Those who can, do. Those who cannot, get on social media platforms to criticize things about which they have no clue.

My apologies, Gentle Reader. After several years of watching the words “outrage” and “controversy” lose all meaning (except as a drinking game) I have reached my tipping point.

Either I am growing more mature with age or am becoming inured to the constant caterwauling of online critics who believe every incident on earth is incomplete without their comments (from their lips to God’s ears).

I have accused more than one of my friends of not possessing an unspoken thought. It must be an insatiable need to break the inertia and utter each idea burbling from one’s brain pan – the genesis of online commentary.

If that offends you, I am sorry. Sorry that some people post comments to the web with their name and a delightful selfie attached to it, oblivious of the consequences.

Scientists have posited that rocks absorb sounds. In other words, voices of the past could be all around us. Imagine tapping a stone and hearing a narrative from Jesus, a speech from George Washington, or the gossip about whether Brett Kavanaugh really did do that in the third grade.

Or you could look to the heavens. There are those who say the conversations of the ages are orbiting our planet, an amalgam of man’s existence chronicled in a ring around the earth. Like Saturn, except made of words.

Children are warned repeatedly of the dangers of social media. Every. Word. You. Say. Or. Write. Or. Post. Is. Recorded. For. All. Time. Adults need to take heed, as well.

I’ve always wondered how posting on the Internet gives people the Dutch courage to say things they would never say to a person face to face. At least a one on one conversation has the saving grace of offending a person in person.

People whose public positions require a patina of decorum in real life often become knuckle dragging Neanderthals once fortified behind the stronghold of the Internet, oblivious to the real-world implications.

First Amendment Warriors, relax. I am not suggesting people should hold their tongue online. I am only suggesting that, as our youth have been told since the advent of the Internet, that once you say something online, it is there forever.

Yet the apple does not fall far from the tree, apparently. While teens are posting every juicy detail of their personal lives online, their parents are venting their spleen on topics ranging from sports to politics to post nasal drip.

Grown Ups, just a friendly piece of advice: your online antics are not flattering. As a member of our community, have you considered that people do not separate your online persona from your real-world life? Perhaps you should.

Speaking for myself, my opinion of certain public figures has diminished due to their online opines. Does is affect them personally? Professionally? Financially? I do not know. Conversely, I am sure the words I have to put to paper in these pages over the years have changed some individual’s perception of me. As they should, good or bad. Because once you’ve written or posted it, you’ve put a ring on it.

It would serve us all well to remember that words hurt. They did on the playground. They do on the digital landscape, too.

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Robert Roe