Strangers Doing Dumb Nice Things That Restored Our Faith in Humanity

The internet serves up a lot of reasons to feel bad about people in general. This is not one of those articles. This is the other kind — the kind where completely ordinary people do something unnecessary and kind and slightly absurd, and the internet rewards them with the closest thing the digital age has to a standing ovation.

Scroll past your normal content rotation for a minute. These ones are good.

The Guy Who Carried an Elderly Stranger's Groceries for Six Blocks

He wasn't asked. She was struggling, he was there, the bag was heavy, and he just did it. They talked about her late husband and his upcoming job interview for six blocks. She told him he was going to be fine. He was fine. He posted about it later and the post got shared two million times, which suggests this story was doing something a lot of people needed.

The Kid Who Started Returning Shopping Carts

A ten-year-old started returning stray shopping carts in a grocery store parking lot, unprompted, every week. This is technically a job that an adult is paid to do, but the adult was apparently not doing it in a timely fashion, and the ten-year-old had thoughts on the matter. The store offered him a gift card. He declined. He has principles.

The Anonymous Tipper Who Sent Pizzas to a Hospital Night Shift

No note. No name. Twelve pizzas at 3 a.m. to a hospital ward that had been running a difficult week. The staff never found out who sent them and the sender presumably never told anyone, which is the purest version of this kind of thing. Someone somewhere just did something kind with no expectation of recognition and then went home.

The Man Who Fixed a Stranger's Flat Tire in the Rain

She had a flat, it was pouring, she was alone on the shoulder of a highway. He pulled over, changed the tire, refused any money, and drove away before she could get his name. She posted about it. The comments filled up with people who said they'd had the same thing happen to them, and suddenly there were thousands of stories in one thread about strangers helping strangers for no reason at all except that it seemed like the thing to do.

There's more good out there than the algorithm usually shows you. Worth remembering.