When “Good People” Are Cruel: What a Pile-On Reveals About Character
When you are the parent of a high-needs child, and later a high-needs adult, you learn that society’s commitment to acceptance often has conditions. People are compassionate while the need is understandable, the behavior is manageable, and the family remains appropriately grateful. But when a crisis becomes disruptive, prolonged, expensive, or uncomfortable, acceptance can disappear remarkably quickly.
Over the years, I have watched people who speak passionately about inclusion become judgmental when faced with the complicated reality of disability, mental illness, addiction, trauma, or a family in crisis. I have seen support offered freely when the story was inspiring, then withdrawn when the person did not recover neatly or behave in ways others found acceptable. I have watched families reach out for help only to encounter suspicion, gossip, blame, and the quiet assumption that they must somehow be responsible for what is happening.
That is why I am writing this. When people see behavior from a young child, it can be reconciled, but when that same behavior of a 30-year-old mirrors a 7-year-old, it can be harder to navigate.
There is a particular kind of cruelty that is difficult to explain because it does not always come from people society recognizes as cruel. It comes from the admired neighbor. The respected professional. The church volunteer. The nonprofit director whose public identity is built around helping people. It comes from people who sit on boards, organize fundraisers, advocate for compassion, and receive awards for their service. Other people describe them as generous, selfless, and wonderful.
Then someone begins to struggle, often in a way that makes other people uncomfortable.
A person relapses. A child is in crisis. Behavior is escalating. Behavior is off-putting or outside of social norms. Communication is difficult. Recovery is not happening fast enough. A business fails. A family falls apart. Someone becomes ill, loses a job, makes a mistake, reacts badly under impossible pressure, or becomes the subject of a rumor or false accusation.
Instead of offering help, or even quietly staying out of it, those previously compassionate people join the crowd. They speculate. They repeat private details. They assign motives. They decide that a complicated human being can be reduced to the worst thing that has happened to them.
Worst of all, once the person is already down, the community decides to pile on.
That may be the most revealing part. Anyone can be gracious toward someone who is successful, popular, useful, and easy to admire. Character is tested when another person has nothing to offer us, when associating with them carries a social cost, or when the crowd has decided that cruelty is permissible.
Acceptance is easy to claim in principle. It becomes much harder when disability is disruptive, mental illness is frightening, addiction involves relapse, trauma affects behavior, or a desperate family needs more than reassuring words. That is when we discover whether acceptance is something we genuinely practice or simply something we like to say about ourselves.
A Good Reputation Is Not the Same as Good Character
We often confuse visibility with virtue. Someone who performs charitable work publicly may indeed be compassionate. But the position itself proves very little. A nonprofit title, a religious affiliation, a respected career, or a history of community service does not automatically make someone kind at their core. These things tell us what a person does, or how a person is known. They do not necessarily tell us how that person behaves when there is no applause. Narcissists thrive in these environments.
Reputation is the story a community tells about someone. Character is how that person treats people who cannot improve that story.
The difference becomes especially clear when there is an imbalance of power. Watch how a person treats an employee who cannot answer back, a client whose life is messy, a family asking for help, a person with an addiction, someone with mental illness, or a neighbor whose circumstances have become public entertainment. That behavior may tell us far more than any polished biography or fundraising speech.
Some people love helping humanity in the abstract but have very little patience for actual humans. Actual humans are inconvenient. They relapse. They are weird. They are too much. They become defensive. They miss appointments. They communicate differently. They become dysregulated. They make poor decisions. They do not always express gratitude correctly. They may need help more than once. They may fail to become an inspirational success story on schedule.
It is much easier to support a cause than to tolerate a complicated person.
Why People Pile On
When something goes wrong in another person’s life, “the crowd,” now typically found in the comment section online, often rushes to create a simple explanation. If the struggling person can be declared irresponsible, dishonest, immoral, unstable, or deserving of the outcome, everyone else gets to feel safer. If misfortune only happens to bad or foolish people, then those who consider themselves good and sensible can believe it will not happen to them.
But life is rarely that orderly. Good people make serious mistakes. Responsible people become financially overwhelmed. Loving families fracture under pressure. Illness changes personalities and capacity. Trauma affects judgment. Addiction is not corrected by public humiliation. Sometimes people contribute to their own problems, and sometimes circumstances simply flatten them. Frequently, both things can be true at the same time. Life is overwhelming for so many people.
