“Hey, did you see the video of Tony Stewart hitting that guy?”

It was likely the No. 1 question asked in America last week.

Let me rephrase that.

Pathetically and disturbingly, it was likely the No. 1 question asked in America last week.

That’s better.

For the record, I did not watch race-car driver Tony Stewart hit and kill Kevin Ward Jr. in a sprint-car race in upstate New York. Nor do I intend to. Nor do I ever intend to purposely watch any morbid, sensational video of a gruesome death or injury inflicted upon a human being.

It doesn’t make me any better than the millions of people who viewed the Stewart video. They can do what they wish. Free country and all that. But I will protest in my own, tiny, inconsequential way against our disturbing trend of having to see everything with our own eyes, even the most horrifying and private of moments.

Like someone’s death, for example.

I realize this will be as effective as picking up an aluminum can along the side of the road in hopes of curbing worldwide pollution, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. There are certain things better left unseen, better left to the imagination, and in the age of smartphone video cameras and the Internet, those moments are coming under siege daily. Perhaps this is one middle-aged man’s attempt to turn back the clock.

Technology has finally caught up with mankind’s morbid curiosity, and it feels dirty.

It’s not that seeing death via mass media is a new thing. Thanks to the Zapruder film, the world has seen John F. Kennedy’s head explode from an assassin’s bullet for decades. There are no more disturbing photos than those depicting dozens of dead Union and Confederate soldiers in the Civil War. The same goes for graphic photos of any war. Dead bodies on the beaches of Normandy. A South Vietnamese officer shooting a suspected Viet Cong sympathizer in the temple at close range. It’s all in the history books.

Maybe that’s the difference. The most graphic examples of death used to be reserved for history or education. It was shocking because it was so rare. It seemed forbidden, solemn. At the least, there was real news value to most of it.

Now an obscure sprint-car driver gets run over at a dimly lit dirt track at a place nobody’s ever heard of, and millions of people see it. Millions of people search for it. And not with solemnity nor even shock, I might add, but with emotionless detachment and flippant curiosity.

I mean, a guy died. He had a mother and father. Siblings. Friends. There are fewer more private moments for a private citizen and his loved ones than death. And Ward’s death was seen as nothing more than a few moments of distraction, you might even say entertainment, for millions of people.

Strange.

But it’s where we are. The Internet has opened everybody’s life (and death) to everybody else. It’s all about the clicks and the shares (present company included, and guilty to a certain extent). The number of Web page-views is how success is measured and sold to advertisers and so the walls of discretion have crumbled to dust. So-called mainstream media have been forced to follow suit, so Ward’s death wasn’t only available for your online viewing pleasure at blogs or alternative media sites. Some newspaper web sites ran the video, as did some television networks (including CBS and ESPN).

Remember when we used to chuckle at the National Enquirer and Globe headlines at the supermarket checkout lines?

“SHOCKING PHOTOS!”

“EXPLOSIVE INSIDE STORY!”

“NEVER BEFORE SEEN DEATH-SCENE PICS!”

Turns out the tabloids were ahead of their time. The world likes that stuff, big-time.

I never picked up an Enquirer at the grocery store. Nor have I watched Tony Stewart hit Kevin Ward Jr.

I feel like the only one.

(Mike McFeely is a talk-show host on 790 KFGO-AM. His program can be heard 2-5 p.m. weekdays. Follow him on Twitter @MikeMcFeelyKFGO.)