Okay So That Unfounded Rumour You Helped Spread Wasn’t True, Here’s What You Do Next

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IT could happen to anyone. Office gossip, WhatsApp group, Insta story, 49-tweet thread – we’ve all been in the position of unwittingly sharing a doctored image, false accusation or harmless rumour. We’re all fallible.

Did you pass on any rumour about someone having an affair but it categorically wasn’t true? May we introduce to you the words ‘no smoke without fire’?

Did you break the land speed record grabbing your phone to forward on the unsubstantiated rumour about how a local business person was embezzling money? Take solace in the fact you weren’t the only one.

The neighbour changed his frail elderly father’s will so he cut his siblings out of the inheritance? Well okay he didn’t, but comfort yourself with the ‘he seems the type’ method and think not of how you swore blind to 40 people he did it.

‘Herself has had a Brazilian bum lift’, well how were you to know for sure? Were you expected to pinch it yourself and check? People should just accept the gossip and be happy.

What can be done when it turns out it’s not true and those 483 separate comments you left across Facebook insisting an immigrant carried out an attack in your town or neighbouring village and now gardaí have arrested someone for making a false accusation?

Absolutely, under no circumstances, should you fess up and admit you were wrong. Move on, no harm done, we haven’t noticed any uptick in racism or xenophobia recently which phew, what a relief, imagine contributing to any of that? The guilt.

Oh right, you’ve chosen to double down? Okay, and now you’re saying so what if it isn’t true, you’ve heard of it happening everywhere so it’s perfectly okay to have spread the false rumour as if it was fact.

Ah, right, and the guards and media are in on it? The rare quadruple down, this will be interesting. You never needed this guide, you clearly mastered this art form.

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