Those who live with disability, neurodivergence, mental illness, chronic illness, addiction, trauma, or complicated family systems know that the full story is almost never visible from the outside. Behavior has consequences, but behavior also has context. Understanding that context is not the same as excusing harm. It is simply refusing to pretend that human lives can be accurately judged from a few selected facts.
Complexity, however, does not travel through a community as quickly as certainty does.
Being an active part of the judgment-crew also offers social rewards. Joining the accepted version of events signals membership in the group. Condemnation can be disguised as concern: “I am only worried about everyone involved.” Gossip can be presented as accountability. Personal hostility can be wrapped in the language of safety, ethics, faith, or community standards. Once moral language enters the conversation, people can become astonishingly cruel while feeling righteous about it.
That is what makes this behavior dangerous. People who know they are being unkind may eventually feel ashamed. People who have convinced themselves that their unkindness is virtuous may never question it at all.
When Condemnation Becomes Entertainment
We see the ugliest version of this online, where people can move from seeing an allegation to demanding a death sentence in the space of a few comments. They call for people to be executed, fed into woodchippers, imprisoned for life, or publicly destroyed before the most basic facts are known. Sometimes they are reacting to something genuinely horrifying. Sometimes they are reacting to an edited clip, an incomplete account, a misleading headline, a blatant fake, or a rumor repeated with enough confidence to sound like evidence.
The goal is not to let everything go, of course; all serious wrongdoing shouldn’t go unanswered. The point is that many people no longer seem interested in discovering the truth, in figuring out “what happened”. They are interested in the emotional thrill of condemnation, and seeing it written on Facebook somehow makes it a verified fact.
There is a difference between saying, “If this is true, it is appalling,” versus deciding that a complete stranger deserves a violent vigilante death before knowing whether anything they were arrested for is true. There is a difference between protecting possible victims and treating punishment as entertainment. When we casually see “good, neighborly folks” fantasizing about killing people they know nothing about, we are not demonstrating moral clarity. We are demonstrating how quickly we can surrender our own humanity while claiming to defend someone else’s. The ignorance seems palpable, and no one is immune.
Taunts can be relentless. People mock appearances, intelligence, families, disabilities, addictions, poverty, mental health, and every unrelated vulnerability they can find. Some people even contact employers, or they harass relatives. They fill private messages with rhetoric and threats. They want the target to know that there is nowhere left to stand. Remember Mikayla Raines and her wildlife rescue story; and I am unsure why, but outside of the marginalized communities I am thinking of, for some reason, animal rescues also seem to be a huge target of these kinds of relentless accusatory statements.
It can be framed as “holding people accountable,” but much of it is simply bullying disguised as seeking truth, seeking justice, and absurd public relations. That’s what has my brain completing loops of why and how and why would they?
When the Community Protects Its Favorite
I have been pondering this for a while; I actually stopped reading comments on anything remotely related to Meghan Markle, and I try not to hyperventilate at the thought of “if that was my daughter” moments. Recently, what prompted me to begin writing this was that I was reminded again of the extent of the unfounded, irrational hatred people harbor while listening to an episode of “48 Hours.” This particular episode has the story of a girl who reported being raped in high school. The person she accused was a star football player, and shockingly, the community’s loyalty was not directed toward the young person saying she had been harmed. It was directed toward the athlete, the team, the school’s reputation, and the comfortable story people wanted to preserve. Eventually he assaulted a 14-year-old and STILL no one believed he was in the wrong. The more I listened, the more shocked but also disheartened I became.
She was not simply doubted. She was decimated socially and still is. Other students bullied and taunted her because she had reported someone they admired. More disturbing still, even adults and teachers reportedly entered the fray. The very people who should have recognized a vulnerable student in need of protection helped create an environment in which she was treated as the problem. Her whole life was destroyed by a boy, then destroyed again by her own community. The bullying continues, years later, prompting her to move away and completely disconnect from her childhood home and area.
Where is the humanity in that?
