I saw a message shared on Facebook this week that made me pause for thought. Wentworth Miller, who you may know as Michael Scofield inPrison Break, shared an image of himself that had been posted online, along with a very personal and revealing commentary on it.

The picture shows two images of Miller side-by-side: one shot of him fromPrison Break, covered in tattoos, very slim and muscular and the other shot of him looking a little bigger, walking down the street in a red shirt, smiling. The joke being that he’d got out of prison and discovered McDonalds. Wow.

In a brave messageto followers on his official Facebook page, he explained some of the background behind the second picture. Struggling with severe depression and thoughts of suicide, he had experienced a rare, happy moment with a friend – and this is the stolen moment that paparazzi managed to capture, later to be turned into a joke by others.

I’m glad he wrote the post as it will have made some people think, and the heartfelt message he posted resonated more than usual with me, because I have my own history with depression. It makes things that might usually be hard become impossible to deal with – and the thing that this story shows is, you don’t know what people’s individual stories are. You might think that because actors like Wentworth Miller are in a line of work that makes them famous, they are always happy and always able to handle these intrusions on their life – but why should that be the case? The person who made this particular meme probably had no idea about what he was going through at the time, but even without the added background we now have, it was essentially just a mean joke.

Sadly this isn’t the first story of this kind that I’ve seen. From girls without make up to small children in supermarkets, some people have a tendency to pick up pictures that they think they’ve made a joke from and share them with no regard for the person at all. There is no need for this to be the case; plenty of the most successful memes aren’t based on mocking someone – just think about THAT dress, or cats who love cheeseburgers. I’m not saying that memes should never involve a person… but there’s a big difference between laughing with someone and at someone -and this is especially true online.

If you become the subject of a viral joke, then you know that a lot of people are going to see it… but how many people? Potentially, billions. While it’s unlikely that every single internet user is going to see it and laugh at you, that can be what it feels like; even though they don’t know who you are, they’re making fun of the picture and you know that it’s you who’s the butt of the joke.

These pictures only become “memes” because they are passed around from person to person. They are only given power through being shared. Think about whether things are being taken in good humour or whether they’re just mocking someone – clicking retweet might not feel like bullying to you, but to the person in the picture, it certainly does.

- Gemma Styles