There is no doubt that we live in a social media age. We depend on social media to network for our jobs, keep up to date with current events and to stay in touch with our 614 friends on Facebook. I personally like all of my social media accounts. Facebook helps remind me of interesting events around me that I can attend, Pinterest gives me plenty of ways to mess up my kitchen by convincing myself I can be a master baker and I find myself constantly laughing at what people decide to do with the Snapchat filters. Like I said, I’ve always liked my accounts, but lately I’ve been seeing an uglier side in the social media world.

I was scrolling through my explore page on Instagram the other night and saw a picture of a very pretty girl showing off some new shorts she had just purchased by wearing them confidently and posting a picture about her new, great buy. After reading a few comments, I saw one person post about how she was not the right size for “that type of fashion,” to which others started joining in and telling her it was because she was too big and how much it disgusted them. I could not believe that there were people out there actively looking to offend strangers on social media through pictures the person clearly posted because they liked it. The situation saddened me but it was not until another incident, this time a little closer to home, had me enraged.

A couple days ago, my friend was complaining about how some random, middle-aged men (if we want to call them that) were getting on the nerves of her boyfriend. It started with some disagreement on Twitter over a football team that turned into some minor name calling that even the boyfriend was involved with. However, nothing was out of hand and it seemed to be more annoying to my friend than her boyfriend; to him they were just being dudes arguing about football. Well, more time passed and one of the men thought it would be more entertaining to start insulting the size of my friend based off of her boyfriend’s profile picture.

Of course, the boyfriend came to her rescue calling it a “cheap shot” followed by another derogatory name but hey, this time it was well deserved. But after, others stared joining in and things got a little nasty.

I could not believe the audacity these “men” had to break out insults about the appearance of two strangers simply because they got mad someone did not like their football team. Not to mention the insults weren’t just aimed at the boyfriend involved, they had to bring his girlfriend into the mean mix. Seriously, what was the point of that? Thankfully, my friend is not super insecure about her body, but imagine what it could do to someone who had more insecurities.

People are so engrossed with the idea that there is one way you have to look in order to be called “pretty” or “handsome” or “attractive” that when they see something out of the ordinary, it is automatically labeled as “ugly” and “disgusting." This is a horrible habit and it needs to be broken now. Instead of breaking people down for not looking the way society deems as okay, we need to build people up because everyone is gorgeous in his or her own way.