Sometimes after I’ve corrected—as I see it—yet another post on social media I imagine that I must be driving some people crazy. Never-the-less, I keep doing it because it just seems like the right thing to do. When I see people posting things that they obviously care about, I believe they should know when they’re getting worked up about something that isn’t real, or at least isn’t framed up properly. How else do we make sense of issues that concern us and improve them?

I come by this behaviour honestly. That is to say, I appear to have been born with it. Not that I was above getting into mischief, but I was the sibling that the rest hid the truth from, if that truth might get them in trouble. “Shhh! Shut up! Terry’s coming.”

Later, in school, I was the kid who, if I heard gossip about the whats and whys of someone’s actions that I knew to be unfounded, would intervene to explain the truth and how I came by my understanding of it. “Actually, I heard her Mom talking to the teacher. She doesn’t have the measles—they have to go to a funeral and will be away till next Monday.” “No, he doesn’t think he’s better than us. Remember, he’s new here. They were at our house for supper on Saturday, and he told me that he’s afraid no one will like him. I’m sure he’s just shy and waiting for us to make the first move.”

I was the kid for whom a good time was reading encyclopedias. Comparing the articles in the three versions at school, each from a different decade, to see how the understanding and presentation of a subject had changed over the years. Trying to fathom the mystery of why my friends didn’t really want to hear every last detail about the cool things I was finding out.

For a person with this kind of bent, the internet is a cross between the best resource and the worst drug in the world. To be able to search anything, to find and compare source materials with such ease, is truly wondrous. To see the amount of misleading crap floating around that’s either made up, unsourced or poorly sourced is frustrating. To repeatedly encounter complex matters reduced to pithy black and white, either/or online bumper sticker statements is discouraging. To think about how all this is polluting people’s minds and clouding issues, both great and small, is truly maddening.

So, yeah, I’ll keep correcting these lame posts when I see them. I hope people don’t take it personally and get ticked off at me. I mean well, and my beef is with whoever makes this junk up, much more so than with the reposters.

Terry McTavish