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I Was the One Calling People Out Over Old Tweets Until Someone Did It to My Brother
Ngl I used to screenshot old posts from celebrities and pile on with everyone else, felt like I was doing something good. Then about 8 months ago my brother got dragged on X for a dumb joke he made when he was 19, and his job in Columbus actually made him sit down with HR over it. The joke was bad, sure, but he was basically a kid when he posted it and he'd changed a lot since then. Watching 4,000 strangers decide who he was as a person from one line kind of broke my brain. Now I try to ask myself if the person actually still stands by the thing before I share anything. Where do you all draw the line between holding someone accountable and just digging up old stuff for sport?
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the_emma12h ago
Ugh, I felt this in my bones. I read this piece a while back about how the internet never forgets but people do change, and it talked about how we used to give folks room to grow and now we just go for blood over stuff from years ago. What got me was the part about how a dumb post from when you're a teenager doesn't show who you are now, it just shows you were a teenager. There's a real difference between someone who still says that stuff today and someone who said it once and clearly grew up. The pile-on thing is just so easy to join and it feels like justice in the moment, but it's really just a mob. I don't have a clean answer for where the line is, but asking "does this person still stand by this" feels like the right place to start.
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