I had assumed my nightly position. There I sat, lounging in my computer chair, leg up on the desk and hand on the mouse, displaying posture that would puts dollar signs in the eyes of chiropractors across America.

My eyes watched as my Twitter feed rolled up the monitor, but my brain hardly registered the waste pile of words flashing before me. Complaints of “fake chicks” and “ratchets” — which, to my surprise, are no longer tools you would find in a mechanic’s garage — all blurred into one big mess of complaining teenagers. My visits to Twitterville recently have become pretty pitiful; my mind has been numbed to the chunk of my age group that just can’t find anything positive to say. Suddenly, like a deer darting across a field, something different caught my eye.

I did a double take, a triple take, and halfway through my quadruple take my eyes proved to not be deceiving me. “Say it ain’t so…” I thought, and I blinked away the blurriness to spot the equivalent of Sasquatch in a thick forest: widespread happiness. What made it even more shocking is that this was started by one account: @FHCCompliments.

Somewhere out in the thunderstorm of negativity sat an anonymous person under the shield of an umbrella, selflessly complimenting his or her fellow Spartans one by one. Soon, the storm clouds of insults started to thin, and the sun began shining through on that Sunday evening. The compliments weren’t groundbreaking, but they were nice little pick-me-ups that seemed to brighten the day of each person they mentioned. Without any warning, this awful place was starting to change.

Soon the busy streets of Twitterville were filled with jovial high school students, each of them marveling at how @FHCCompliments was just so darn nice and how whoever was behind it had a one-way ticket to heaven. They retweeted and favorited and replied, retweeted and favorited and replied, and before long Twitter had made the switch from a dreary dungeon of self-pity to an overall nice place to be.

Zap back to me at the computer desk. My lazy, tired posture had disappeared, and instead I leaned toward the computer screen in awe. I watched all of this positive activity as if it were some sort of cracked out dream, and that it couldn’t possibly be real. This darn @FHCCompliments had somehow turned Twitter into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, and instead of dealing with its detractors with hate, it did what my mom always told me: killed them with kindness. You don’t like the idea? Here, have a compliment!

I originally had a concern with the diversity of the people being complimented, but as soon as I hit “tweet”, the unknown tweeter started taking suggestions from its followers so more love could be spread. I went to bed befuddled. Who the heck was this guy?

Soon, however, that didn’t matter. The period of bliss was short lived, because the storm of hate wasn’t about to go down without a fight. The next day, a new account was made, the Mr. Hyde to @FHCCompliments’ Dr. Jeckyl. Enter the ever classy @FHCdissedyoass.

For every compliment, this account had an insult. The happy pedestrians of Twitterville instantly switched back to their negative ways, firing profanity-laced messages at the account that only fueled the inferno. A riot had broken out, and @FHCdissedyoass (which has now been taken down) had gotten exactly what it wanted: the state of unhappiness and negativity that they loved. Who’da thunk it.

Upon returning to my computer chair, I helplessly watched as the ruins of the temporarily happy town of Twitterland smoldered. Gone were the smiles, gone were the positive interactions, and the only thing left was the same old unhappy town that was once there. Negativity once again reigned victorious.

Since then, the ashes have cleared. Twitterland still stands, and it has found that happy medium of complaining and arguing once again. Somewhere, though, there is room for a laugh. During all of this, somehow the large gym (@FHCLargeGym), the small gym (@FHCsmallgym), the Spartan statue (@SpartanStatue), the boys locker room (@Fhcboys) and more rooms or inanimate objects all grew thumbs and can now express their feelings — 140 characters at a time. Give them a follow for a laugh or two.

So this recent fiasco gives me the perfect opportunity to get on my high horse and rant about the attitudes of some people my age, but I’ll spare you. Instead, I leave you with a simple phrase: don’t worry, be happy. Take this attitude to Twitter, take it to Facebook, and more importantly take it to real life. And maybe, just maybe, negativity wouldn’t be the status quo.

I’ll see you next week, buddy.