Kimberlee K.

Hello there! Typically in the month of December I only post lists (hence the title List-cember) but this year I thought it would be fun to deep dive on a couple of my 2025 goals. Namely the less trackable, self improvement type goals, both to see if I still agree with setting them, and to notice what they’ve taught me.

I’m calling it *Goal Review* and today we’re checking in on goal #10 from my list: Stop reading the comments.

With a goal like that you might think I meant my own comments—that I was victim to vitriol that was piercing my thin skin and making it hard to keep writing or posting or simply being online.

But most of my comments are from family members, from people that already know and love me, or by kind readers that make me feel like my work matters. All of my other social media accounts are on private, so again, any comments I might come across are from people I know, and are full of heart emojis and exclamation points and general gooeyness that makes me feel good.

So no, the comments I was referring to were not my own, but rather those of the wider world. The pockets of conversation on random posts and videos, sometimes directed towards people who have made social media their job, and other times toward those who simply clicked post with the intent to share something funny, inspiring, or that made them smile.

It never fails to shock me, the kinds of things you can find.

The kinds of things that people dare type out and click SUBMIT on.

Truly some of the meanest things I’ve ever seen—things I didn’t realize people were even thinking about other people, or about the world in general, let alone things they feel comfortable hurling at someone they don’t even know, and understanding that they might actually see it.

I have made a concerted effort to look at the comments less, but I have yet to fully stop.

I have actually tried to train my brain to know which comment sections are likely to be good vs. bad. And while this perhaps has spared me a few glimpses into the meanness of the internet, it has also inadvertently taught me to look for things that people might take as invitations to be terrible, and I don’t really feel good about that either.

I don’t want eyes that look for things like that.

I don’t want to reach a place where my mind half justifies the things people are saying because, well, they DID decide to post this, so that’s on them.

But the thing is, sometimes people do post things simply to get a rise out of the internet. Collectively coined as “rage bait,” it has become a trend to post things that elicit a reaction—comments, views, outrage—so that the person posting can reap the benefits of the engagement. And it’s become so normal that people don’t care if they upset an entire corner of the world, as long as those numbers are climbing and they’re making money.

The other day I was talking to a friend and I clenched my fists in anger, asking, WHY CAN’T WE SEE IT?! Because with all the talk about how bad of a place the internet is, how awful scrolling social media can make you feel, how toxic the comment section can be—we are partially, if not entirely responsible!

And isn’t that obvious?!

We are the ones hitting post, we are the ones hitting comment, we are the ones who can’t look away, we are the ones forgetting that there are real people on the other side of our screens and that our actions have real consequences.

For my part, I’ve found that it’s often my curiosity—laced with instincts that say, don’t look—that opens up a comment section just to see. Even if I know it will be bad. Because I want to be in the know, even if “the know” is mean and awful.

On the internet, as in real life, there are communities and people who go out of their way to be mean, but there are also those who choose to be kind. And while the world can never reach its quota of kind, I hope that one day we’ll realize how long ago we reached our quota of nasty, and that it’s our choice to keep drowning in it—whether that be by choosing to no longer make the mean comments, or choosing to no longer read them. Both, I feel, are an act of defiance in the right direction.

I know I’m part of the problem. That my curiosity, my learned need just to look is what feeds the monster holding us all hostage. So with this goal, I’ve tried to do my part in refusing to pay that tax. We’ve always had the power to do so, and we always will, sometimes I think we just forget.