Interesting. I think being performatively kind and being actually kind are not the same thing at all.
A lot of online “kindness culture” has evolved into moral policing and public shaming.
People can become quite cruel while believing they are righteous, because they frame their hostility as justified. Once someone decides they are defending empathy, safety, inclusion or kindness, they often feel licensed to attack whoever they’ve cast as the “bad” person.
The strange thing is- OP is neurodiverse, has diagnosed ADHD and is literally asking if she was rude and even apologised to the man, therefore you'd think people would not be so nasty towards her considering all of this. Its such a ridiculously minor incident as well, the way some people are scolding her for it, you'd think she had spat in his face.
What’s especially depressing to me is that #BeKind became so prominent after the death of Caroline Flack, when there was so much discussion about the damage online pile-ons, public shaming and relentless criticism can do to someone’s mental health.
Yet now you constantly see people weaponising the hashtag while behaving in ways that are openly cruel, hostile and bullying towards complete strangers online.
They’ll preach compassion and awareness of mental health one minute, then publicly humiliate someone over a minor mistake the next, with absolutely no thought for the damage that kind of mass online hostility can actually do to a person. None of them know what someone is already carrying privately, how vulnerable they are, or where they might be mentally.
It feels like the actual message was completely lost. People learned the slogan, but not the lesson.