You don’t have to be wearing a tinfoil hat to suspect there’s more to the story than “exhaustion.” Exhaustion doesn’t usually merit a 911 call. And an anonymous source who claims to have seen the incident report told E! Tuesday that Moore was “shaking” and otherwise “acting like she was suffering from a seizure,” which certainly sounds like something serious went down – and may have been part of a larger problem.

But from the moment the news broke, there was skepticism that a beautiful, wealthy woman — even one whose recent divorce proceedings render her Twitter handle painfully obsolete — could have it all that bad. The very first response on E!  was a weary “Stress? What stress? I swear, these Hollywood socialites wouldn’t last a minute in the real world!” TMZ, where the story originally broke, had similar sentiments. “Stress? WTF! Obviously she hasn’t been out in real America lately,” wrote one disgusted commenter. On People, a commenter complained, “I am exhausted too. Where is my article in People?” while another said, “For rich people it’s called exhaustion. For the rest of America it’s called working a full time job, plus overtime, running a household, raising kids and paying your bills. Now I know why I am exhausted.” A commenter named Lucy added, “Try working 2 jobs, 60 hours a week, looking after your own household with no hired help and tell me about exhaustion! ” And at ABC News, a woman named Ann wrote, “I look frail and tired EVERY DAY. I am fed up with rich has-beens being a piece of ‘news.’” Wow, all that real-world stress and exhaustion sure makes people angry.

The idea that a lady with an army of handlers to clean her mansion, iron her designer clothes, and mix up her cleanse shakes is stressed out may justifiably stick in the craw of anyone trying to wring one more winter out of that crappy pair of Payless boots. The story, for Moore’s detractors, is black and white: Entitled woman with a jet-set lifestyle hits a bumpy patch when her marriage to her handsome TV star husband  flatlines, can’t handle the “real” world, and has the luxury of retreating to some zillion-dollar-a-week oasis where she is no doubt right now getting a caviar and gold leaf facial – all while the rest of us are picking off-brand Cheerios out of the carpet.

Divorce, sickness, job insecurity and family obligations happen to the rich and poor, the famous and the obscure. And very, very few among us have the resources of a “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” star. There are no medals or cash prizes handed out for enduring hardship without a personal trainer or Kabbalah retreat. But it’s certainly not as if a celebrity’s choice to “seek professional assistance” creates a shortage of it for everybody else. Some movie star’s in treatment? Oh well, dammit, now where are the rest of us supposed to go? She’s doing something for her health? Gosh, what a bitch.

If, for whatever reason at all – the end of your marriage, the disappointment of a professional flop, the plain old chemistry in your brain – you were at the end of your rope, wouldn’t the absolute best and smartest thing in the world be to get whatever assistance you possibly could? Or does having a big bank account somehow render an individual impervious to heartbreak or depression? Because I’ve got to say, based on what we know of celebrity, it does not.

There’s still far too much stigma attached to the issues of mental and emotional health and illness. And the idea that anyone, regardless of fame or income, isn’t supposed to be affected by profoundly life-changing events is absurd. Worse, it perpetuates the myth that getting help is for the weak. Just because you can afford “exhaustion,” there’s still no shame in having it — and there’s no shame in getting treated for it. Sure, most of us have to get through storms on the strength of our own, decidedly low-budget, counsel and support. But we still find it in our own ways, because we need to in order to survive. And those who don’t aren’t stronger or more “real” – they just tend to become angry commenters on the Internet.

“It’s always wrong, that’s obvious, but I’m rolling my eyes at all the attention she’ll get.”

While covering the Egyptian protests back in February, CBS reporter Lara Logan was separated from her crew and endured a horrifying sexual and physical assault. And when the news filtered out from Tahrir Square, New York University Center for Law and Security fellow Nir Rosen fired off a torrent of scathing tweets about the attack, admitting “She’s so bad that I ran out of sympathy for her,” and adding “it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson [Cooper] too.” In the wake a furious backlash, Rosen swiftly deleted the tweets, apologized for his words, and resigned from NYU. Today, he’s back on Twitter after a brief sabbatical, but as he wrote for Salon last winter, “with 480 characters I undid a long career.”

