Like a lot of kids growing up in the 1980s, Laurel Snyder’s first introduction to Scott Baio was as Chachi, the wisecracking, cute-as-a-button younger cousin of Fonzie on the television show “Happy Days,” and later as a heartthrob playing the titular character on “Charles in Charge.” She could not have imagined her first real interaction with him would be years later with him calling her “vile” on Twitter.

The encounter happened after the Baltimore native, award-winning children’s author of “Charlie & Mouse,” “Orphan Island” and “My Jasper June” was invited to speak about her work at two Los Angeles private schools in April 2019. Baio, a conservative one-time Republican National Convention speaker and parent of a student at one of the schools, found some of the author’s earlier social media posts, in which she criticized then-President Donald Trump, and responded with the hashtags #classless and #trash on X.

The Internet, as it does, took it from there. By the time it was over, Snyder, who now lives in Atlanta, was the subject of hateful rhetoric and accusations and a “whole back-and-forth” between her fans and Baio’s, resulting in the actor eventually blocking Snyder. Five years later, the weird incident serves as a reminder of the perils of discourse in this current democratically crucial, historic, disinformation-prone election cycle, even when you seek to keep your political and professional life separate.

I would never discourage political speech online. It can be not only cathartic but an exercise of one’s rights to voice their opinions. But in this highly reactive climate, never forget that there are always people out there looking for someone to fight with, or, even worse, deliberately target. It’s always important to remember that free speech doesn’t mean freedom from criticism or consequence, which in Snyder’s case was what raised the ire of a celebrity with hundreds of thousands of followers.

Expressing my opinion is my literal job, so I expect my share of vitriol on my various feeds and inbox. Snyder, on the other hand, writes well-reviewed kids books about spirited little boys who like rocks and bananas, so it was a shock that her tweets about that year’s State of the Union address would be connected in a negative way to her work.

“It was really baffling,” said Snyder, who reached out to me about the five-year-old incident a few weeks ago. I’d posted on X about Baio’s advice to the former president and current Republican presidential nominee about his upcoming debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, in which he suggested Trump stick to “policy, policy, policy” and avoid “name calling.”

There was a lot of name calling and more in Baio’s posts about Snyder, who is very honest on her X feed about her support of liberal politics and figures like Georgia politician and activist Stacey Abrams. But her literary appearances never mention those views, so when she went to the Los Angeles school visits, “I didn’t say anything political. It was about imagination and fairies.”

Afterwards, she went back to her hotel, turning off her phone to prepare for a small cocktail party thrown by parents from one of the schools. As Snyder hurried into a taxi, “I turned my phone back on, it was just blowing up. There were hundreds and hundreds of tweets, and it took me a while to figure out what had happened.”

What had happened was that Baio had found her tweet joking that while watching the State of the Union, “My kids are speculating whether @realDonaldTrump insisted Melania dye herself orange so that he could look normal by comparison.” (She’d also likened the mood of Trump’s speech to the Holocaust.) Baio took offense to that observation about the couple’s alleged orange hue, noted that Snyder had spoken at his child’s school that day, and said that the Tweet was evidence that “she teaches her kids to hate and disrespect” people like the then-first couple.

Snyder said her posts expressed her “annoyance and frustration with Donald Trump. It had nothing to do with his kid or school visits. It was talking about politics, as we all do, but because I mentioned my children, and the fact that my children are people who have political awareness, there was the suggestion that there was something very wrong, that I had pulled my kids into political life.”

Because there was nothing political in the substance or promotion of the visit, Snyder said she was confused at how Baio had even found those posts, made two months earlier, and figured “he had done a lot of digging about me.”

“He was stirring things up on the Internet,” she said.

By the time Snyder arrived at the cocktail party, the furor had gotten so bad that she felt the need to inform the parents of the second school “that I was nervous this was going to be some controversial thing.”

The incident blew over, but the ability of one person with a large following to do a deep dive into the social media life of anyone they choose, looking for something to be mad about, is a stark reality. I’m sure you’ve seen those “This you?” posts, when an X user says something so spicy that it inspires others to comb their feed until they find something blatantly contradictory they can hit back with.

Again, that’s the risk you take when you exist online, especially if that existence appears partisan or opinionated. In the past two weeks, I have been called racist, stupid, a sycophant and a bad Black person by accounts large and small. Having my say and getting into it with strangers are two different things, so if you’re going to wade out into the political waters this fall, take some advice: Don’t get into fights. Resist the urge to get personal. Block early and often.

And remember that you never know where the criticism might be coming from, whether it’s a dude down the street or Scott Baio. “Until it happened, I didn’t have an awareness of him as a political person,” Snyder said. “This is what happens when you go to Los Angeles.”