Earlier this week, an alligator snatched a two-year-old boy vacationing with his family at a Disney resort in Florida and dragged him into a lagoon. The boy's father, who apparently ignored (or perhaps hadn't seen?) a "No Swimming" sign, tried to defend his son against the animal, which are common throughout the state, to no avail. (Authorities found the child's body the following day.)

You can react to this story in one of several ways. The most obvious—and, I suppose, the most understandably human—would be to take it all in, murmur Holy shit while staring at your phone, and feel a few slight pangs of sadness before scrolling to the next story. Another response would be to imagine it happening to your kid, and then, as a parent, wondering how that dad will go through life without beating himself up every morning. Yet another way to deal with such news would be to make some dark, socially uncouth alligator joke to your one friend who lets you get away with such things.

You could do any of those things. Other things, even. Or you could do this, which is what someone did shortly after the boy went missing:

WIRED

Huh.

OK.

You know that gravity-futzing, brain-fizzying sort of queasiness you feel when you come across something so proudly, so profoundly abominable that your organs almost recoil, as if they're so disgusted they'd rather crumple up and collapse into a pinprick-sized void, rather than have to deal with something unpleasant? If you need a reminder of what that feels like, step into a rickety elevator after taking some off-brand cold medicine, or listen to "One in a Million" by Guns N' Roses. Or reread this:

WIRED

Look: Tweeting is hard. Really. It is. Entirely too many people simply are not good at it—including myself—and even those who *are *pretty good have a tendency to lapse into badly structured arguments or iffy jokes or lame self-boosterism. And then, of course, there are the who-knows-how-many *intentionally *vile hate-tweets released into the atmosphere each day, like fart-fueled hot-air balloons, and aimed directly at people we know and love and respect.

But as far as (relatively) mainstream tweets go, this one is very, very bad, a bouillon of everything that's terrible about the Internet in 2016. There's the lack of empathy, for starters—an utter inability to not only understand or acknowledge someone's pain, but to not even allow that person to experience it in private. (A reminder: This father watched his two-year-old child—a toddler whose mere existence was the result of a cosmic crap-shoot of biology, and who was old enough to speak his parents' names and dole out hugs and maybe even have some go-to catchphrases—was seized by a creature that probably looked a lot like this, dragged under, and drowned.) Then there's the preening, needy narcissism required to read about it and immediately think, "*Hmmm. *Dead kid, you say? How can I make this about me?" And, of course, there's the parent-shaming, which I guess is something we all feel comfortable doing in public nowadays? Even though parenting is insanely hard, and no one's really "good" at it, and every day, you're forced to make hundreds of micro-decisions instantly, any one of which could have life-altering consequences? Sure, fine. Shame away, Dr. Perfecto.

Finally, there's the politicization of it, though before getting into that, let's quickly look at what that p-word means, as its usage has become confused in the last week: When someone storms a nightclub and kills 49 people, the urge to have an almost immediate conversation about gun control, pro or con, isn’t “politicizing” an issue. Gun laws are debated, written, and either passed into law or rejected by politicians. They are inherently a political issue. You can't "politicize" a topic with which all conversational roads ultimately lead to politics.

But a kid being killed by a wild animal in a lagoon? That's not an issue tied to any sort of politics—cultural, social, sexual—unless someone forces it to be, illogically and ungracefully, without any evidence or elaboration, just to win some easy Internet points. Which, frankly, is pretty much what appears to be going on in this tweet, which combines so many unfortunate characteristics of modern web discourse (vanity, cruelty, pettiness, judginess, reductive reasoning, etc.) that it feels like a greatest-hits record—the *Hot Rocks *of cold shit.

So, yes: It's a terrible, terrible tweet. And, apparently, it was later deleted. But then, like all terrible things on the Internet this year, it all became even worse, because suddenly, the terrible thing wouldn't go away. People started tweeting about the terrible thing, and mocking it, and suddenly, a dim-witted, unkind missive was in front of more eyes than it ever should have been, instead of quietly dying alone, as most bad tweets do. And to make it even more crappy, this morning, the wannabe-political tweet became an *actual *political tweet, when Glenn Greenwald wrote this:

To quote Cathy, from that time the swimsuit-convention was being held right next to the chocolate exposition: *Ack! Ack! Ack! *Do not do this! Do not give this terrible thing more traction! (Also, logically speaking: What, exactly, is Clinton supposed to do in this situation? Is she to issue a statement saying that, for the record, she does not support people who support alligators that support toddler deaths? Wouldn't that threaten the southern-alligator vote she needs this fall?)

And so it goes. Hour by hour, the tweet grows more prominent and more awful, even though it's technically now hidden behind a wall, as the account has been set to private. In fact, just by writing this story, I'm making it worse, because some of you reading this were no doubt enjoying your morning, and not thinking about all of the stupid things the Internet gets up to when everyone else is asleep or catching up on *Veep *or playing with their *own *2-year-olds.

And so: I apologize. I apologize for being someone else bringing it to your attention; for making you wonder why the internet is such a docking bay of assholery; for waiting until the end of this piece to point out that "Brienne of Snarth" is a C+ *Game of Thrones *pun (and that's if I'm being generous). For keeping this terrible thing alive.

And I apologize for having to point out that, as bad as this tweet was, it will be replaced—possibly within hours—by some message that's even more hysterically far-reaching and empty-hearted and just plain horrible. Tweeting is hard, but looking at the world around you with even a *forced *amount of compassion or kindness has, apparently, become even harder. Worst tweet of all time? Nope. Just the worst tweet of day.