The Internet is Awful this Weekend
This essay was originally posted April 12, 2026 to Substack.
Now, I have thoughts…
I’ve seen some horrible things on social media the past few days. I’m nearly forty-seven years old, and I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed human behavior that is this dark before now. Most recently I saw a woman respond to a horrifying comment (which I won’t repeat here) she received about a prior post sharing her recent success in lowering her A1C levels, and no longer being considered a Type 2 Diabetic. The commenter told her that it was nothing to be proud of and did his level best to discourage, hurt, and criticize her.
And this was just the latest example of how low the bar actually is for acceptable treatment of others, but they ran the gamut of criticizing a soon-to-be college graduate for not getting married and having children at eighteen years old, to a thin woman criticizing a curvier woman’s size and shape, to a young man with a large platform offering his opinion on the utility of women in general (which again, I will not repeat here).
I understand that a lot of these folks are trying to build a following by being cruel, and the fact that there is even a market for this is mind-blowing. But this kind of thing matters to me, not only because I’m a mother trying to raise good humans who contribute something positive to society, but as a human being who struggles deeply with perfectionism. I know a thing or two about shame.
Over the past few years, I’ve done a tremendous amount of work both in my faith and with my therapist to come to the understanding that I’m a work in progress—that my worth as a human being isn’t tied to my skills and ace performance in all facets of life. And the crazy thing is this is something I already knew. I grew up in a supportive family and in certain areas of my life self-grace always came naturally. Progress was the goal. But in areas where I struggled, like being on time, forgetting to pay a bill, or making mistakes at work—menial tasks that require a modicum of focus—those are difficult for me. And no matter how hard I have worked throughout my life, and tried to get my brain to just do these things, it never worked.
It’s nearly impossible to explain that I am highly capable, but my brain doesn’t work that way and I don’t know why. I experienced a lifetime of shame over this, only to be diagnosed with Combined-type ADHD in my forties. In hindsight I know it would have done wonders for my self-esteem to understand this about myself much earlier in life, but the way it actually played out taught me something much more valuable. I exist, and that is the only requirement needed to be worthy of love, and kindness, and being treated well.
This morning at church a little girl played a popular worship song on the piano for the congregation. If you knew the song, you would know where she missed a note or beat here and there, and at one point, she almost got flustered enough to stop. But she didn’t—she kept going and she did a wonderful job. How well she performed that song isn’t what mattered though. In the moments she paused, or started to get frustrated, all the adults in the room were silently cheering her on and willing her to shake it off and keep going. We were so proud of her because we know how hard that is for a little girl. Perfection wasn’t expected. The fact that she tried at all, was what mattered most.
As I watched her, I had a vision in my mind’s eye of the angels and saints watching over us as we simply live out our day-to-day lives, and in those moments when we think we’ve dropped the ball, when we convince ourselves that our small missteps and our even bigger mistakes are huge failures in God’s eyes, it’s the angels and saints who silently cheer us on, willing us to shake it off and keep going. I assumed for far too long that when I don’t meet the standard in my mind that I believed I should as a wife and working mom, and all the other hats I wear, that God shakes his head at me. But God doesn’t expect my perfection—just my devotion and willingness to let him teach me something new.
And He does teach me something new every day. He taught me today that the student isn’t expected to pass the test before the lesson has been learned.
There’s a concept called failing forward. Maya Angelou described it perfectly when she said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” I think this is what we’re all trying to do—our best.
We’d do well to remember this in how we treat others. But first, we’d have to remember to treat ourselves well. “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31). When we treat others poorly, it doesn’t elevate us over that person. It exposes how we treat ourselves.
And when I think about how rampant this behavior is in modern society, it makes me terribly sad. Because the volume at which we see human beings choosing cruelty over grace, is a devastating indication of how little we value our own humanity.
I think what we are witnessing in real-time, is a confession of sorts—a subconscious confession of unprocessed generational pain at a collective level. An entire generation screaming into the void in search of both release and belonging, any way we can find it.
They say the line between love and hate is thin.
I think that line is the ache of feeling unseen.
Hate
Hate is a heavy burden
You are not required to carry it
Someone else’s hate is even heavier
Because you aren’t conditioned to hold it
You can refuse to participate
In the charade of hate
A charade because the line
Isn’t just thin, it’s minuscule
Hate is not
The opposite of love
Hate is retribution
For attention not given
Maybe I hate you
Because you refuse to see me
Maybe hate is the response
To cruel indifference
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Thank you for reading and supporting The Common Joy.
—Mack
