don’t even know you’re there.
That’s one of the strangest things about social media.
Someone halfway across the country can post something unbelievably cruel.
You see it.
You get angry.
You think about it for hours.
Maybe you argue with them.
Maybe you look through their profile.
Maybe you see ten more horrible things they’ve said.
And suddenly a complete stranger has occupied your brain for the rest of the day.
Why?
Why am I allowing someone I don’t even know to take up this much space in my mind?
That’s something I’ve been trying to remind myself of.
I don’t have to consume everything.
I don’t have to read every comment.
I don’t have to engage with every asshole on the internet.
I don’t have to watch every argument unfold.
I don’t have to subject myself to every horrible opinion simply because someone posted it publicly.
Sometimes you need to step away.
Close the app.
Put the phone down.
Go outside.
Listen to music.
Talk to someone you actually care about.
Do literally anything that reminds you that the internet isn’t the entirety of humanity.
Because it isn’t.
The people screaming online aren’t everyone.
The people making horrible jokes aren’t everyone.
The people celebrating death aren’t everyone.
And the fact that algorithms keep putting them in front of your face doesn’t mean they’ve suddenly become the majority of humanity.
There is another thing I’ve had to remind myself of:
I don’t want their behavior to change who I am.
If I become so disgusted by other people’s cruelty that I become cruel myself, then I’ve allowed their behavior to infect me.
I don’t want that.
I don’t want to become cynical because other people are cynical.
I don’t want to stop caring because other people don’t care.
I don’t want to stop having empathy because other people think empathy is weakness.
I don’t want to become someone who celebrates another person’s suffering simply because everyone around me is doing it.
I want to remain myself.
And for me, that means holding onto empathy.
Even when it’s difficult.
Especially when it’s difficult.
I don’t believe empathy means approving of everything someone does.
It doesn’t mean forgiving everyone.
It doesn’t mean ignoring wrongdoing.
It doesn’t mean refusing to hold people accountable.
It simply means remembering that there are human beings on the other side of all of this.
People with families.
People with friends.
People with fears.
People with dreams.
People who are complicated.
People who can do terrible things and still be human.
People who can hold terrible beliefs and still be human.
People who can be wrong and still be human.
And people who can disagree with me and still deserve basic human dignity.
I think that’s something we desperately need to remember.
Because the alternative is exhausting.
Living in a constant state of “us versus them” is exhausting.
Constantly deciding who deserves compassion and who doesn’t is exhausting.
Constantly looking for reasons to hate other people is exhausting.
Constantly consuming outrage is exhausting.
And constantly wondering whether everyone around you secretly has a bloodlust for anyone they disagree with is fucking exhausting.
I don’t want to live that way.
I don’t want my mental health to be dictated by the worst people I encounter online.
So I’m trying to remind myself that there is still goodness out there.
There are still compassionate people.
There are still people who see tragedy and respond with compassion rather than celebration.
There are still people who can say, “I hated what this person stood for, but I’m still saddened that they died.”
There are still people who understand that disagreement doesn’t have to become hatred.
There are still people who believe that another person’s suffering isn’t entertainment.
And maybe those people aren’t always the loudest.
Maybe they’re not the ones getting millions of views.
Maybe they’re not the ones dominating my social media feed.
But they’re there.
And I need to remember that.
Because otherwise, the internet can make you lose faith in humanity.
And I don’t want to let it.
I can acknowledge that people can be cruel without believing that everyone is cruel.
I can be disturbed by what I see without allowing it to consume me.
I can reject violence without becoming consumed by anger toward the people who support it.
And I can continue believing in empathy even when I see people behaving as though empathy is something they threw away a long time ago.
Maybe that’s the healthiest response I can give.
Not pretending the cruelty doesn’t exist.
Not pretending it doesn’t bother me.
But refusing to let it define my understanding of humanity.
Because I don’t want to become mentally exhausted from carrying the hatred of strangers.
They can keep their bloodlust.
I’ll keep my humanity.
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