I’ve been in communications for 38 years, and I’ve never seen it like this. It’s never BEEN like this.

A Republican Facebook friend recently deleted my comment proving that a photo of Kamala Harris with Jeffrey Epstein is a lie. A Democrat online friend refused to delete their posted meme saying that Starbucks was a major donor to the GOP convention—also proved to be a fiction. (For the record: Starbucks provides free coffee to first responders at both conventions as they have for years, a bipartisan caffeination if ever I saw it.)

To extend the metaphor: Too many people are drinking the Kool-Aid of fake news and inaccurate memes, and it is as dangerous of an exercise in this polarized political moment as the real-life Jim Jones massacre that inspired that phrase.

I respect all my friends, despite political differences, online and off. However, my thumbs are becoming the most muscular part of my body as I attempt to shovel back the ocean of digital detritus. “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true” is a cliché, but it’s truer than ever now.

There’s a difference between free speech and free access to the Internet. Think before you post. Actually, Snopes.com before you post.

My lodestar for political debate (actually, for everything) is my Grandma (1898-1989). As a child, I walked with her to the polls. When I was 14, I asked her if she remembered her first election.

“I voted in the first election in which women were allowed to vote,” she said, leaning on my teenaged shoulder. As a “Yella’ Dog Democrat” she had her preferences (“FDR saved my family’s life”), but I always remember her wizened wisdom as she entered her precinct: “If you put a Democrat and a Republican in a bag and shake ’em up, I don’t know who would fall out first.”

Indeed, the last few years (decades?) have shaken up our political discourse, and I have no idea who will “fall out” this November. But I do know this: Reposting mindless memes doesn’t inform our electorate. Argue, advocate and, above all, vote for the candidate of your choice. But for the love of all things holy: Stop spreading misinformation.

No, as of this moment, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift aren’t doing a concert for Kamala, and Trump didn’t “stage” his assassination attempt. I would recommend that for the next 94 days (how about forever?), we ascribe to “The Four Gates of Speech” before we open our mouths or activate our socially iPhoned digits:

  • Is what I have to say true?
  • Is what I have to say necessary?
  • Is now the appropriate time to say this?
  • Is what I’m saying kind?

If we open those gates, and our efforts are proven to be false? To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: Take down that post.

David Eugene Perry has been a public-relations consultant for 38 years, and is the author of the award winning mystery thriller Upon This Rock.