This past summer, I stared death in the eyes. That is, I stared at the face of a corpse on a living person’s head.

Since the popular social media app Snapchat started offering fun, animated filters to their users, the Snapchat community has primarily used these filters for comedic effect, allowing user experiences to be more enjoyable. The app’s filters vary from simple, colored overlays to entertaining, face-detecting graphic effects.

Last July, I saw the selfie an unidentified man posted using Snapchat’s faceswap filter. He had used the app to trade faces with the deceased at a funeral.

I was disgusted and then even more horrified when I scrolled down to see a second picture of the same deceased man adorned with dog ears and a nose from the app’s ubiquitous dog filter. There was no way that image was leaving my mind anytime soon.

Since when did the decision to cross the line from human decency to moral blasphemy become so easy?

It’s shocking to see how far people on social media will go simply to gain some attention or get a few laughs. But disrespecting a deceased man at his own funeral?

That’s a new standard of low.

There is no time or place, including on social media, where it should ever be acceptable to desecrate or demean a person’s memory. There is no time or place, including social media, where it should ever be appropriate to mock or disrespect a person at all.

Every picture you post on social media is an advertisement of yourself. By posting a photo or comment, you are essentially publicizing your choices.

Being ‘the guy who mocked a deceased man with the dog filter’ is not a reputation worth having for the sake of a joke.

Leaving a poor impression on social media, whether it be through publicizing illegal activity or posting immoral behavior, will only ever be harmful to yourself.

Of course, anyone can post anything they want on social media. But the fact that we are not restricted in this sense doesn’t mean that we should feel encouraged to push the limits.

There are boundaries within social media that are just not worth crossing.

Broadcasting illegal activity and posting derisive photos of the deceased is not charmingly wild or pleasantly sardonic. It is deplorable and ignorant, and we shouldn’t have to look death in the eyes to realize that.