Social Media and Depersoning People

Carson King the young man who raised over a million dollars for a children's hospital in Iowa due to his sign at College Gameday is being dropped by many supporters. Many of you don't know the name, because as quickly as he became a viral sensation, he became the target of scorn as old tweets resurfaced and people condemned him for racist things written 7 years ago. Tweets from 2012 surfaced showing definitive racist remarks, as well as other offensive writings Carson tried to pass off as humor. Carson has since apologized for the tweets and his deal with Anheuser Busch has been revoked in light of that information.Carson even reported that he was glad the journalists at the Des Moines register dug up his old offensive tweets. Saying,

"I am embarrassed and stunned to reflect on what I thought was funny when I was 16-year-old."

Ok.This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened. A cursory Google search on people apologizing for their actions of "way back when" will yield a laundry list of results. Go ahead try it. Careers have been ruined or forever altered, all because of words on Social Media. Not acts that actually physically harm anyone...but words on a screen.It's very important that people understand what we're about to say.In no way shape or form do we condone bad actions.Re-read that. Do it again so it gets through the knee jerk reactionary thought process our social media culture has become enamored with.Now that we put that disclaimer out we can basically say whatever the fuck we want. Just kidding.There needs to be a line. Honestly, who sat and took the time to go through 7 years worth of this dudes tweets to find something bad? Why? Is our pettiness really that laser-focused? Yeah, he said some really bad shit, 7 fucking years ago. Ask yourself this question before getting uppity with us. Are you the same exact person you were 7 years ago? Have you not learned, or grown in 7 years? Would you, absent the social media witch hunt, look back on some of the innocent things you've said and think "What in the fuck was I thinking?"Consider this. We live in Texas, so we'll use this state's data.

Statute of Limitations in the state of Texas: Murder, manslaughter, numerous sex crimes: none; certain theft offenses, forgery, arson: 10 yrs.; money laundering: 7 yrs.; other theft offenses, robbery: 5 yrs.; others: 3 yrs.

The statute of limitations for some felonies is shorter than the time that has passed since homeboy's indiscretions. We can forgive certain felonies after 3, 5, 7 years, but we can't ever let anyone forget that someone somewhere, sometime, was stupid? Obviously, we need to take into account who the person is currently, have they grown or changed? Is this behavior a pattern or a one-off from their normal good judgment?At the end of the day...Stop. Deifying. People. They are, we are...in fact imperfect and prone to acts of ignorance and poor judgment throughout the entirety of our lives, especially on social media.We wanted to give a hard and fast rule about how this should be done, but the truth is, there is no hard and fast rule...outside of letting people just be people. Let them make mistakes, grow and make amends in the realm of what is humanly possible, and move on.Just know we'll never apologize for shit we say and we hope you go looking so we can own it and remind you that there is nothing we can do to undo the past, so...ya know like go fuck yourself guy.