Digging up the Past

We live in a world where people are eager to dig up anything they can about certain people, or rather targets.

We always did this sort of thing on political candidates, its called vetting, but now we find a more random sort of research, although the amount of work required usually involves picking targets.

If you are in the public spotlight and for any number of reasons someone targets you, every thing you ever said on social media is likely to be scrutinized looking for anything that could be construed negatively.

Now, suppose someone has been somewhat active on social media and has posted hundreds or maybe even thousands of times.  If 99.99% of those are non-offensive but that .01% is bad enough, you can face a public scandal and have to explain yourself, even if the yourself your explaining was years ago.

There is no consideration of the fact that this person may have posted something when he was angry, tired, inebriated, or any other factor, there is the post, standing alone accusing the poster of inappropriate behavior.

Of course everyone has become more aware of social media now but years ago people treated it a little bit like private chat, or didn't consider long term consequences.

Of course some posts are worse than others, but we are don't seem to be particularly discriminating when we see these posts exposed.

We live in a world where digging up dirt can get rewarded, or at least get some attention, and everybody is under a movable spotlight.

There are actual bad people out there saying and doing bad things without trying to condemn someone for that one tweet sent out when they were pissed off years ago.