It was only a really, really trivial thing – but that’s what it looks like: My local paper have removed a comment I made on their website, and I can only imagine that it was removed because I shamed them.

The news report I commented on is this story about the son of a recent lottery winner. When I read it I noticed the comment that the chap in question wasn’t happy that his “personal life had come out” – the fifth paragraph in the article, which reveals where he lives, and his wife and son’s names and ages. The paragraph before gives his age and what he does. Indeed, later in the article, it points out that he originally claimed to do something else, in order to keep his real job a secret – I imagine most, if not all of the rest of the details I’ve mentioned were also included in what he didn’t want revealed.

The Bristol Evening Post published that information on their website in the very story in which they quote the man as saying he was unhappy about those details being published. Ironic, I thought.

And that’s pretty much what my comment said. I quote from memory, but it was something like:

‘[He] said he was “not happy” that his personal life had come out’ – quotes the Evening Post, while publishing those very details. How ironic.

Today, that comment is gone.

Removed.

Deleted.

Censored.