Realized I was the toxic one after 3 deleted accounts

Back in 2019 I used to pile on anyone who got ratioed, thought I was doing justice work. Then a small artist I liked got canceled over a 6-year-old joke and I joined the mob without reading the full clip. Someone replied to me with the timestamp and the context, and I sat there feeling stupid. That's when I figured out I never actually checked sources, I just wanted the rush of being on the winning side. Has anyone else had that gut-drop moment where you become the person you used to mock?

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aaronsullivan1mo ago

Tbh the part people skip is how quitting the mob becomes its own ego trip. I was deep in that cancel culture phase around 2017, and when I finally snapped out of it, I caught myself bragging about how self aware I was. Like, congrats, you stopped being a jerk, here's a cookie. That's when it hit me that the rush of being a good person was still the same rush as being on the winning side, just with a different label. We don't just delete accounts, we delete the part of us that enjoyed the pile on, and that part comes back in sneaky ways. The real work is staying quiet when you feel that old itch to jump in, even if it means missing the dopamine hit of being right.

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