How much courage does it take to be mean about the dead? Or to scold them for dying accidentally?

Two stories in the past week, about three young hikers swept over Yosemite's Vernal Falls and a Marin man washed into a Hawaiian blowhole by a rogue wave, were grimed up with scathing and indignant comments, thrashing them all for being careless and contributing to their own deaths.

"Darwin award candidate right here folks," one comment on the Maui tragedy read. "Irresponsible," another wrote about the Yosemite kids, also citing Darwin. There were far worse: "What a blowhole for getting that close."

How many people heartlessly shaking a fist at the deceased have never heedlessly tempted fate? Maybe it's texting while driving. Or changing lanes without looking. Leaving the stove on. Perhaps dumbest of all: communing up close with a Komodo dragon in its cage.

We are careless every day in large and small ways. Experienced travel editor Jeanne Cooper, author of SFGate.com's Hawaii Insider blog, wrote about her own occasional "imprudence" during visits there.

And yet addicts who overdose on drugs, a much more voluntary departure from life, seem to get more understanding and less vitriol.

Some reactions were sympathetic and compassionate. But the schizophrenia was reflected on SFGate on Thursday by two headlines: "Warnings ignored before Yosemite plunge." Right below it: "Yosemite falls victims 'role models.' "

Also last week, 25-year-old Nancy Ho was killed on her bicycle when she made a bad turn on Mission Street and got hit by a truck. So far, not much online character assassination there, but maybe it's still early.

I'm a professional skeptic who occasionally leans into cynicism. But this chiding, trollish vilification of people who can no longer respond for themselves is outrageous.

Accidental death and the human decency of the deceased are not mutually exclusive. They are victims, as are their families.

I did not know the hikers who died tragically in Yosemite, but I do know Tika Hick, the woman whose partner of 11 years, David Potts - father of her 6-month-old son - was lost in Maui. She is one of my sons' preschool teachers, an expansively kind and compassionate person.

But a contextually absurd dispute about where warning signs were posted on the lava rock (the only one was a quarter-mile away) required of her this, in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat: "Girlfriend defends Marin County man."

Life itself had already piled on that family. Tika learned she had stage IV breast cancer weeks after giving birth. David was a successful contractor-builder who took a hit in the recession and recently declared bankruptcy. Then they lost their home.

Are we smirking yet?

They were in Hawaii with friends and family to snatch some respite before Tika went in for a double mastectomy.

Tika's brother, Bo, who saw David consumed by the sea, was appalled at some people's suggestions that his brother-in-law deserved to die. But he knows it's easy to ridicule when hiding behind anonymity. When he started to read the piece about the Vernal Fall deaths, which also spoke of recklessness, he saw it in a whole new light.

Local Maui officials said people walked close to the blowhole despite what happened to David Potts. Should they all die as a penalty?

Accidents, including those that most tragically kill people, are common human occurrences. The victims don't deserve to be met by inhumanity.

For those actually interested in the people of this story, Tika came out of almost seven hours of surgery Wednesday with a good prognosis. Now she'll have to allow the crushing wave of anguished loss to fully envelop her.

This process, left to the survivors, is not helped by the sniping of armchair experts.