When Strangers Rewrite Your Life.

There is something uniquely unpleasant about having lies told about you on YouTube.

I am quite prepared to accept criticism. I have been making videos and putting my opinions, my personality and my life into the public arena for a very long time. If you put yourself out there, people are going to disagree with you. Some will dislike you. Some will mock you. Some will misunderstand you.

That's part of the territory.

But there is a difference between someone saying, "I don't like Matt Taylor," and someone confidently telling an audience things about my life that simply aren't true.

Recently, I came across a comment from somebody using the name Stan Garden.

The comment said:

"He never supported financially or brought up."

My first reaction was genuinely:

Wow.

Not because criticism of me is unusual, but because here was a complete stranger apparently deciding that they knew the history of my relationship with my children better than I do. Better than my children do.

That is an extraordinary level of confidence.

I am the person who was actually there. I know what I did. I know what I contributed. I know the sacrifices I made. And, perhaps most importantly, my children are now adults. They are perfectly capable of forming their own opinions about their childhood and about the role I played in their lives.

Yet somebody sitting behind a YouTube account can apparently write a sentence declaring that I never financially supported or brought up my own children. And suddenly that becomes part of the public narrative.

That is what bothers me.

It isn't simply the insult. It is the casual rewriting of somebody else's life.

The strange thing about the internet.

The internet has created an extraordinary phenomenon.

People can watch a handful of videos about you, read a few comments, hear somebody else's version of events and then develop an entire biography of you in their head.

• They can decide what sort of person you are.

• They can decide what sort of father you were.

• They can decide whether you served in the military.

• They can decide what happened in your relationships.

• They can decide what you believe.

• And, apparently, they can even decide what happened inside your own family.

I have already had people such as Danny West questioning or denying my military service.

Now I am also dealing with comments from people such as "Stan" and "Walis" portraying me as somebody who was a bad father who didn't support or bring up his children.

At some point you have to step back and ask:

How do these people know? 

• Were they in my house?

• Were they there when my children were growing up?

• Did they see the financial decisions that were made?

• Did they witness the difficult moments, the ordinary moments, the arguments, the laughter, the responsibilities and the sacrifices?

No. 

They weren't there. 

I was. 

And my children were.

Criticism is fair. Fiction isn't.

I don't expect everybody to like me. I don't expect everybody to agree with me. I certainly don't expect everybody who watches MattTaylorTV to walk away thinking, "What a wonderful bloke."

That's life.

If somebody thinks I'm arrogant, eccentric, annoying, controversial, funny, ridiculous or completely bloody mad, they're entitled to their opinion.

But there is a fundamental difference between opinion and fact.

"I think Matt is a terrible father."

That's an opinion.

"Matt never supported his children."

That's presented as a fact.

And if the person making the statement doesn't actually know whether it is true, then they have crossed a line from criticism into making an allegation about somebody's life without knowing the facts.

That distinction matters.

There are people behind the screen.

Perhaps one of the biggest problems with social media is that we sometimes forget there are real people on the other side of the screen.

• A username becomes a character.

• A photograph becomes an avatar.

• A YouTube channel becomes a battlefield.

And the person being discussed becomes less like a human being and more like a fictional character everybody feels entitled to write about.

But I am not a fictional character.

• I have lived a life.

• I have made mistakes.

• I have made good decisions and bad decisions.

• I have experienced successes and failures.

• I have served in the military.

• I have been a father.

• I have brought up children.

• And now those children are adults with their own lives and their own memories.

They don't need strangers on YouTube explaining to them what their childhood was supposedly like.

I don't need to invent a perfect history.

There is another important point. I don't need to pretend that I have been perfect. I haven't.

Nobody has.

If my children want to criticise me for things I got wrong as a father, that is their right. They were there. They experienced their childhood. Their opinions matter enormously to me.

But there is something rather different about a stranger who knows none of the intimate details of a family relationship announcing to the internet that I never supported my children.

That isn't accountability. That isn't investigative journalism. It's simply somebody making a statement about a life they haven't lived.

And perhaps that is the most frustrating part.

The truth is usually much more complicated than a YouTube comment.

• Families are complicated.

• Parenthood is complicated.

• Life is complicated.

You cannot reduce decades of somebody's life to one sentence typed into a comment box.

So, "Stan", here's my answer

If "Stan Garden" is reading this, I would simply ask one question:

How do you know?

• Not what have you heard?

• Not what did somebody tell you?

• Not what have you decided after watching YouTube?

• How do you actually know?

Because I know.

And my now-adult children know.

They were there. I was there.

That doesn't mean I claim to have been a perfect father. It doesn't mean that my children have to agree with everything I've ever done. It doesn't mean that there weren't difficult periods.

It simply means that our family history belongs to the people who actually lived it.

Not to strangers on YouTube. And that is really the point of this piece.

Criticise me all you like.

• Challenge my opinions.

• Mock my videos.

• Tell me you think I'm wrong.

• Tell me you don't like me.

I'll survive.

But when you start telling stories about my life, my military service, my family and my children as though you were actually there, don't be surprised when I look at the screen and say:

"Hang on a minute. You don't know me."

And perhaps that is the lesson we could all take from social media.

Before confidently telling the world who somebody is, remember that you may know their YouTube persona.

You may know their public arguments. You may know what somebody else has said about them. But you don't necessarily know the person.

And you certainly don't know their entire life.