Lots of things on this sub don't make me smile.

This makes me smile a great deal.

Not only did a group of people get together to make someone obviously dejected feel better, but one of the most notoriously toxic places on the internet (4chan) even came to his defense. That honestly surprises me more than the fact that the 1000+ people came together to party.

There is nothing that makes me more upset than seeing a person laughed at for how they look. The level of insolence is on par with striking another human in anger. And the internet just breeds that toxicity.

My mother was a very large woman decades ago, and through a lot of hard work, she changed herself for herself. Not for anyone else. I saw her face day in and day out through that, and when she went to her workouts, I know how people treated her. She came home and went straight to the bedroom crying more than once.

What's sad is that there is no solution besides locking down the internet, which I'm against for more important reasons. But at least this can confirm that there are a lot of people out there willing to go to (albeit combined) great lengths to come to the defense of someone's dignity. That's something to be impressed by.

There is a lot courage in putting yourself out there, willing to physically show up and have fun not just with one stranger, but many. There's even more courage knowing that you're the center of all that simply because you can admit you're trying to have a good time.

That kind of courage is no where to be found among the trolls of the internet. They spend their lives hiding under proverbial rocks and rotting husks. They have no gatherings. No get-togethers. No friends. Just their own stink among a faceless crowd of even bigger stink. That's what I remind myself of when I'm faced with the realization of how much shit there is in the world: Those people are the bugs that scatter whenever a bit of light comes around. They're afraid of facing anyone with their toxicity because they know how bad it stinks.