Should we take old tweets seriously ?
The world we live in is ran by technology. More specifically the world we live in is ran by social media. Social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, more often than not, take up the majority of our free time. Social media can be used for a number of positive things such as promotion, sharing videos, or just keeping up with your favorite people. I’m sure many people could vouch and say that they are pretty social media savvy, in that they know how to navigate their way around the most popular apps. Many people might also be able to say they understand social media etiquette like what to post, what not post, etc. However, how many of us had proper social media etiquette when we were young. Twitter is a platform that originally surfaced March of 2006 and rapidly gained worldwide popularity among many ages, although the majority of users are millennials. When Twitter came on the scene it gave people a chance to speak their minds freely and tell others what was going on. Unfortunately, this means that when the majority of current users began using Twitter they were in their adolescent years, and may not have had proper understanding of social media etiquette. With this in mind the question that sparks in my head is, “Should we take old tweets seriously?”
The question will always be relevant, but for what reason? The internet and its users are undefeated. It seems like every time someone becomes too famous or relevant, tweets from when they were younger magically resurface and go viral due to the absurdity of the teenage mind and the lack of etiquette on social media at that age. Many celebrities such as Kevin Durant, have received some backlash for the tweets that resurfaced from years ago, but most of the responses not so bad. However, for Kelvin Pena, better known to the world as “Brother Nature”, a 20 year-old viral “nature/animal whisperer”, the tweets weren’t so laughable. It did not take long for images to go viral of “@coldgamekev”’s tweets from 2012. Pena tweeted things like, “Wanna hear a joke ? Women’s rights”, and “Heil Hitler”, which received a bunch of negative backlash from the public. Following the leak of the pictures, Pena released an apology letting the public know he is not proud of what he tweeted however, he is definitely changed from those young years.
How could we take old tweets seriously ? Especially from the mind of a 12–14 year old. Of course many of us had common sense at that age, but we were not thinking of the consequences of a social media platform like Twitter. At the age of 12 or 13 I said whatever came to my mind for a laugh, cursing was funnier than ever to me, and I still said things like “retard”. Many people do not have a filter at that age. Does that completely excuse the extremities of the comments Pena made regarding Hitler or women’s rights ? No. There is definitely a line that has to be drawn with a few of the comments that he made at the time. However, we have to be a little empathetic and understand that we were once that age in this world, with little to no understanding of the dangers of social media. Besides, a lot can change in 8 years, give the man a break. In the future though, I think we all should go back and try to clean up our Twitters because who knows what I tweeted in 2012.
