Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/27/newspaper-fires-reporter-over.html
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Is there something about social media that sets off this odd suspension of self awareness? I mean, if I were to go digging through someone else’s old tweets to find racist ones from years back to publish, I’d likely first ask myself if I, too, had made racist tweets from years ago that someone else might uncover. But not this genius, who’s now lost his job.
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In related news, everything on the Internet is forever, and delete as you might, somewhere there is an accessible archive of you saying hateful things about baby ducks. Good luck keeping your job now, duck hater.
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The fact that he owned up to saying dumb stuff when he was 16 and profusely apologized for it makes me think that perhaps life has taught him stuff in the last 1/2 decade. I did shit as a kid that I’m completely embarrassed about and would love to rewind time and take those actions back. But time is causal and fortunately the internet didn’t exist in the 80’s as it does today.
This guy could have just taken the whole shebang and walked away, but instead he donated the money to a hospital. My vote: cut the dude some slack.
Edit: oh, and screw InBev. They’ve done so much worse to this world compared to this guy who is trying to be a stand-up guy.
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I think the sign guy handled it pretty well. 16 year old kids do dumb things.
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Most people don’t think that ‘they’ are a target. “They” have never met who I like to call “Sally”. “Sally” hates her life and spends her time looking for ways to make other people miserable. “Sally” has a had written spreadsheet with everyone in the office on it - when they arrive to work, when they leave, when they break, when they lunch, and how often they miss work. “Sally” does this because it’s the only thing in her life that gives validation - when they can point out someone else is worse than they are.
“Sally” has existed in forever - but most people don’t know her, even if they work next to her - because “Sally” is sneaky enough that many people don’t find out what she’s doing. “Sally” now has twitter and facebook to use against people that don’t even have to work with her.
Don’t be “Sally” - but know that she is looking at you now - just waiting to bring you down.
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I know for a fact that as a young person i was a shithead. I still had fairly “wannabe edgy” tendencies, humor and thoughts until the recent past and i had some stances that were ill-informed until like 6-5 years ago. I’m still the same person i’ve always been so it’s not like i’ve changed that much but at least i’ve learned more about myself and i’m aware of my biases and its a daily work in progress. I’m just glad i am not a public persona or had a bigger social media footprint because i know i would’ve said some dumbass things thinking it was funny.
This guy’s apology seems wholly genuine to me, and at 16 no one is perfect. I’m glad his current self is aware and mature enough to own it.
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A Couple of his “offensive” tweets were of the Fuck the police variety. Which gives me a sense that he’s not all bad. (The kid not the reporter)
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Very well said. However, if you ask most 16 y/o people, they will claim to be so 
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I think it’s more related to low quality journalism.
I surely have done something idiot or said some not-so-clever thing.
Actually I am sure that I’ve written some regrettable things in the past.
Luckily almost nobody remembers what BBS are and probably a lot of content was lost and not indexed by google.
Nowadays it’s easy to find al the traces one has left in the social media thinking to talk informally with friends an not to a wide worldwide audience.
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Yep, a bunch of tech-enabled Cousin Bettes. And now lazy reporters like this one are trying to turn it into a profession.
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The newspaper even held some sort of internal debate as to whether it was worth airing the completely non-related tweets. Apparently the decision was made to hold the sign guy to an impossible standard of perfection, shit on his life and undo his attempt at charity.
I know the tendency is to smirk that the reporter got hoisted by his own petard, but two idiotic wrongs dont make a right.
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Speaking as a former 16-year-old, agreed. He certainly did better than the PM of Canada on his first attempt to apologise for something dumb he did (several times) in his late 20s.
That’s part of it, but there’s still the matter of the reporter believing he would be immune from being called out for the same kind of stupid behaviour on social media, especially given that his target had built up a lot of public goodwill. Maybe this will serve as an object lesson about lazily casting stones at others in the immediate vicinity of one’s own glass house.
So we can add irresponsible and lazy editors to this story, who betrayed their own lazy reporter. I wonder what skeletons lurk in their social media closets.
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I think you misunderstand milkshake duck… the duck is the hater.
/s
If we want the world to change—if we want people to be other than the way they are, think differently from the way they think, do differently from what they’re doing—we have to allow people room to become informed, to learn and change. Every one of us is an unfinished, uneven work-in-progress until the day we die.
If we won’t allow for others to change, what’s the alternative? When we condemn people and put them in physical jail for their wrongs/mistakes it’s very expensive to keep them there, and has to be maintained with force. When we jail people in our own minds it’s very expensive and draining to ourselves to keep them there. We need to find more ways where encouraging people to learn, change, grow, and improve is the accepted and expected mode.
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You must be new here.
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Well that’s what we do now - note that the prison explosion almost directly corresponds to the baby boomer generation taking over - I don’t know wtf went wrong with our national mind here - but I think the horrors/payment for ww2 will have books written about what it did to our nation for an entire generation.
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Dear everyone:
Go back in your social media history and delete any tweets that might be considered problematic today.
You’re welcome.
Haha, no, obviously—but always hopeful.
And I’m as much speaking to myself as to the world Being mad at someone forever is exhausting.
Good news! I have no tweets! All done.
I suppose they could have not tweeted racist shit in the first place? Why do some people find that so hard?
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