“What a sick lying poisonous toad of man."

The Internet Expert Who Knows Nothing.

There is a strange phenomenon on the internet.

People who have never met you, never lived your life, never sat with you during your darkest moments, somehow become convinced that they know your story better than you do.

Not only do they think they know it, they feel entitled to rewrite it.

I've experienced this repeatedly over the years. Individuals who possess only fragments of information, rumours, gossip, assumptions, and their own imaginations confidently present themselves as authorities on events they neither witnessed nor understood.

My mother's death is one example.

I have seen people construct elaborate narratives about what happened, who was responsible, what people's motives were, and what supposedly took place. They speak with absolute certainty despite having no direct knowledge whatsoever.

The reality is far less dramatic and far more tragic.

My mother died from smoke inhalation after a small fire. It was a heartbreaking event that affected real people, real family members, and those who cared about her.

Yet somehow, complete strangers on the internet feel qualified to turn that tragedy into ammunition for online arguments.

The remarkable thing is not that they get details wrong. Human beings make mistakes. Memories are imperfect. Information can be incomplete.

The remarkable thing is the confidence. The absolute certainty with which some people announce their conclusions. No hesitation. No acknowledgement that they might be mistaken. No consideration that perhaps the person who actually lived through the experience might know more about it than someone watching from behind a keyboard years later.

This is one of the most toxic aspects of internet culture.

A rumour becomes a fact. An assumption becomes evidence. A guess becomes history. Then the story is repeated so many times that people forget where it came from in the first place.

It must be true because Tony Quigley said so…

The original truth gets buried beneath layers of speculation and embellishment.

What begins as "I heard" eventually becomes "everyone knows." In reality, everyone doesn't know.

Most people don't know anything at all. They are simply repeating what somebody else said.

There is also a deeper issue at work.

When someone rewrites another person's story, they are not merely making an error. They are taking ownership of experiences that never belonged to them.

They are turning somebody else's grief, pain, memories, and life into a prop. A character in their own narrative.

Something to be used, reshaped, and manipulated for entertainment, argument, or personal gain.

The internet rewards this behaviour. Outrage travels faster than truth. Mockery attracts more attention than accuracy. A sensational lie often receives more engagement than a boring fact. But reality does not change simply because somebody invents a better story.

Truth remains truth. The facts remain the facts. And no amount of online mythology can alter what actually happened.

One lesson I have learned is that people determined to misunderstand you will do so regardless of the evidence placed before them.

They are not seeking understanding. They are seeking confirmation of what they already want to believe.

For everyone else, however, there is a simple principle worth remembering:

If you were not there, if you did not witness it, if you do not possess direct knowledge, then a little humility goes a long way.

Sometimes the most intelligent sentence a person can say is: "I don't know."

The internet could use a lot more of that. Because when people start telling other people's stories as though they were their own, they often end up doing two things simultaneously:

Getting it completely wrong. And shitting all over the truth.

“What a sick lying poisonous toad of man. His Mother didn't commit suicide, she died in a house fire not long after he settled in Scotland with her after going on the run with her with around Europe to escape  punishment from the army, not long before she caused a fire  in a hotel room in Holland where they were staying before going to Scotland.  She fell asleep with a lit cigarette, so obviously that's what happened in Scotland when she was alone as Matt was caught and had to go to Hampshire to face the Music.  He never went back to deal with her Body.  Says it ALL. and as we know Babs wasn't Dead. Actor!”