“Face it folks, you just feel better when you say it. #WINNING”

Believe it or not, before March, Twitter was a Charlie Sheen-free zone. But in the midst of his epic spat with the producers of “Two and a Half Men,” the guy with more catch phrases than a Bond villain took his Vatican warlock assassin fingertips and tiger blood to tweet town. He immediately set a Guinness world record for “Fastest Time to Reach 1 Million Followers” and an unofficial one for least coherent stream of consciousness. Remember, world, “You already own you. Now go… Earn the power.”

“What do Japanese Jews like to eat? Hebrew National Tsunami.”

Gilbert Gottfried, the man who helped bring the concept of “too soon” into the lexicon lived up to his reputation in March, when he unleashed a slew of one-liners about the devastation in Japan. In the aftermath, he wasn’t just all but universally condemned – he lost his gig as the voice of the Aflac duck. The company had to issue a distancing statement that the tweets “were lacking in humor,” and Gottfried himself quickly announced that “I meant no disrespect, and my thoughts are with the victims and their families.” The whole episode — which he discussed in a Salon exclusive interview — proved that when you bomb in a club, it’s a bad night. But when you bomb on Twitter, it can cost you your job.

“Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).”

When Pakistan IT consultant Sohaib Athar heard some unusual activity going on in the middle of a May night, he took to Twitter to talk about it. “A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty,” he wrote, adding a few minutes later that “all silent after the blast, but a friend heard it 6 km away too… the helicopter is gone too… Must be a complicated situation.” It was indeed. As Athar told the world the next day, “Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.” And with that, the musings of one sleepy guy who wished he had a “giant fly swatter” to silence the noise became an eyewitness to the American raid on the compound of Osama bin Laden.

“im retiring Video: http://bit.ly/kvLtE3 #ShaqRetires”

Sure, he expanded on it in the accompanying video, but not much. When the legendary basketball player Shaquille O’Neal decided to end his nearly two-decade career in June, he wanted to “tell you first” – you being the Twitterverse. And with a post so pithy it didn’t even bother with the apostrophe, he was done.

“Touche Prof Moriarity. More Weiner Jokes for all my guests! #Hacked!”

Except he hadn’t been hacked. That unfortunate crotch shot, we learned back in June, was indeed the bulge of New York congressman Anthony Weiner. In the fact of mounting evidence that no hack occurred, he admitted a few days after the damning image emerged that “The picture was of me, and I sent it” to college student Gennette Cordova. It was the inauspicious end of a political career, and Weiner’s Twitter timeline as well. Lesson – if you insist on sending ladies pictures of your junk, stick to texting.

“September 17th. Wall Street. Bring Tent. http://bit.ly/re9ENL #OCCUPYWALLSTREET”

A worldwide movement began as a simple plea back in July, when Adbusters, inspired by the protests in Egypt, issued the call. There had been a poster in the July issue of the magazine, and a fiery blog post to “you 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals out there.” But it was the power of the hashtag that soon made itself known, as an action became a revolution. Occupy Seattle. Occupy Tuscaloosa. Occupy London. Occupy Hong Kong. Occupy Antarctica. And behold the power of tents and tweets.

“Who’s #notguilty about eating all the tasty treats they want?” and “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo.”

Corporate outreach gone terribly, terribly wrong! When the Casey Anthony verdict broke in July, #notguilty skyrocketed straight to the top of Twitter trends. With a better sense of how to make a delicious crumb cake than what’s going on in the news, baked goods brand Entenmann’s leapt in with an out of context – and wildly inappropriate — hashtag. The tweet was soon deleted, with a follow-up that “Our #notguilty tweet was insensitive, albeit completely unintentional. We are sincerely sorry.” And even the ever-provocative Kenneth Cole went too far with a February tweet about the Egyptian protests. Cole likewise quickly scrubbed the tweet, with a message that “We weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation.”

“Dear Fox News, don’t play our music on your evil fucking channel ever again. Thank you”.

