It's no secret that the internet is a breeding ground for savagery. Sometimes it's all in good fun, in cases of ridiculous, dank memes. A grand majority of the time though, people turn to hating other people because they think those other people are horrible people.

Now, I'm not disputing that these "horrible people" aren't horrible. People do horrible things. People do things so horrible that we feel our only option is to reduce them to less than a human, because we innately know that hating other humans is wrong. Regardless of your religion, spirituality, moral codes, beliefs, or even lack thereof, there's a general internal consensus inside all of us that genuinely hating other people is wrong. So when we learn that someone does something extra despicable, we relieve our cognitive dissonance by dehumanizing them, justifying our reasons for dehumanizing them, and then feel better about ourselves by openly professing our hatred for these horrible people.

I'm not here to point fingers at any one political party, religion, or what have you. People of all views do it. Liberals, conservatives, atheists, religious folk, and everyone in between. I'm also not suggesting that we should stop hating these horrible acts, nor should we necessarily stop hating horrible people – realistically, we should, but I'm not here to reprimand you for using your free will to hate someone. I'm suggesting that maybe we're wasting our energy by openly hating people every time we hear about someone doing something particularly awful. I stay vague about this because these "particularly awful" actions can be a myriad of things.

Publicly hating awful people doesn't sufficiently contribute to important causes, as much as we really want it to.

I understand the need for us to call out bad behavior. And as much as we're leaning towards this idea of "we should be able to express our distaste for injustice however we want to and if you've never suffered this injustice then you're not allowed to have an opinion," the reality still stands that some methods of bringing awareness to things are always going to be more effective than others. And when people are constantly bombarded by hatred, about whatever issue, from whatever perspective, they're going to get tired of it and are probably less likely to listen to it. I'm not saying that we should beat around the bush every time something awful happens, but I am saying that literally doing nothing but dehumanizing the person (yes, regardless of how awful their actions are, they are still persons) who committed the atrocity is not helping the cause in a meaningful way.

The fact that I am able to proclaim that we should just stop being filled with hate all the dang time and find more "peaceful" alternatives to raising awareness about important issues puts me in an incredible place of privilege, and I get that. I get that you're probably not going to listen to me since I have rarely, if ever, experienced any major injustice that allows me the peace of mind to not hate people who do absolutely disgusting things. But hear me out: I believe we should be raising awareness about these things.

I am merely suggesting that we should be looking for other ways to help the causes that we are passionate about.

Whether the person that infuriates you did something universally wrong or just went against your personal moral code, publicly hating them doesn't do much good. In your eyes, maybe hating bad people and shaming them may be a necessity, and I'm not saying that you should give up your freedom of speech and never publicly shame someone that you think deserves it, but it needs to stop being the internet's primary means of spreading awareness about the things that need to be discussed.

Targeting our hatred towards a specific person or persons might get people talking about an issue and recognizing evil for what it is, but it's an easy way out of actually putting in the work to help a cause.

It makes us feel good to publicly shame someone because now that other people know we hate bad people, it makes us look like caring people, like people who care about the oppressed, whether we're a part of any particular oppressed group or not. But simply sharing hate against certain people is merely lukewarm activism. I get that not everyone has the time to volunteer at abuse shelters and go to every protest out there and start our own fundraisers to help those experiencing injustice, but let's be real - most of us have far better options to help those who need it than just publicly hating people who did something disgusting. And so many people are giving that up in favor of calling every person who makes the news for doing something wrong a pig or a monster or a trash bag because doing that alone makes us feel moral and good.

There's some validity to calling out specific people for being awful, and perhaps it's a good way to start raising awareness, but it's not a good way to end. It shouldn't be the only, or the primary way to help fight the injustice that this awful person perpetuated.