We tell young people to report sexual violence. We tell them to trust adults, speak the truth, and ask for help. But when the accused person is popular, valuable to an institution, or central to a community’s identity, those principles can disappear remarkably quickly. The person reporting harm becomes an inconvenience. People begin worrying about the accused person’s future, the team’s season, the school’s image, and the discomfort of everyone around them. Far fewer appear concerned about what it costs a young person to stand in a hostile hallway after disclosing one of the most traumatic experiences of her life.
Any allegation deserves a serious and fair investigation. The victims deserve privacy. Fairness matters for everyone involved. But fairness does not require bullying an accuser, mocking her, threatening her, or socially punishing her for making a report. Due process and compassion can coexist. In fact, any community or institution worthy of calling itself safe and protective should insist upon both.
When teachers, nonprofit leaders, coaches, faith leaders, or other respected adults join a pile-on, their participation carries extra weight. Young people notice. Vulnerable people notice. Every person silently carrying abuse learns the same lesson: speak, and this may be what we do to you.
The Permission of the Crowd
This is the part I struggle with most. Sometimes I find myself almost hyperventilating at the speed with which it happens and the aggression with which people join in. Many people would never initiate an attack, but they will readily join one already underway. The crowd distributes responsibility. Each person contributes one comment, one private message, one insinuation, one shared post, or one carefully placed question. Individually, each action may appear insignificant. Collectively, they can destroy a person’s reputation, relationships, livelihood, sense of safety, and willingness to ask for help. No one feels responsible because no one believes they delivered the final blow.
We continue to speculate about suicide rates and point almost automatically toward mental illness. But if you have read much of what I write, you will know that I believe circumstances can be just as implicated in a person’s decision to end their life. Mental illness may increase vulnerability, but relentless humiliation, social isolation, financial devastation, public condemnation, and the sudden loss of community can become unbearable. We cannot participate in creating those circumstances and then act bewildered when someone does not survive them.
This is how ordinary people contribute to extraordinary harm. They do not have to invent the lie. They only have to repeat something they have not verified. They do not have to openly attack someone. They can exclude them, withdraw support at the worst possible moment, remain silent while others escalate the abuse, or make sure everyone knows that the person is no longer socially protected.
They strip that person of both power and recourse in a single blow. Once the crowd has decided whose story is credible, anything the targeted person says can be reframed as denial, manipulation, instability, or further proof of guilt. Defending themselves becomes evidence against them, while remaining silent is treated as an admission. There is no acceptable response and no clear path back. The crowd has not merely judged them. It has taken away their ability to be heard, removed any chance of redemption and recovery. No matter how unjust the punishment continues.
Cruelty is not always loud. Sometimes it wears a concerned expression and lowers its voice before sharing confidential information. Sometimes it laughs in a school hallway. Sometimes it uses the R-word to reduce a human being to a slur. Or makes intentionally hurtful comments on a meaningful post or makes assumptions about a serious situation. Sometimes it takes a joke too far, making someone a laughingstock or deliberately causing others to see a person as having no worth. Sometimes it even types a death threat beneath a family photograph and calls it justice. It is pervasive, destructive, and far more socially acceptable than we care to admit.
When Helpers Cause Harm
The true test of a mission is not the wording on the website. It is what happens when a difficult, unpopular, or imperfect person walks through the door. It’s holding onto compassion and humanity even when it feels wrong.
Accountability Is Not Cruelty
Criticizing a pile-on does not mean pretending harmful behavior never occurs. Some people lie, manipulate, exploit, abuse, or repeatedly refuse responsibility. Protecting others may require firm boundaries, documentation, consequences, or public correction when there is a genuine public risk.
But accountability and cruelty are not synonyms.
Accountability addresses specific behavior and seeks an appropriate outcome. Cruelty attacks the whole person and often seeks social destruction. Accountability relies on relevant facts. Cruelty collects rumors. Accountability protects necessary privacy. Cruelty turns private suffering into community entertainment. Accountability allows for proportion, repair, and change. Cruelty keeps moving the finish line because punishment has become the point.
We should be particularly suspicious when people appear to enjoy another person’s downfall. Justice does not require delight. Concern for a community does not require mockery. Protecting people does not require turning someone else’s worst season into a spectator sport.