Apparently Maroon 5′s Adam Levine is not a fan. When the network used a soundbite of the band’s “She Will Be Loved” on an October edition of “Fox & Friends,” Levine took aim at the cable behemoth in a way that was both fearless and bitchy. While the network decorously didn’t reply, give feistiness points to its Andy Levy, who shot back via Twitter, “Dear @AdamLevine, don’t make crappy f*cking music ever again. Thank you.” #ohsnap

“How do you fire Jo Pa #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste.”

What is it about these “Two and a Half Men” stars? In November, Kutcher responded to the dismissal of legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno with a kneejerk expression of outrage. But Paterno, as the rest of the world knew and Kutcher later sussed out, lost his job over his lackluster response to sex abuse accusations against his former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. Kutcher quickly admitted, “I feel awful about this error. Won’t happen again.” But then he then compounded the error by announcing he’d decided “to turn the management of the [Twitter] feed over to my team at Katalyst as a secondary editorial measure, to ensure the quality of its content.” And how’s that been going? “I will forever cherish the time I spent with Demi. Marriage is one of the most difficult things in the world and unfortunately sometimes they fail,” he tweeted soon after. “Love and Light, AK.” Ewwww.

“I have breast cancer. I am in good hands. There is a long road ahead and it leads to happiness and a cancer-free, long, healthy life.”

Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin lives her life online. So naturally, she live tweeted her first mammogram, or as she cheerfully put it, “the perky robot pancake boobs squisher machine game.” But just a short time and several tweets later, she gave the stark news. Since then, Jardin’s been ferociously tweeting from the new land of cancer. And whether she’s posting about data mix-ups or referring to her MRI tube as “an industrial music dance party,” she’s proving every day the inspirational, and very healing, power of online community.

As headlines across the world have made clear, the legendary 84-year-old was not ousted this week because of his age or his job performance. Instead, he was fired for his lackadaisical response to charges that former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky allegedly sexually abused a young boy in a campus locker room. Though Paterno related the alleged incident to his superiors, he did not report any wrongdoing to the police. On Saturday, Sandusky was charged with multiple counts of sex abuse involving eight boys over the course of several years.

You’d think Kutcher, who has his own anti-child sex trafficking foundation, would keep himself more abreast of the major child abuse scandals – especially those that allegedly involve that trafficking of human chattel. Apparently he didn’t get the memo. He was, however, promptly schooled on the details of Paterno’s departure by plenty of his horrified followers, who were swift to brand him, among other things, an “idiot.”

So what did the undisputed Twitter all-star, a guy who’s historically shown a keen knack for the social, soundbite-friendly media — with over eight million followers to show for it — do next? Initially, he seemed to be handling it with the right touch of humility and grace. He tweeted that “As an advocate in the fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more remorseful for all involved in the Penn St. case” and that “As of immediately I will stop tweeting until I find a way to properly manage this feed. I feel awful about this error. Won’t happen again.” He even threw in a self-deprecating picture of himself standing next an “I’m with stupid” sign. Ah, was it just last spring that Kutcher boasted that he “only played stupid on TV”?

He followed up with a blog post admitting that “I assumed that [Paterno] had been fired due to poor performance as an aging coach” and hastily posted a tweet defending his career.” After the “hailstorm” of “outrage” he quickly deleted the offending post, and now says he’s “truly sorry.” That’s exactly what someone should do when he makes a huge mistake. He should say simply that he was wrong, stupid even, and apologize. But here’s what he shouldn’t do: wuss out. And that is exactly what Ashton Kutcher did.

Kutcher went on to write that he’s “going to take action to ensure that it doesn’t happen again,” explaining “While I feel that running this feed myself gives me a closer relationship to my friends and fans I’ve come to realize that it has grown into more than a fun tool to communicate with people. While I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk, I’m going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst as a secondary editorial measure, to ensure the quality of its content.”

Kutcher explains now that “I have posted virtually every one of my tweets on my own, but clearly the platform has become too big to be managed by a single individual.” Really, dude? You have power and reach enough to use your Twitter celebrity to raise funds to fight malaria and you can’t handle your own “platform”? A “platform” largely devoted to people telling each other what bar they’re sitting in at any given moment? That is so effing weak.

