It takes a lot of maturity to filter out the chaff from an online life, a maturity I am increasingly discovering I cannot yet claim for myself. Random posts by people I do not even know seem to be triggering a mental gag reflex, echoes of which refuse to go away, clutter up my mind, throw equilibrium out of sync. The latest instance is an ill-researched question on a quiz group. The question had got its facts wrong, perhaps understandable, given that the person asking the question is a raw undergraduate. What repulsed me was that someone more credible reverse-searched the image on Google, and typed out the "answer" he thus found to add a feather to his cap. I found this quite disturbing. I could not deal with the issue with equanimity, something I was expected to do since I am an administrator of the said online group. I finally ended up deleting the post, after posting a couple of comments asking for the source, and inquiring how this could have been answered honestly, given that the question itself had its facts wrong.

The question is, I feel this reflects a broader intolerance in me, something I will have to come to terms with considering the fact that I will be teaching a class of undergraduates soon. A lot of my professors (with whom I am friends with on Facebook) must be facing a lot of chaff in their profiles as well; probably much more than me, since they are friends with quite a few generations of their students. They seem to be dealing with it a lot better, and it goes back to my initial point about mental maturity I think. As ever, a few conversations with the wise would probably be helpful at this point.

I have deleted my post from a few days back whingeing about my family being recalcitrant; again because I felt it was immature. They had their logic, which was entirely sound. Again, the older and the wiser tend to be unnervingly right, as ever. In this case, I have managed to convince them of my point of view, and they have come around, as usual, in their wisdom and their kindness.