The one thing everyone misses about cancel culture is the permanent paper trail

I keep seeing people argue about whether cancel culture is just a temporary online storm or something that actually ruins lives. But what nobody talks about is how the internet never forgets, even when the mob moves on. Back in 2018 I had a coworker named Sam who got called out for an old tweet from 2011 where he was 19 and dumb. The outrage lasted maybe 10 days, but that tweet screenshot still shows up if you Google his name in 2024. He lost his job at a marketing firm in Austin and now can't even get an interview because hiring managers find that old stuff. I know because I tried to help him get a job at my current company last summer and HR flagged it instantly. So sure, the mob gets bored and finds someone else, but the damage sits there forever. Has anyone else seen this play out years after the fact?

3 comments

3 Comments

foster.charles2mo ago

Look at it from the company's side though. If I'm hiring someone and I find they posted something racist or cruel online, even if it was years ago, that tells me something about their judgment. Sam being 19 doesn't change the fact that he put that out there for the world to see and never deleted it.

hayes.jake2mo ago

Good heavens, that is one of the most chilling things I have read in a long time. The fact that a stupid tweet from 2011 can still kill a job opportunity over a decade later is just staggering. You would think once the mob moves on and finds a new target, the slate would be wiped clean, but it clearly is not. That poor guy Sam is basically walking around with a permanent scarlet letter that HR departments can pull up in two seconds. It makes you wonder how many other people are out there, completely invisible to the hiring world, because of something foolish they said when they were a teenager.

gibson.elizabeth1mo ago

I actually helped Sam scrub what we could back in 2019... we used a service called BrandYourself that costs like $20 a month and it pushed the old stuff down to page 3 of Google results after about 6 months. The trick is to build up positive content on LinkedIn, personal blogs, and even Medium articles with his full name attached so the bad stuff gets buried. He also changed his Twitter handle and deleted every tweet from before 2016, but the screenshot still lives on sites like Imgur and archive.is which you cant take down. It took about 8 months of steady work but now most of the first page results for his name are his new portfolio and a couple of charity event mentions... it's doable but you have to treat it like a second job.