You’re a professional, you idiot. You’ve worked your entire adult life to achieve respect in the field of your choice and you were just getting used to seeing the term “expert” in your bio when the cataclysm-that-is-the-Internet came along and turned your dreams of contributing knowledge and insight to the progress of humanity into lowbrow waking nightmares. Now you spend your days online, which is to say that you’re physically somewhere in the world, everyone is somewhere, but your mind isn’t focused on your immediate surroundings, your walls, your floors, your children, you negligent imbecile. Instead, you’re emotionally elsewhere, pulsing thoughts with millions of other people’s thoughts, people who are equally there-but-not-there; people who’ve shown up, uninvited, just like you; people who’re anonymous and not of your choosing, who may or may not know things, and you engage them randomly depending on your mood and the scant remainder of your finite daily willpower, you unfathomably stupid jerk. You’re interacting with people you would never have crossed paths with if not for the internet, which would be a miracle and a blessing except that, day after day, hour after hour, they predominantly require you to correct their falsehoods and wrongheaded assumptions, and hold them accountable for their basest, most repellent prejudices, and you oblige them, you dumbass! You throw down facts and historical context, insights and morally sound thinking, but you don’t just leave it there, do you, you mindless cretin. No, you do what you never dreamed you’d do in all of those years of reputation-building that led to now: you publicly call a complete stranger an ass clown. In the absense of inspirational leadership and national identity, you cave, you schmuck, and sink to the lowest possible rung of human interaction, the rung where cruel, douchebag power mongers hang out. From down there, everything you shout into the ether sounds small, and less than, and angry, you worthless P.O.S. And all of the people who turn to you for expertise and role-modeling, they follow you down there because that’s where you’ve chosen to live, you slob. You’re leading alright! Leading millions of people down the drain, you weak, visionless, soft-brained piece of excrement.

If there was a shred of evidence, even a single study, that proved calling people morons and idiots and low I.Q. imbeciles had the effect of motivating them to reconsider their views, or bettered the lives of their victims, or just got them to plain shut-up, then your tweets would make perfect sense. You’d be a hero, you pathetic dope. Instead, time and again, the only reliable outcomes from insulting someone are fist-fights, exponentially more hate, and a swell of entitlement to the festering rage and alienation that sits pent up in all of us, ready to savage the next person who ticks us off and feel damn justified doing it. Well done! You did that! Way to be, you fetid piece of garbage.

Did it ever occur to you that the reason we need a police force is for the comparatively tiny number of people who can’t police themselves? That the vast majority of us choose not to break the law for the same reason we choose not to insult people — not because we’re masochists and we get off giving assholes a pass, but because we aspire to civility? Do you realize that anarchy is just one decision away? That what makes each of us better than the worst of our society is the ability to control our impulses, you deplorable reject? That you’re following the lead of the guy who separates kids from parents and holds them all in cages every time you call someone a moron, you stinking piece of trash? Did you stop just once to consider that no amount of fact-checking and moral-vetting matters if it’s accompanied by a black eye, you total, complete and utter dipshit?

What to do instead. Mmmm, I don’t know, jackass. Maybe climb back out of the sewer. Try deleting the insults and stick with the facts and perspective. It’s surprising how powerful the truth is when the messenger’s pre-teen angst isn’t butted up to it like a rapey locker room weasel. If someone says something so ridiculously stupid that you’re tempted to call them a name, take the high road instead, or zip it. Be a study in contrast. Don’t jump in the ring.

Meanwhile, if, deep down, you really do care about elevating public dialogue (and let’s be honest, that’s not too challenging these days, especially for you) then get creative. You’re an expert. You’re a role model. People are listening. React intelligently in the online space when someone behaves ignorantly or monstrously. You’re not an average joe who occasionally slips. You have a platform. Be accountable to it. People will amplify whatever you do, so set an example. Forget #BeBest. Just #BeBetter. Remember that person you wanted to be when you started out in life? #BeHer. #BeHim. #BeYou.