Early on, the Internet felt like it was going to be a force for good. It was supposed to connect people across the world, break down barriers, bring everyone a little closer together.
That’s not exactly how it turned out.
Spend a few minutes scrolling through Reddit and you’ll find posts where people gang up on some poor anonymous person. Titles like “Is this the ugliest woman in the world?” pop up, with the picture above, and the internet gladly weighs in. Everyone gets their shot. Everyone feels clever. This is the worst version of what social media can be — not connection, but collective cruelty.
Even when it feels justified — when someone says something truly awful and it seems like they deserve it — it’s rarely as simple as we want it to be. Take Justine Sacco’s infamous tweet in 2013:
“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white.”
It’s hard to defend. Clearly, Sacco is an arrogant racist. Or at least, that’s how it looked. But as Jon Ronson explored in How One Stupid Tweet Ruined Justine Sacco’s Life, the story was messier. Her tweet — “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” — wasn’t meant to trivialize AIDS or boast about privilege. It was a clumsy attempt to mock the insulated ignorance of privileged Westerners, the idea that race could magically protect someone from suffering. The joke didn’t land. Online, stripped of tone and context, it read as pure bigotry. By the time any nuance surfaced, Sacco’s life was already in ruins.
Look a little closer at most internet dogpiles, and you’ll find the same thing: a messy human being, not a cartoon villain. Someone who said something clumsy, or poorly timed, or just easy to misunderstand. Online, complexity collapses fast, and people get reduced to their worst moment. Most of us wouldn’t fare much better under that kind of pressure. But outrage rewards simplicity, and the internet is always hungry.
We can stop and think before vilifying the Justine Saccos of the world. There’s a difference between holding people accountable and rushing to turn them into villains. But there are places where we can go further — where we don’t just stop bad behavior, but actually flip the script. We can use media to build empathy, to show what it feels like on the other side of the joke. It won’t always be as easy or as fun, but it might be a little more human — and a lot more satisfying.
Enter You Can’t Ask That, an Australian TV show where groups of people are asked the most blunt, uncomfortable questions the rest of us usually keep to ourselves. Participants come from communities that are often misunderstood — people with disabilities, survivors of trauma, refugees, Indigenous Australians, and many others. The questions they answer are submitted anonymously by the public, and nothing is softened or spun. They’re asked questions like the following (answers below1):
“Do you think deaf people should have kids?”
“Are you actually happy being fat?”
“Why do you keep having kids if you’re poor?”
“Are you just lazy because you’re homeless?”
It’s a format that could easily slip into exploitation, but instead, it does something rarer: it creates space for people to tell their own stories, on their own terms. In doing so, it chips away at assumptions and reminds us that understanding usually starts with listening, not judging.
Questions that could have been cruel instead open doors. They reveal things we often don’t stop long enough to see.
I’ve learned about how a blind couple walked into a store with their two-year-old sighted daughter and overheard someone whisper, “Now you have someone to take care of you,” — as if a toddler was somehow more capable than her own parents. Or how people with Down Syndrome say, “We are just like everyone else. But I am very concerned about what will happen to me when my parents won’t be able to take care of me anymore.”
Which brings us back to the picture above. It’s Carly Findlay, who appeared on the episode about facial differences. Carly was born with ichthyosis, a genetic skin condition that affects the appearance of her skin — not that it stops strangers from offering medical advice in the middle of the supermarket. On the show, she talked about what it’s like to have her face treated like public property, something people feel entitled to comment on, question, or fix. She wasn’t asking for pity, just a little less unsolicited expertise.
When she was asked, “Is your face contagious?” She didn’t miss a beat. “No,” she said. “If you catch anything, it’s going to be my sense of humor.”
It’s easy to tear people down. It’s harder — and braver — to meet ignorance with humor, to turn a cruel question into a punchline on your own terms. You Can’t Ask That reminds us that dignity doesn’t have to be delicate. Sometimes it looks like laughing first. But with a little help from a TV show we can soften it into something else — curiosity, understanding, maybe even respect.
Footnotes:
- These are the answers given on the show.
Deaf people:
“Do you think deaf people should have kids?”
One participant answered simply: “Why not? Hearing isn’t what makes you a good parent. Love is.”
Fat people:
“Are you actually happy being fat?”
“I’m not happy because I’m fat. I’m happy because I decided my worth isn’t up for public debate.”
Poor people:
“Why do you keep having kids if you’re poor?”
“Because being poor doesn’t turn off your heart.”
Homeless people:
“Are you just lazy because you’re homeless?”
“I worked two jobs before I ended up on the street. One illness and one missed paycheck, and I lost everything.”
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