I don’t see many advantages to being #elderlyAF in 2018, at least until AARP starts offering discounts on gold bars in Red Dead Online. But one nice thing about being of an advanced age and having “grown up” before the age of social media — or the World Wide Web, or the discovery of fire — is that there’s no electronic evidence of my immature behavior when I was young and stupid.* None of the moronic things my friends and I did as teenagers were being surveilled, at least to the best of our knowledge. There’s no permanent record of our racist, sexist, homophobic, and otherwise problematic banter. We were kids, and we were allowed to be kids. We were young, dumb, and free of observation.
Those days are long gone:
As of early Sunday morning, four offensive tweets using an anti-gay slur remained active on the Heisman winner’s account https://t.co/K0hQ6MI7up
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) December 9, 2018
Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray had a Saturday to remember. But the Oklahoma quarterback’s memorable night also helped resurface social media’s memory of several homophobic tweets more than six years old.
When Murray was 15 years old, he tweeted at his friends (via his since-verified Twitter account) using an anti-gay slur to defame them. Four offensive tweets remained active on his account late Saturday night but were eventually deleted by Sunday morning — when Murray apologized for his insensitive language in a tweet.
Notice the framing here: The old tweets “resurfaced.” Nobody dug them up. Nobody said, “Hey, this guy just achieved something great… whadda we got on him?” Nope, this stuff just “resurfaced” on its own.
And the tweets “remained active.” In other words, it’s Murray’s fault for not deleting them before he accomplished something great. And if he had deleted them but somebody had taken screenshots already, that would mean he was trying to “hide the evidence.” It’s a Kafkatrap. It’s a lose/lose situation.
Here’s one of the things Murray tweeted as a teenager. I’d add a trigger warning, but if you’re reading a blog post with my pseudonym on it, you deserve whatever you get:
That’s it. That’s the big deal.
If we’re keeping count, this is the second black man in the space of a week who’s been publicly humiliated for old tweets right after achieving a career highlight. But the white people who took these guys down aren’t bigots, because they’re liberals and “gay” is higher than “black” in their hierarchy of victimhood.
I honestly couldn’t care less about the Heisman or the Oscars, but a lot of people do. Kyler Murray and Kevin Hart do. They both accomplished something that was important to them, and it was instantly ruined because of stupid stuff they wrote down on the internet years ago.
As noted pundit Jon Gabriel puts it: “The new secular religion has mortal sins and eternal punishment, but no means of forgiveness.” If you’ve ever blasphemed against someone or something these zealots hold dear, you will be held to account by the Clannish Inquisition. Don’t incur the wrath of LGBTQ, or you’ll be SOL.
Hey, wait a second. LGBTQ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and… queer. The very word that got Kyler Murray in trouble. Well, I guess that’s how identity politics works. The same word can be either a slur or a badge of honor, depending on who’s saying it. N-word, c-word, q-word, whatever. It’s all about the identity of the speaker.
How exhausting. No wonder libs are so touchy and miserable all the time. You would be too, if you had to tiptoe through a minefield every time you try to express yourself. One small misstep and… KABOOM!!!
It seems like a bad idea for identity groups to abuse their cultural power like this. There’s bound to be a backlash. This sort of political correctness has already helped give us President Trump, yet these professional victims can’t seem to stop themselves.
Note to the guy (or gal!) who eventually cures cancer: Before you announce it to the world, make sure to delete your Twitter account.
Actually, just go ahead and do that now. No good can come of being on Twitter. Trust me, I’m living proof.
*There’s only evidence of my immature behavior now that I’m old and stupid.
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