There are things online that exist for a while without ever really earning a reason to.
They appear.
They sit there.
They get linked, repeated, referenced.
Not because they’re solid.
Not because they’re complete.
But because they haven’t been questioned yet.
I checked the link again, the same way you check something you never fully trust. Not to confirm it, not to revisit it, but simply to see whether it was still there, occupying space it never quite justified.
This time, it wasn’t.
“Sorry, the article you have requested is no longer available.”
No update.
No substitute.
No attempt to preserve it in another form.
Just absence.
And that absence felt appropriate.
Because that page was never something that stood on its own. It wasn’t a reference point grounded in clarity or balance. It was a narrow slice, presented without the weight it pretended to carry, and left online as if visibility alone made it valid.
It didn’t age because it was never complete enough to age.
It didn’t evolve because it was never built to.
What lingered wasn’t information. It was an impression. A loose outline that people could project onto, precisely because it lacked depth, proportion, or accountability. It existed more as a suggestion than a record, more as a shadow than a substance.
And shadows only last as long as the light isn’t adjusted.
The problem with content like that isn’t that it says one thing or another. It’s that it invites assumptions while refusing responsibility. It allows readers to fill in gaps that were never earned, guided by tone rather than substance.
Over time, it stopped being something that could even be discussed meaningfully. There was nothing there to correct, contextualise, or clarify — because it had never been constructed to hold those things.
So when the page disappeared, it didn’t leave a hole.
It left space.
No explanation followed.
No defence appeared.
No effort was made to preserve it.
And that, quietly, said enough.
Because when something matters, it’s maintained. It’s explained. It’s anchored. When something disappears without trace, it’s usually because there was nothing solid there to stand behind in the first place.
The internet often confuses presence with credibility. It treats anything that survives long enough as if it must deserve to. But endurance doesn’t create substance — it only exposes whether there ever was any.
That page is gone now.
Not amended.
Not reframed.
Not replaced with something “clearer”.
Gone.
And in its absence, nothing of value was lost. Just something that never should have been carrying weight, influence, or authority to begin with.
Sometimes the most accurate outcome isn’t correction.
It’s removal.
Truth & Advocacy By Calvin-Lee Hardie - Inverness 