Being kind to the popular kid is easy. Being kind to the kid nobody sits with is character.

Kindness with a social cost attached is the only version that tests anything. Being warm toward somebody everyone already likes returns something to you, so it proves little beyond your ability to read a room. The harder version has no return and occasionally a price. The point is not rescuing anyone, since nobody wants to be a project, it is treating a person as ordinary when the room has decided they are not.

Sit down next to somebody this week and talk about something completely normal. Do not announce it, and do not check afterward whether it counted.