I was a guest on a television show a few years back, and I told a story about buying a used car. It was an old Subaru Outback, I explained, and when I bought it in 1988 it was already eight years old, with a rusted undercarriage and a perpetual oil leak.

“Subaru didn’t make an Outback back then,” about two dozen angry viewers tweeted at me the next day. “Why are you lying? What else are you lying about?”