I mentioned this phenomenon in the Hulk Hogan story that popped up recently. Tl;dr, someone posted Hogan saying some racist things in a private conversation from 8 years ago, the story got picked up by The National Enquirer, and now the WWE has disowned him, and even removed him from the Hall of Fame.
It terrifies me that someone could find something I said nearly a decade ago and get me fired for it, today. I don't agree with all the stances I held 3 years ago, let alone 8. But as you mentioned, the phenomenon isn't limited just to the past. I'd be horrified to find that someone recorded me on a bad day and put it on YouTube with my name attached. We shouldn't judge people based on isolated incidents of us at our worse, but that's the type of drama that sells. If a consumer market didn't exist for it, if people weren't begging to be fed stories like these, they wouldn't exist at all.
I mentioned this phenomenon in the Hulk Hogan story that popped up recently. Tl;dr, someone posted Hogan saying some racist things in a private conversation from 8 years ago, the story got picked up by The National Enquirer, and now the WWE has disowned him, and even removed him from the Hall of Fame.
It terrifies me that someone could find something I said nearly a decade ago and get me fired for it, today. I don't agree with all the stances I held 3 years ago, let alone 8. But as you mentioned, the phenomenon isn't limited just to the past. I'd be horrified to find that someone recorded me on a bad day and put it on YouTube with my name attached. We shouldn't judge people based on isolated incidents of us at our worse, but that's the type of drama that sells. If a consumer market didn't exist for it, if people weren't begging to be fed stories like these, they wouldn't exist at all.