Update: A friend talked me out of jumping on the bandwagon to cancel a local restaurant owner

So last month our town's Facebook group was up in arms about the owner of a diner on Main Street. Someone posted screenshots of his old tweets from like 2014 saying some pretty tone-deaf stuff about gentrification. I was ready to never eat there again. But then I had a coffee with my buddy Dave who actually knows the guy. He told me the owner had been volunteering at the youth center every Saturday for the last 3 years teaching kids how to cook. Dave showed me a photo on his phone of the owner helping a kid flip pancakes. It hit me that the tweets were dumb but not evil, and the guy had been doing real good in the community since then. I ended up going back to the diner last Tuesday and told the owner about the whole thing. He apologized to me directly for what he wrote and said he learned a lot since then. Have any of you had a personal conversation change how you felt about a canceled person?

3 comments

3 Comments

oscarw831mo ago

Wait, hold up. You're telling me the guy from the tweets was LITERALLY teaching kids to flip pancakes? Like with a tiny spatula and everything? That's wild because I've seen those same old tweets floating around and they sound so arrogant, but seeing a photo of that would mess with my head too. I gotta say, a lot of people would just double down on canceling someone over dumb old posts, but you actually went and talked to him. That takes guts, man. And him actually apologizing to your face? That's way more than most folks would do.

alexw751mo ago

Man, that's a really decent ending to a messy situation. Good on you both.

the_joseph28d ago

Hard disagree honestly. Giving this guy a pass because he teaches kids to flip pancakes is exactly how bad actors get away with stuff. People aren't one dimensional sure but the tweets were out there for years before anyone noticed, he didn't delete them either until the blowback came. Apologizing to your face means nothing when you're standing right there cornered in a community center. Real change happens quietly not in a public moment where you have no choice. I'd need to see him actively working against whatever those old tweets promoted over time before I'd call it a decent ending. A lot of people do a good deed to cover up past garbage and it works every time.