I’ve received negative comments on social media, and I know how one cutting remark can stay with you long after you’ve closed the app. Imagine what it’s like when strangers keep coming back to mock your appearance, your voice, or something personal you shared. A video you were proud to post can become something you dread opening. That’s where a group of strangers calling themselves The Kindness Mob comes in.

Tyler Brickley, a father of four from Kansas City, Missouri, started the group on TikTok in 2023, hoping he could find ten people willing to leave kind comments. Today the volunteer-run nonprofit has more than 600,000 TikTok followers and is also active on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Anyone can nominate a creator who could use some encouragement. Volunteer moderators review the nominations, and Brickley posts a video telling the group whose page to visit. The volunteers, who call themselves “Mobsters,” leave comments about something they actually noticed in the post and keep the group’s name out of it.

One of the people they showed up for was Kahri Salyars, a 28-year-old from King George, Virginia, who posted a TikTok video after losing 40 pounds. As she told CBS News, she was happy with her progress, but the video drew hundreds of insulting comments, and the pile-on continued for about a month.

Then strangers (Kindness Mob) began leaving messages of encouragement on the same video. Salyars told CBS that her confidence came back. Read her story on CBS News.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I’ve been thinking about how often I’m grateful for something I find online and how rarely I stop to say so. Someone spends hours researching a story, filming a tutorial, or finding just the right words for something we’ve been struggling to put into words ourselves. We read it, learn from it, maybe even send it to a friend, and then scroll on. The person who made it may never know what it meant to us.

So this Thanksgiving season, and on an ordinary Tuesday when there’s no holiday to remind us, I hope we’ll be a little more generous with our thanks. A thumbs-up or a heart costs nothing. A few words can say even more. “I finally understood this because of your video,” or “This made me laugh on a day when I really needed it.” It takes a few seconds to tell someone their work mattered to you. And I’ve found that the more kindness I give, the more I seem to receive.

Join The Kindness Mob or nominate someone who could use some encouragement.