Save Us From the Tyranny of the Fact Checking Dorks

These guys stink! (Fact check: TRUE)

Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Think back to your time in elementary school. Now try and remember the worst, most obnoxious, most anal-retentive kid in your class: the one who insisted on being right, no matter how annoying it made them. The sort of second grader who would leap out of their seat to tell the teacher that “ACTUALLY tomatoes are a FRUIT not a VEGETABLE” (oh my god shut up who cares?) and then wait for a round of applause that never comes. I’m sure you know the type of kid I’m talking about. Hell, maybe you were the type of kid I’m talking about — if so, consider buying a few extra Discourse subscriptions to gift to your elementary school classmates as penance for being such a pain in the ass back then.

What you are not, however (at least I hope not), is the inevitable developmental endpoint of that sort of insufferably pedantic personality type: the professional fact checker. Because, if you were a professional fact checker, odds are pretty good that you’d be out there fucking this entire election cycle up, instead of reading this silly little blog about how much you’re fucking this entire election cycle up.

Allow me to explain.