Okay, so I just posted this literary masterpiece about why I support a cashless economy. The problem is, I totally stepped on my own crank and repeatedly made mention of a fact that hasn't been the case for nearly 50 years, which someone pointed out in a comment. While this did not necessarily have any meaningful impact on the meat and potatoes of the article, it did do one thing I simply couldn't tolerate: it made me look like a complete idiot! Now I face an even greater problem: the more I think about how I handled this revelation, the more I find my responses identical to those of a career politician.
Obviously, the first thing I had to do was make sure the comment was accurate. If being publicly corrected on a matter of common knowledge wasn't bad enough, the fact that it took me less than a minute to find this knowledge for myself was a kick directly in the family jewels. Now, not only do I appear incredibly stupid, but equally lazy. Unacceptable, right? So, did I edit the article and make the necessary corrections? No. Did I admit my mistake? HELL no. What did I do? I went straight to the comment, without even rereading what I wrote, and lied my ass off. Not only did I lie, but I tried to play it off like I already knew the information provided in the comment.
The problem with that approach was it went to complete crap upon examination of the post, wherein I did not simply present the outdated fact once, but over and over again through the entire first half of the article. This is usually the point where a reasonable person would either own up to their own ignorance or simply delete the post. I like to think of myself as a very reasonable, logical person. Apparently, this is not as true as I would like it to be, because instead of choosing one of those very reasonable options I just mentioned, I LIED AGAIN. My second attempt was as weak and poorly developed as the first.
It wasn't until after I went back and read my own article three more times that I realized I had monumentally, colossally failed as anything resembling an intellectual human being. There was only one option left to me: destroy the evidence! So, hoping that I was acting in time to stop anyone else bearing witness to my miserable failure, I deleted the post. Like Nixon destroying Watergate tapes, like Clinton's cronies scrambling to erase emails and redacting the rest, I eliminated all known trace of my egregious failure. And yet, despite my efforts, there are still nearly 30 witnesses out there: people who can make my ignorant folly public knowledge. For now, I can only wait and see if any will come forward.
There are morals to this story. First, always do your research, even when you're sure of your knowledge regarding the subject matter. Second, honesty will always get you out of more trouble that it will ever get you into. Third, if you screw up, just own it, laugh it off and move on.
