I think because they think they’re superior. A guy nailed the problem 2000 years ago: people tend to overlook their problem and concentrate and blame other for minor issues.
Quid autem vides festucam in oculo fratris tui, trabem autem, quae in oculo tuo est, non consideras?
aut quomodo potes dicere fratri tuo: Frater, sine ejiciam festucam de oculo tuo: ipse in oculo tuo trabem non videns? Hypocrita, ejice primum trabem de oculo tuo: et tunc perspicies ut educas festucam de oculo fratris tui.
Yeah, you’ve got to wonder about people who seem to enjoy the constant flow of virtual public stonings. It’s a special kind of damage of its own.
I have one tweet asking about the temperature of a black hole. Hopefully that isn’t taken out of context.
Of course not. There is a real problem with people believing that they can say whatever hurtful shit they want, and not be called out for it. I knew from a young age that saying racist stuff was not acceptable. This isn’t rocket surgery, it’s just common decency, and it’s a little disheartening to see that people can’t grok that very basic fact on social media.
I’m not sure where you grew up or what the circumstances of your family were, but when I was a kid racism was all around me. Racist language and jokes were common. This was the 1970’s and I had joke books filled with ethnic humor that in hindsight were straight up racist and I used to take these to school to read. Some of my favorite comedy albums that I listened to over-and-over had racist humor.
If Twitter was around back then there’s a good chance I would have posted something that I would be terribly ashamed of now.
The turning point for me was going to college and living in a big dorm and making new friends. I was already a different person when I went home for Thanksgiving in my first year.
That’s an interesting way of looking at things. I was just using “imprisoning people” as an analogy for a mental process, and I think it would probably be off-topic to discuss the U.S.’s prison system here, but you’ve given me something to think about, thanks.
The whole Internet? That’s going to take more than five minutes.
Why is Twitter even a thing? Has anything good come from it? And can we take up a collection, buy it, and shut it down?
Oooh! We could shadow-ban everyone. Then all the garbage people will just be hurling invective into the void.
Yeah… did I ever say that there wasn’t racism all around me, too? There absolutely was, including having the KKK setting up recruiting near my house, in full regalia at a time where the face covering had been banned. And my family was white working class, so they weren’t exactly paragons of racial tolerance…
I was saying that I knew that saying certain things was wrong from a young age. Not that I was perfect or didn’t say insensitive things, but I was aware that there were hurtful things you shouldn’t say.
I think the best way to handle such things is to own up to them, and try to make amends somehow. It’s important for personal growth to be able to acknowledge having done hurtful things to others. We’ve all done something that hurt someone else that we wish we could take back, because we’re human.
This 100%! I think the guy in the article handled the situation well. His public apology coupled with his charitable actions make me believe he’s grown up a lot.
Here’s the statement he made after the Register published the initial article:
It was just 10 days ago that I was a guy in the crowd holding a sign looking for beer money on ESPN Game Day.
Since then – so much has happened. Especially when I announced all of the money would be donated to the Stead Family Children’s Hospital in Iowa City.
Thousands of people have donated and today the account is at 1.14 million dollars. Much of this has happened thanks to social media – it has the power to bring people together for a common good.
It also can make your life very public.
And that is why I wanted to share with you that eight years ago – when I was a sophomore in high school, I made some social media posts with my friends that quoted and referenced the show Tosh.0.
One of those posts was brought to my attention by a member of the media today. I had no recollection of it. In re-reading it today – eight years later – I see it was an attempt at humor that was offensive and hurtful.
I am so embarrassed and stunned to reflect on what I thought was funny when I was 16 years old. I want to sincerely apologize.
Thankfully, high school kids grow up and hopefully become responsible and caring adults. I think my feelings are better summed up by a post from just 3 years ago:
“Until we as a people learn that racism and hate are learned behaviors, we won’t get rid of it. Tolerance towards others is the first step.” – July 8, 2016
I am sharing this information tonight because I feel a responsibility to all of the people who have donated money.
I cannot go back and change what I posted when I was a 16-year-old. I can apologize and work to improve every day and make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.
And, I am so very thankful for the generosity of the thousands of people who have donated to our fundraising push for the Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
Sure. I’m glad he was able to own up to what he did in the past and try and make amends for it today. He can’t undo the hurt he did then, but he can most certainly take responsibility. Usually, people just offer weak excuses about kids being kids, rather than owning up, though.
Well, in between the bouts of deep self-loathing.
When he was 13 and 14 yrs old. Probally watched a lot of South Park.
Worst thing about young teenagers is they are immature.
Well, as an iowan who has had to watch this car wreck unfold, its insane that NEITHER the reporter or the kid, Carson, had ANY issue with the other.
Im glad the tweet was included showing Carson had no problem with the register. He responded to it with class.
Faintly mentioned in most writeups on this was that the mentions of the social media comments were literally shoved at the ass end of the profile, in barely a few sentences, vaguely with no real specifics or attention drawn to them. Its a 99% up fluff peice.
All of a sudden, it became “reporter goes after philanthropist for clicks”. And yeah, busch light, who is honoring their donation and made him a commemorative can, is severing the relationship. But it didn’t exist a week ago, and ran its course.
Seriously, the reporter and Carson should have just grabbed a beer together and said “fuckin internet people, amirite?”
Its such a wierd nonevent cooked up by trolls on both sides. Its just a shitshow of back and forths by people who are not the reporter or Carson, but done on their behalfs despite no one asking. Its surreal.
I don’t disagree with you in the least on that. But I see a difference between digging for previous hurtful things in the background of a public figure who is seeking a position of power over others, and digging in the background of someone who did nothing but take a million bucks he could have legally spent on bling for himself but instead gave it to help kids with cancer.
What this newspaper did was out of line. Way, WAY out of line. If they had not decided to poke into this kid’s Twitter history I do not think the amount of racism in the USA would have increased by 0.0000001 per cent.
And be careful what you do between now and then.
This afternoon I saw a guy sitting on the sidewalk who was clearly down on his luck. I had a spare fiver in my pocket and went over to offer it to him.
Quick as a wink, he pulls out an old iPhone and says, “Wait!! I need to check your Twitter history before I decide to take that.”
I legged it.
Not true. Especially for social media, as soon as it closes lots of content is lost forever.
Digital archiving is a pain in the ass. Just try to recover something from early 2000s in the web. It gets pretty bad. Links won’t work, photos don’t load, plug-ins are dead, even a missing CSS file can make that content pretty hard to read.
Some company bought Flickr and they simply demanded ransom for not deleting all of your photos minus an arbitrary number, people didn’t pay? Fuck that content. One of the biggest repositories of pictures available via creative commons dies, just like that.
I think the young man handled it well, accepted the consequences of his actions when he was younger, while acknowledging what he did was wrong. He seemed to handle it with grace, so good on him.
The journalist did what journalists do, in this case, like it or not. But the fact that then the journalist had questionable things? That’s the WTF here, I think. And they are now shit canned because of it.
