I saw a cool thing on Social Media.
https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]/111856332167462860
Someone replied “Seems that you were seated on right side of a plane landing to LHR. Always choose that when I fly to LHR, you get a very nice view of all London from East to West.”
(I added the last period to that quote. If you don’t like that I use complete sentences, capitalization, and punctuation in my SMS and SM messages, you may kindly STFU. I write correctly because dumb people cannot, lazy people will not, and I am neither dumb nor lazy. If you tell me that your Millennial or whatever culture considers correct writing “harsh”, your culture is wrong. Your culture is anti-intellectual. Your culture is intentionally inventing offense where none was intended. But I digress.)
That reply reminded me of a thing from way back in my early childhood. So I posted a response:
Reminds me of the etymology of POSH.
Originally an acronym for Port out, Starboard home… the best booking for an Atlantic Cruise from UK to US and back. You get to view sunrises & sunsets from your stateroom balcony.
I followed that with a post about how I “knew” that. It was a song I remembered from childhood, in the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDPMcdd7F0A
Aside: it’s amusing how a person can “learn” a thing at six or seven years old, and it becomes ingrained in them as foundational fact, even if it’s completely made up. Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Uh, dude, you said the quiet part out loud. Also, there’s no Santa, nor Easter Bunny, either.
Well, both of the people in the original conversation boosted my post, and about a half dozen sensible souls out on the interwebs feared that incorrect “alternative facts” were going to get spread about with the help of a couple accounts with a crap-ton more clout than mine, and they corrected me. And I sincerely thank them for that.
I edited my post to insert the fact that it was debunked.
Are there truly repulsive “reply-guys” out there? Sure. There are condescending, misogynistic dil-holes. I’ve seen ’em.
But far more often, in my personal experience, I have seen people saying incorrect things about a subject in which I’ve worked for many years, and I know more than they do, and I post something informative and helpful, and I get a response like this:
So, what is Social Media Toxicity?
On the one hand, it’s the condescending, misogynistic dil-holes, as previously discussed.
On the other hand, it is also the ignorant fragile-ego people who saw someone else push-back with the “reply-guy” remark, or the ackchyually cartoon, and adopted that as their go-to response to anyone graciously offering information that contradicts their naive ignorance, or even stubborn stupidity. This moronic nobody-can-tell-me-anything anti-intellectual attitude is how we ended up with the pinnacle of fragile-ego ignorant asshole as POTUS, #IQ45. It was a direct result of stupid people being stupid on purpose to over-compensate for their shame in being stupid, and becoming the loudest minority on FaceBook, Xhitter, et al.
Friends, I’m telling you, it’s OK to not know a thing. Ignorance is the default condition; stupidity is a choice. It’s OK to say something you think you know, but be incorrect. It’s OK, in fact very good, for someone to be generous enough with their time to reply with the correct information. And it’s wonderful to be gracious about being corrected.
Be curious. Be humble. Be correctable. And be brave enough to push back on both sides of Social Media Toxicity.
