LET me tell you something very weird. And be rather petty as I do so.

There are people – usually on the internet – with tremendously strong views about a place they call Dombas, a region which does not appear on any map and which is never mentioned on the news.

These mostly keyboard warriors mean, I suspect, the Donets River Basin of eastern Ukraine, much of which has been occupied by Russia or its proxies for nearly a decade.

What happens is they surprisingly often misspell – and mispronounce – this crucial area’s abbreviated name, Donbas. The ’n’ the word becomes an ‘m”.

READ MORE: Why Kremlin thinks your language determines your vote in the Ukraine – and Scotland

In fact, this particular little mistake always strikes me as perfectly reasonable. English speakers find it hard to follow an ’n’ with a ‘b’.

We naturally morph words to make them easier to say, replacing the ’n’ with an ‘m’. Sometimes these little changes become permanent. That is why, for example, the capital of Dunbartonshire is confusingly called Dumbarton.

So talking about Dombas instead of Donbas is an entirely innocent and completely understandable gaffe. We all get things wrong, not least foreign place names. No biggie, you might well say.

Except should we not expect those who take radical, even zealous, stances on this chunk of Ukraine to know what it is called?

Surely, after more than 600 days of full-scale war, nearly a decade after Vladimir Putin’s fake “separatists” seized Donetsk and Luhansk, keyboard warriors would get the name right?

Well, sure, yes. Some have started to notice the mistake. But others are still typing away.

Gun the word “Dombas” in to your favourite social media platform’s search bar and you will see what I mean. Even this week you will find people raging about supposedly Nazi-loving Ukrainians – or maybe even “Ukranians” – bombing the poor “Russians" of, well, “Dombas".

READ MORE: Scotland’s hidden anti-Tory block vote

I suppose this is what happens when people vomit up Kremlin propaganda they have not even digested properly.

Little brainfails like misnaming a Ukrainian region are laced through social media discourse on big foreign stories. They are like blood in stool, a tell-tale sign that something is wrong.

It is worth being petty about this stuff, it is worth noticing the wee slips and blunders that the unknowing make. Details, they matter: they expose larger ignorance.

We often portray the kind of people who push Putin’s talking points on the internet – or at the bar – as either frighteningly gullible or frightfully corruptible . And this characterisation is – sorry to be blunt – scarily often true.

But there is another type who frequently ends up being both the victim and the perpetrator of disinformation and misinformation: somebody who is both very opinionated but also shockingly inattentive.

For the sake of simplicity, let us call this category of goober “Dombas” guys and gals. You might come across them in the pub, or scroll past them on Facebook.

If you do, I am honestly not sure if it is worth tapping their shoulder – in real life or online – and asking why on Earth they have taken such a staunch position on a place with which they are, obviously, entirely unfamiliar.

I have tried. The Dombas guys and gals think those who challenge them are ghastly know-it-all nitpickers. As if it is too much to ask people to know the names of the communities they are lying about – whether they know it or not – on behalf of a bloody tyrant.

READ MORE: De-colonising Russia and the independence movements threatening Putin

I guess there is nothing new about people having very stupid views on topics about which they know absolutely nothing. But there seems to be so little cost in doing so in our social media age.

Why bring this up now? Because some of the “Dombas” guys and gals have moved on to a new story: the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

I say “new story” but it is nothing of the kind. We are witnessing another bloody chapter in a long-running saga of violence spawning violence.

For a lot of people, conflict in the near east has been like elevator muzak for their entire lives, a background noise they barely notice.

That means they can hum along to the tunes, but they do not know the words.

Take Martin Daubney. The former lads mag editor and tabloid hack has been railing against support for Ukraine – but for Israel.

Early this week the one-time Brexit Party MEP posted a picture on X, the former Twitter, of some Africans standing, harmlessly, on or around the plinth of a London statue of Bernard Montgomery, the Second World War field marshall. They were protesting – a while back, actually – about what was happening in Sudan. Some of them had the flags of their country.

Mr Daubney, an occasional commentator on scandal-hit right-wing chat channel GB News, wrongly thought they were waving Palestinian symbols and that they were doing so during recent pro-Palestine demos. So he slagged them off.

He kept the materially misleading post up long after his error was pointed out to him. I guess that is how he rolls.

The flags of Palestine and Sudan are pretty similar. Muddling them is forgivable: if you own up to it.

You do not need to be an expert to have a view on distant events.

But should not solidarity from afar come with some humility? A little respect? The people we are shouting about – at least when we do so online – can tell when we get the basics wrong, such as the name of their region or the colours of their flag.

I have picked two really stupid examples of people revealing their ignorance. But there, of course, there is an endless supply.

The first act of international solidarity is to pay attention. If you are not doing that, you are not helping anybody, even yourself. So let us not put up with Dombasses.