Seeing the world today, one would be forgiven for thinking that everyone has lost their goddamn minds. War, road rage, internet comment sections — fellas, can’t we all just get along?

If you’re thinking this, you’re not alone. In fact, things have gotten so sinister that one user on Reddit has a theory: the average person is just a dick.

In a post on Reddit’s r/Conspiracy, user unluckydude1 floats the idea that everyone around us — whom he dubs “madnpcs” — are all just pieces of shit. “I have noticed a lot of people being angry for no reason and no empathy and i know some of these people havent always been like this like their personas all have become one hivemind of angrynpcs,” he writes. “I have even had same conversations with diffrent madnpcs that have no connection but using exactly the same words like hours apart from each other.”

To get this out of the way, there’s a distinct possibility that people are being weird to this guy because he uses words like “madnpcs.”

That said, unluckydude1 isn’t alone. No matter the reason, commenters were in agreement about his general sentiment. According to them, the default person of today is kind of a prick. “I’ve never seen so much rage, impatience, hostility and aggression in my life. Most notably on the road and in traffic,” wrote one user. “Covid and quarantine changed everybody. I don’t think it’s the only thing that did, but yeah, people have lost their minds. And souls.”

“I always say ‘excuse me’ when trying to get past people. In the last 4ish years almost no one has acknowledged me. I always get like an angry face. Sometimes even a grunt,” shared another. “Vice versa no one ever says excuse me to me anymore. They just walk through no matter how inconsiderate. It didn’t use to be like this.”

Unluckydude1 and his fellow Redditors aren’t the only ones feeling this way. In the past few years, articles have come out in TIME, Psychology Today, Slate and more trying to figure out just why so many people seem like such jerks.

There’s no real consensus here, but among the chiefly cited reasons in both these articles and on Reddit are phones, jobs, COVID, general unease — and maybe, just maybe, the reptilians who keep fucking with our clocks (okay, the last one was just one dude, but hear him out).

Are people really meaner today? I don’t know, but if you take away one message from this article, it should be “be nicer to each other.” Or at least roll your windows up before you scream at someone in traffic.