I met Aleksey at Yale a few months after the video had gone viral and found him to be a nice enough guy who was intelligent and interesting to talk to, though it was clear that he had serious emotional issues as even then after all the ridicule he felt compelled to boast of unlikely achievements almost as a reflex. He was not the arsehole the internet had prepared me for but a decent and troubled person and I felt desperately sorry for him.

The communities and networks we have built online have proven to be fantastically capable to creating and organising for good, whether it be raising funds for disaster relief or catapulting some deserving person to stardom, but we've all too often decided to ignore our power to tear down and destroy with frightening speed. Aleksey Vayner's video may have been silly and weird but it did not merit the public humiliation he received.

It would be too much to expect that large scale ridicule of an individual like this will never happen again, human nature is what it is and cruelty and anonymity go hand in hand. But as individuals we can at least prevent ourselves from being a part of it by pausing before we forward, retweet or share the next picture, video or meme and considering whether the person being laughed at deserves to be destroyed for our amusement.