It’s good that Kutcher has acknowledged he made a terrible mistake. He should muzzle himself for a while. And yes, Twitter is a social minefield, as a lengthy list of individuals will attest. Cee Lo Green learned the power of social media after snippily suggesting a critic who didn’t enjoy his show must be gay. Gilbert Gottfried learned it when he rushed in with Japanese tsunami jokes back in March – and lost his gig as the Aflac duck. Nir Rosen resigned from his post at NYU last winter after “rolling my eyes” over Lara Logan’s rape in Egypt. And the likes of Courtney Love and Lindsay Lohan make every day on the Internet a fresh opportunity to put a virtual foot in a metaphoric mouth.

But you know what you do when you screw up? You grow a pair, say sorry and move on, in your own words. You don’t farm out your mea culpas, wry observations or announcements of when you’re next doing Jimmy Fallon’s show for editorial review. You don’t run your words past your handlers, lest you commit the human crime of making a mistake about how you’re at the “Two and a Half Men” table read. That’s pretty pathetic, especially from the man who just two weeks ago tweeted glowingly about the “willingness to fail.”

The erratic, sometimes contentious world of Twitter is not for everybody. If you don’t want to be in it, don’t. But remember that Joe Paterno lost his job for being too much a coward to speak up. There are far worse things in the world than saying something stupid. Everybody says stupid things sometimes. We don’t then contract someone who will be less stupid to speak for us. We learn from our mistakes and we keep on talking, in our own sometimes clumsy ways. Otherwise, we’re not communicating at all. Kutcher’s feed is now just a mouthpiece posting announcements. And if that’s all it is, what’s the incentive for eight million people to care?

Exactly what happened in a San Diego Hard Rock hotel a few weeks ago is known only to those who were there. But that particular detail – and Leal’s eagerness to share it – show just how much attitudes and behaviors have changed in the last few years. And that taking risks is no longer the great taboo it once was.

Late last month, right around the time Sara Leal was allegedly getting her Magnum-free freak on, the International Planned Parenthood Federation was releasing a sobering study  on the dramatic rise in unprotected sex among young people worldwide. Since 2009, the number of teens forgoing contraception when they bed a new partner has spiked 39 percent in the United States – and a harrowing 111 percent in France. Unsurprisingly, among the reasons cited were not liking it and not having adequate access to it. The CDC estimates there are “approximately 19 million new STD infections each year, which cost the U.S. healthcare system $16.4 billion annually.” 

Leal is not some doe-eyed high school sophomore, but at 22, she’s young enough to have a different perspective on the risks of unprotected sex than her AIDS-era elders. Whatever she and Kutcher may or may not have done, however, her cavalier boast seems a way of making the story more intimate and authentic. She didn’t just have sex with a TV star, folks – she had the real kind! The kind you’d have with a boyfriend! And then they talked about astrology.

Whatever one might think of the morality of a tale that involves the words “Ashton Kutcher” and “hot tub,” what’s really skin-crawling about Leal’s tell-all is the utter lack of concern she seems to have for herself or her sexual partners. Instead, she paints a picture of being swept up by a handsome, famous man with “good endurance.” And by insisting the encounter was condom-free, she seems to want to imply a certain level of intimacy and trust — while instead coming off as dangerously deluded.

Condoms aren’t synonymous with spontaneity or romance. They tell a person, look, we’ve got to protect ourselves here from any potential diseases. They immediately signal that both parties have had a sexual past and a likely future. Opening the package and getting the sucker on don’t always go smoothly – and they feel different once you’re going at it. That’s why even now, for all the rampant sex scenes on prime time and in the movies, you rarely see a scene of someone fumbling with a box of prophylactics. A condom is life’s way of saying, “Please don’t give me the clap,” and that’s not an easy statement to make with someone whose pants you’re trying to get into.

Yet admitting you bail on protection doesn’t make a person seem sexy or spontaneous. It just makes her sound reckless and dumb. And Leal might now have a harder time finding anybody else who wants to go where she claims Kutcher has boldly gone. Because though she, like the increasing number of teens gambling with their bodies, doesn’t seem to mind that one Americans in six has herpes or that nearly 3 million cases of chlamydia are reported annually, there are still plenty of sexually active adults out there who accept the stark reality that the pleasures of sex have to go hand in hand with the responsibilities of it.