august 6 guh
I spent a lot of today thinking the decline in how people treat each other. Eventually I landed on a hazy kind of point about how a way that people are dumb, rude, mean, and inconsiderate offline is clearly influenced by the way people speak to and about each other online.
I spent a lot of today thinking about that because Sydney Towle, a social media influencer who documented her three-year battle with cancer on Tiktok, died yesterday at the age of 26. In her New York Times obit, Katherine Rosman wrote about how Towle had been targeted by a bunch of redditors who had decided that she was lying about her condition because she wasn't performing cancer patient the way they assumed she should:
Does something feel off to you about Syd Towleβs cancer story?β one of the most prolific posters wrote.
βWe have receipts, medical analysis, fact-checking and discussions,β the anonymous poster added, urging people to βjoin the conversation and tell us how you found us and why you may have doubts.β
Intent on exposing what they said was likely a giant fraud, the Reddit posters questioned the medical details that Ms. Towle shared online, finding bogus βevidenceβ of a conspiracy and mocking her every move. Some reached out to the brands she had deals with to urge them to drop her. Someone using an anonymous email account even messaged her medical providers.
βI literally feel like punching her in the face,β wrote one commenter.
I know I should not be surprised that a group of people actively chose to spend part of their one life sharing conspiracy theories about a total stranger who was literally dying in real time on TikTok while also trying raise awareness for rare cancers ββ she had cholangiocarcinoma ββ but I am absolutely, positively blown away that a group of actual human people who ostensibly have other, better, more important, and less ghoulish things to do, decided that it was a good and smart and cool idea to spend part of their one single solitary life on the one planet we know know can support human life sharing weird and mean-spirited conspiracy theories about a total stranger who was literally dying in real time on TikTok while also trying raise awareness for rare cancers.
Like, what the fuck are we even doing anymore?
I know people like this exist and have always existed but I still don't get why they haven't been bred out of the gene pool or otherwise evolution-ed out of existence. I read stories about the things people like this do and my face wrinkles up with confusion, pity, and disgust. I taste metal in my mouth when simply try to envision the kind of person I would have to be to get off on doing things like that and I end up nowhere.
And then I remember that I am not like this.
And that you are not like this.
And that the people I spend my life with and around ββ both online and offline ββ are not like this.
And the knot in my chest undoes itself, slowly at first and then all at once.
And then I can breathe again.
π² gonna
πΌ go
π± touch reread
π³ grass yesterday's much better post
π· now
Be good to yourself.
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