Doing the right thing between January 1 and January 15 is better than not doing it at all

Battling with your New Year’s Resolutions already? Colm O’Regan is here to share in your struggles.

Resolutions — I have some minor ones: Flossing more (but it hurts!) and not procrastinating (I’ll probably start that next week).

New year’s resolutions are often derided as tokenistic, starting at the wrong time, or doomed to failure.

My view is that doing the right thing or being a better you between January 1 and January 15 is better than not doing it at all. Anyway, just to be on the safe side, my ancillary resolution is not to get annoyed with myself over a failure to keep up resolutions.

Although, if I break that, it’ll unleash such a storm of negative emotion, I might need therapy later — and then fail to keep attending.

My ‘worthy one’ this year (or this week, depending on how it goes) is to not let as much pass by unchallenged. And by “much” I mean the things I read; opinion, fake news, inaccuracies. And by challenged I mean making even a smidge of effort to try and query and ask whether it’s actually all correct or fair.

With the turd-storm of information flying around us, if more of us make even a tiny bit more of an effort to separate fact from chaff (that’s three metaphors in one sentence, another resolution broken), surely it will help this year. Sorry, I’ve just roped you into it as well too (a classic columnist’s trick).

I don’t think you have to plough through the annual reports from a Cayman Islands holding company to fight for a tiny bit of truth either.

You could just spend your day on Facebook gently nudging people (or roaring at them that they’re Something-ist, whatever your preference).

We could resurrect that old skill “to google”. I make it sound as if it’s a dying skill, like whittling, because for a lot of the time I don’t really use the Internet like I used to. I see something on my phone, stab a reactionary thumb at it, and share it or like it without checking.

But we used to google things. I know Google isn’t a saint, but then neither was Henry Ford and we still drive cars. So if you see a photo shared by an aunt-in-law that says “This refugee is stealing Curlywurlies from this baby” maybe just do a quick search to double check it’s true before sharing it to your Family Reunion For Nan’s 90th Birthday WhatsApp Group.

Every side is at it. During the American presidential election, a Trump quote from 1998 was doing the rounds saying that he would run for the Republican Party because Republican voters are “stupid”.

He never said that. It’s amazing they bothered because the stuff he actually said was way worse.

From now on, I’m going to try and understand the author of something I’ve read. Where are they coming from, figuratively? Why would they say that? What would be their biases? (Actually what are mine?)

Or are they just looking for notoriety because it might get them more work? Do they get more money based on the number of people who click on the link? Or were they stuck for a topic, like I often am? I’ll ask questions like: Who wins?

Say a paper you like suddenly prints something that smells like feet, maybe wonder whether they’re doing it to generate clicks on their website. Because clicks equal advertising money.

I’ll try and look for other opinions on the thing that’s been written about. Dammit, at the bare minimum I’ll google “fake Audi Car giveaways on Facebook”. It won’t win me a Pulitzer but it’ll prevent me from looking like a gobshite.

And then when I’ve got a few more facts, maybe I’ll consider tiptoeing into the online debate a bit more, leaving the fact in there, tactfully like as if I were the room service fella in a room where the occupants are naked.

The trick is to avoid spending all of one’s available time arguing with strangers online — time which should be spent dandling a child, fetching fuel, or minding a ham. So I’ll probably need a sixth resolution for that — to just stop and leave.