as heartwarming and encouraging it is to hear a story about someone who's done a 180 and completely put their life together and straighten out, it's far more often i hear stories --or even witness them myself-- of people changing for the worse. whether it's treating people as if they are sub-human, showing friends how little respect they hold for them, accusing people of unimaginable things, giving people big news via IM/text message/e-mail (and even worse... dropping it into the conversation as if the other party already knew the information... ie "my girlfriend and i are going ..." which makes the person look stupid for trying to pull that one off), or just the selfishness of being self-involved and too busy to ask how someone else is doing. it really gets me going.