The Urge to Police Your Fellow Man

Friday are Free for Everyone at this Substack, 5 December 2025

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This week in the free column, I want to talk about the urge to “police” your fellow man — to shame others because their behavior does not conform to your standards. This is an increasing problem in our paradoxically coarsening society. The worse we become as people, the more some of these terrible people feel it’s their self-appointed mission to tell other people what to do. In an effort to enforce their powerless demands, they provoke, incite, and agitate. It is a measure of just how lucky some people get that more of them have not been beaten, shot, or stabbed.

Allow me to explain. I was scrolling through social media last week when I saw this short video from “Cart Narcs.” I’ve been aware of Cart Narcs for a while. The person or persons behind the channel go to public parking lots, find people who are not returning their shopping carts properly, and stick magnetic signs or flags on the offenders’ cars in an attempt to publicly shame them.

If you’re thinking this sounds like a fantastic way to get shot in the face, hold on and don’t get ahead of me. In the video in question (which is fairly similar to all their other videos), an unseen a-hole slaps magnetic stickers or signs on somebody’s car, often multiple times. In this particular video, a stocky fellow gets out, takes offense… and then starts advancing on the “cart narc,” promising to put six bullets right in his forehead.

This is, as it turns out, not actually an empty threat. (I’ll get to that). While the fellow filming thinks this is all very funny, and enjoys taunting people — especially old men who are easily provoked but don’t provide much of a physical threat, our YouTuber thinks — the subjects he is recording are frequently extremely angry.

Outrage Farming for Clicks and Views

This video, and this channel, are not unique. Outrage farming is its own genre on social media, from TikTok to YouTube to Instagram and Facebook. Either the video creator hopes to make people angry so he can record their reactions and get traffic from spectators, or he hopes to enrage the spectators and get traffic that way. The end result is the same. The video creator is a nuisance streamer whose “value added” is annoying people.

There is remarkable profit to be had in annoying people. It’s relatively easy to monetize a video channel if enough people are watching it. Outrage is one way to ensure a steady stream of clicks and even the occasional viral video. We cannot resist negativity. When your negativity is rooted in policing other people’s entirely legal but, according to you, immoral conduct, your shaming of them generates outrage both pro- and con- relative to your position. In other words, people love Cart Narcs either because they like to see non-cart-returners shamed, or because they can’t help but watch the train wreck that is the cart narc himself endangering his own life.

Make no mistake: When you go around provoking strangers, that’s exactly what you are doing. You are putting your life in danger. That’s what happened to Tanner Cook, who was harassing a stranger when that stranger, a delivery driver, pulled a revolver and shot him without hesitation.

The First Rule of Public Interactions: Mind Your Own Business

The first rule of being in public is minding your own damned business. You simply don’t have any authority to be telling other people how you want them to behave — as long as their behavior falls under the umbrella of what is legal. Think of yourself as a social libertarian when you are out and about: As long as the people around you aren’t hurting anybody else, hurting you, or violating your rights, what they do is none of your concern.

I know it’s hard not to stick your nose into things. I’ve violated this rule more than once in my own life… and regretted doing so every time. Mind you, I’m not preaching that you don’t get involved no matter what. When you see a wrong happening, you should intervene. When you see someone who needs help, you should act.

This is not the same thing as proactively patrol what you perceive as the moral lacks of your fellow humans. Yes, people should return their shopping carts, rewind their obsolete VHS video tapes, refrain from stealing pens from other people’s desks, and not pee on public toilet seats. The fact that they don’t do what they ought is frequently disappointing — but it’s not your job to create a public disturbance, nor to provoke a potentially violent altercation, because you own a monetized YouTube channel.

People Get Territorial About Their Cars

As we saw in the mall video of Tanner Cook’s shooting, it doesn’t take much to provoke people to violence. Messing with their cars, however, almost guarantees it. The cart narcs mess with property that is not theirs. You do not get to place magnetic decals or flags on somebody else’s property, any more than you can walk up to your neighbor’s lawn and stick a political sign in it. You’re already on thin ice when you meddle with someone’s material goods… but cars? That’s a particularly dangerous thing to touch.

You see, people are strangely territorial about their vehicles. Partly this is because a car represents one of the biggest expenses, apart from a house, that most of us take on. Partly this is because we see it as an extension of our homes. Within your vehicle, you are on your property — a mobile piece of property that goes where you go and is your domain. Messing with someone’s car is a lot like kicking down their door or spray-painting their garage door. It’s going to provoke some people to instant rage. Angry people lash out violently without considering the consequences.

You Are Not A Person in Authority; Stop Acting Like It

Another reason it’s a mistake to go around policing people’s morality is precisely that: You are not the morality police. You are not a person in a position of authority. You’re just some guy or gal. You have no business telling strangers what to do if they’re not breaking the law or being rude to you or yours, specifically. It simply is not your concern.

First Amendment Auditors, or “Frauditors,” make this mistake all the time. They walk around bellowing orders, even to the police, as if they are in charge. They’re not. Conducting yourself like everybody’s manager is going to end up humiliating you when someone calls you on your bluff. What people like these “cart narcs” count on is your own restraint — your own appreciation for the consequences of your actions. They are counting on the fact that you do not want to go to jail, and therefore you will not beat them into the asphalt for provoking you.

This makes for great video until the cart narc or other agitator encounters someone who isn’t quite tethered to long-term consequences. One such person who seems to fit this description is Malcolm Skinner.

You Don’t Know Who You’re Messing With

Malcom Skinner is the subject of the Cart Narcs video that inspired this column. Skinner quite literally emptied a gun into another DART passenger in what authorities ruled was an act of self-defense. Skinner is the person this cart narc is repeatedly provoking, placing magnetic bumper sticker’s on Skinner’s vehicle even after being told not to do it.

Skinner, regardless of his slovenly cart-returning habits, is very aware that he has taken, or very nearly taken, a human life. (It’s not clear to me if the person he shot survived, but I think he did.) When asked who he is, he replies, “A killer.” That should chill ANYBODY given that Skinner has personally drawn down on a human being and gotten away with it. So emboldened was he by this, in fact, that he seems to feel no compunctions about breaking the law on video.

Furthermore, Skinner is probably carrying a gun at the very moment this reckless dick is provoking him. Enough rage is boiling up in Skinner over this behavior that he’s willing to make overt death threats. It’s not legal to tell someone you’re going to kill them when they’re not endangering your life. Annoying as the cart narc is, he’s not doing anything potentially lethal. He’s just very irritating.

Don’t Provoke Strangers, A-Holes, Or Sooner or Later You’ll DIE

Trying to police other people’s morality is not just unnecessary. It’s a great way to provoke strangers. YouTuber Tanner Cook thought nothing bad could happen to him… until a .38 slug ripped through his guts. Worse, Cook asserted he was going to keep right on filming nuisance videos, which means he learned nothing from an experience that could have taken his life.

Going around provoking people and trying to tell them what to do (or shaming them if they don’t) is an unsustainable lifestyle. It’s going to get you hurt or killed eventually. Pick a guy at random in a grocery store parking lot and you might just be annoying a Malcolm Skinner — a guy angry enough to threaten to shoot you who, as it turns out, already knows what it feels like to pump a bullet into someone.

Policing others’ morality is, simply put, playing Russian Roulette with your life. You might beat the odds for a good long while, but sooner or later, the Law of Averages is going to catch up with you. Don’t do it. Don’t take that risk.

The life you save may well be your own.

See you next week.