I happened upon a reel today. It was one of those people who dress up as shrubbery for the sole purpose of frightening people walking down a public sidewalk.

I am not a fan of those clips (and they seem to be every where lately, in different parts of the country and the world), because I personally do not think it is funny to humiliate people for laughs or views and I am certain that someone is going to get hurt or worse. I’ve seen a few older women fall after being frightened, but they continue to record these and post them. I have, in fact tried blocking or hitting “not interested” on them when they appear so they no longer come up in my feed. I did not realize what this was or I would not have watched it at all.

I am not a fan of prank clips in general.

After seeing a few of these, I wondered and worried just what would happen if a shrub jumped out at DC. I do know that it would not be pretty.

We try to prepare our “kids” for whatever they may encounter in the hope of lessening the shock and the anxiety and the reaction that comes with it, or we just keep them away from situations that we know might cause them anxiety/stress; but really – a shrub jumping out at them? No one is prepared for that.

The reel I saw today was a shrub jumping out at a young woman, who by her reaction clearly had some sort of disability or severe anxiety. I am not here to diagnose anyone, but I have seen that very reaction personally, so I will assume.

In any case; the poster posted it purely to make fun of this person and the comments were so hateful; almost all of them, were just so hateful that my heart hurt. They went everywhere from “Where’s her handler” to the R-Word.

Is this really what we’ve become?

I mean, I do know that this is what we have become but I will never stop being shocked that this is what we have become.

I am not saying that I ever believed that these sorts of comments did not happen but it just seems to be on such a larger scale recently that we just seem to be going backwards. People feel as though they have been given a license to spew hate.

I will not post the clip for obvious reasons.

But really! How is this “funny” to anyone?

Is this really what we’ve become?

(to answer my own question: I am perfectly aware of how we got here)