What Their Treatment of Others Reveals
We learn very little about a person’s character by watching how they treat those they admire. We learn much more by watching how they treat someone they dislike. Do they remain truthful when a lie would be advantageous? Do they protect private information when disclosure would earn attention? Can they disagree without dehumanizing? Can they set a boundary without recruiting an audience? Can they acknowledge wrongdoing without deciding the wrongdoer has no remaining human value?
Kindness is not demonstrated by being pleasant when life is easy. It is demonstrated by retaining another person’s humanity when anger, disappointment, or the approval of the group makes it tempting to deny that humanity.
That does not mean staying close to everyone. It does not mean trusting someone who has repeatedly proved untrustworthy. It does not mean tolerating abuse. Sometimes the healthiest response is distance. But distance does not require degradation.
Nor does being unable to help mean the conversation must end with you. If you are not the right person, organization, or service to provide what someone needs, point them toward someone who may be able to help. Make the introduction when possible. Share the phone number, resource, or next step, and follow through.
Do not abandon the effort simply because the person seems rude, angry, confused, defensive, or overwhelmed. Pause long enough to consider what may have brought them to that moment. Shame, fear of judgment, mental illness, repeated rejection, and years of being criticized, silenced, or put down can profoundly affect how someone communicates when they are desperate. Their presentation may not be pleasant, polished, or easy to understand. It may be the clearest evidence that they genuinely need help. You do not have to accept abusive behavior, but you can maintain appropriate boundaries without abandoning someone because their distress has made them difficult to help.
The People Who Refuse to Join In
There are always a few people who refuse to participate. I am one of them, not because I believe I am above judgment or somehow better than everyone else, but because life has taught me to pause. “Judge not, lest ye be judged” certainly plays a part, but so does a more unsettling question: What if everyone is wrong?
I know that my younger self made countless mistakes. I also believe that part of the purpose of life is growth, and growth requires learning. Sometimes our most important lessons come from the painful mistakes that leave us saying, “I will never do that again.” Those moments are constant throughout childhood and young adulthood, but they do not end when we reach an arbitrary age and officially become adults. We continue to make mistakes, face their consequences, and learn from them. Redemption remains possible.
So, plain and simple, what if you are wrong? What if I am wrong? What if they got it wrong? What if the entire story was a lie? What if I missed something important or misunderstood what was said? Certainty may feel reassuring, particularly when everyone around us agrees, but collective agreement does not turn an assumption into a fact.
On a grander scale, we condemn other countries for public punishments and the crowds that gather to witness suffering, yet we readily form our own digital crowds, baying for punishment, destruction, and even death before the facts are known. The setting may be different, but the appetite is disturbingly familiar.
I do not refuse to join in because I am an exceptionally good person. I refuse precisely because I know I am flawed. I am vulnerable. I could misunderstand, make a mistake, be falsely accused, become ill, lose control of my circumstances, or find myself trapped in a situation that looks entirely different from the outside. If that day comes, I will need truth, fairness, and support, not a crowd eager to condemn me.
Refusing to join the crowd does not mean defending everything another person has done. We may not know the whole story. We may have legitimate questions or serious concerns. But we can refuse to turn uncertainty into accusation. We can refuse to spread information that is not ours to share. We can recognize that a person may need accountability and compassion at the same time.
We should also never forget that redemption and rehabilitation are possible. People can change. People do learn. Sometimes those who have caused serious harm become powerful advocates for preventing it. The former gang member who serves his sentence and then devotes his life to helping others leave that world is one example. His past is not erased, nor are the consequences of his actions, but his worst decisions do not have to become the only truth about who he is. We should be careful about writing people off forever because of the mistakes they have made. Accountability asks a person to face the harm they caused. Rehabilitation gives them the opportunity to become someone who does not cause that harm again.
I believe there are millions of people who think like me. We are often quieter than the crowd, and we may never receive recognition for the harm we helped prevent. Sometimes, instead of mounting a dramatic rescue, we simply decide not to make a terrible week worse.
That might mean calling the person instead of discussing them. It means asking what happened rather than deciding why it happened. It means offering practical help without demanding private medical, financial, or family details as the price of admission. It means correcting misinformation in a room where agreement would be easier. It also means tolerating our own discomfort and accepting that we cannot possibly know what it feels like to live someone else’s life. Sometimes it just means having the humility to say, “I do not know enough to judge this.”
That sentence alone could prevent an astonishing amount of harm.
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