By now, you have seen it, right?

OK, well, so you didn’t “see” it per se, but you had a reaction to it nonetheless after hearing about it from friends and family, or seeing a .gif about it or one of the other thousands of ways that “news” is circulated in America in 2014.

Just know that whatever your reaction to Oklahoma State guard Marcus Smart shoving a Texas Tech fan in the waning moments of Saturday’s game, it’s probably wrong.

But by all means, tag your thoughts with #shovegate. It will give them credibility, for sure.

Once again, what happened this weekend highlighted – for what appears to be the one trillionth time – everything that is wrong with America.

Yeah, I know, I know. This is my MO, to tell you just how messed up our society is and can be and why we need to change.

What is funny is that America may be the world’s leader in secondary education. After all, it has eight of the world’s Top 10 universities. But we do not learn very well.

It seems each week we over and under react to something, blowing it out of proportion or sweeping it under the rug. We overanalyze, under analyze and reach a conclusion, a verdict, a judgment. Then, it’s over and we’re on to the terrible conditions of Sochi restrooms or something else.

And we do this in about six hours.

Was Marcus Smart justified in shoving the Tech fan? Of course not.

Look, any athlete – former has been or never was – can tell you that should you choose to pursue a path in competitive sports, you will undoubtedly hear things from fans that will not sit very well with you mentally.

Between the ages of 15-18, I heard everything you might possibly hear from opposing fans. Racial slurs, comments about parents, comments about hairstyles, dress, mannerisms, sexual preferences I didn’t even know existed and really, everything in between.

Now might be a good time to mention I grew up in a relatively tame, relatively small and relatively white (read: predominately white) community.

It didn’t matter. I have had friends, frenemies and random people that shared the floor or field with me look around with the same expression: people are crazy.

The sooner you understand that, the sooner that you make peace with the fact that as an athlete, you are the target of one motive: to get in your head and take your mind off the task at hand. Is it hard? Of course.

Should mentally unstable people, say Ron Artest, be even more mindful of blocking out literally everything they hear, feel or see? Let’s hope so. Because I am certain that for anyone over the age of about 20, there was a flashback to 2004 and the Pacers-Pistons brawl.

Many opinions – including some from my own hand – argued then and now that there was an invisible line that cannot be crossed between performer and spectator.

And Marcus Smart must understand that no matter what they say to you, you just cannot respond. He’s 19, though, so he must be allowed to repent, learn and move on.

But what about those in the stands? That same line exists for all of us spectators. How sad are we? How pathetic is this Tech fan, Mr. Orr, for saying something, anything to a college student. You are a 50-year-old man. Act like it. Why are you calling a successful college athlete with all his hair and defined muscles who has undoubtedly far succeeded what you did on a basketball floor a piece of crap?

If the former has been/never was athlete in me has reared its ugly head, then I apologize. It has always been a difficult proposition to listen to those who don’t, haven’t and never will throw down a cascade of spoken abuse that most would be enraged to hear if it were being spoken to them or someone they love. Fans are short for fanatical, but that does not have to mean flat out insane and crazy, shouting, cursing and throwing up middle fingers as they calmly pass by.

So was Mr. Orr wrong? Absolutely.

Yet there remains the rest of us. And what are we do to from the sidelines? Well, by all means, let’s get involved.

Notice that we are over 600 words into this piece before race was even mentioned? Well, aside from the physical act of the shove, that became the de facto topic of #shovegate.

We are quick to turn nearly everything into a commentary on race, when in reality, this has much more to do with how we interact with each other.

Again, this problem – this dangerous line between the fans in the stands getting to unleash a torrent of verbal abuse on athletes and the inevitable, split-second reaction from someone who’s just heard enough has become razor thin in recent years.

Every situation is different. In this one, a 19-year-old who turned away the NBA to come back to college and mature more found himself in the middle of a crummy month in the middle of a crummy season that has scouts wondering whether or not he can make it in the NBA.

Add to it all the media attention to what is perceived as Smart flopping on defense to get calls and a game against Texas Tech that was slipping away and you find yourself with the 19-year-old breaking down with a superbooster screaming at him after tumbling into the crowd.

Should he have shown restraint? Should the fan?

Of course.

But were would either of them learn their lesson?

Certainly not from the melodramatic, breaking news style SportsCenter updates and the millions of people on social media who turned those five seconds into a 4-hour racial debate.

But we don’t take the time to rationalize any of this. We just react. Suspend Smart, ban the fan, belly moan the spoiled athletes and joke that the fans have it coming.

Maybe next time, before we once again belittle someone else for not thinking clearly, questioning their character or jumping to 1,000 different conclusions, we could just make the smart move and just not.  The smart move is to just shut up.

That’s the smart move, though.

And we just don’t do shutting up very well.

Do we?