Over the weekend, funny man Kevin Hart came under the social media firing squad and unfortunately for him, he did not leave unscathed. Essentially, Kevin’s seemingly homophobic tweets from years ago were unearthed and he had some questions to answer. This is not the first time these tweets have come up and neither is Kevin the only personality to have this happen to him. Other examples are:
@Brothernature (Kelvin Peña)
In 2016, Kelvin Peña won the hearts of many and went viral with a video featuring “Canella, the deer”. Since then, he’s taken over social media with his affectionate animal videos. He also feeds hundreds of underprivileged families in the US and Africa under his Everybody Eats Foundation.
Kelvin’s now 20 year past came back to haunt him for several distasteful tweets. Some of the reemerging tweets which he recently apologized for are “HAIL HITLER” and “When I grow up I wanna be like Chris Brown. So, if my girlfriend tried to look through my phone while driving I can choke and punch her”, among others. As to be expected, Twitter ate him alive.
And…
@jamesgunn
James Gunn, 51, a Marvel studios director known for his work on Guardians of the Galaxy was under attack after numerous old tweets resurfaced of him joking about pedophilia and going on abusive rants towards women. In his old posts, Gunn uses graphic and sexual terms, while slamming other celebrities and movie projects. The controversial tweets date back to 2009 through 2011. Gunn has since issued an apology on Twitter.
Now back to Kevin.
@KevinHart4real
For those who live under a rock, Kevin Hart is an American comedian, actor and producer, who has seen a meteoric rise in his career recently, around 2016 and 2017. He’s starred or featured in multiple blockbuster movies, he’s hosted the MTV Movie Awards and has been arguably deemed the King of Stand-up Comedy since his rise to fame. He was slated to crown it all by hosting the Oscars in 2019 until the Internet reminded everyone that his old tweets happened.
Kelvin has apologized numerous times in the past but recently had to publicly do so again while also stepping down from hosting the Oscars.
So what does this have to do with you?
You and your brand
Times change. People change. Brands change. Such is the nature of life and things. The best case scenario is to make sure you don’t use social media to project thoughts and opinions that may later come back and bite you in the you-know-what, but sometimes what’s done is done.
You may suddenly find yourself in a situation where you are more accountable for your opinions and social media representation. You may have just closed that fantastic new deal, your boss just started following you on socials or your company made some bad marketing/PR moves.
When all else fails, purge those tweets!
Here are some steps you can take:
1) Delete Your Account
Throw the whole account away. Sometimes completely deleting your account may be the only way to go. You can do this by finding “Settings and Privacy > Accounts > Deactivate your account (at the bottom). This process even allows you to announce your new account link to your followers. Obviously, the disadvantage with this option is you lose all your other wonderful tweets and followership built over the years.
2) Manual Tweet Deletion
This is painstaking but what is it the wise folks say? Desperate times call for desperate measures? Yes! Journey through the past and review your timeline tweet by tweet and delete anything that is incriminating or no longer represents who you are or want to portray. Now the disadvantage with this exercise is you can’t control the screenshots that may already be stored in someone’s image folder just waiting to end your life.
3) Use Apps or Plugins can
From delete.twitlan.com (deletes your last 3,200 tweets) to go.cardigan.com (filter tweets with keywords) to tweeteraser.com (organizes tweets in table so that you choose what to delete) to Tweetdelete (choose a timespan to delete), luckily, there are several apps and websites that can solve this problem for you.
Caution: revoke access to these plugins when the purge is done.
Tweet purging should be a last resort. Ultimately you should always avoid insensitive tweets to ensure that you are safe. Before you hit that tweet button ask yourself: “Is there any circumstance under which I would be remorseful for tweeting this one day?”
Save your future self the trouble of having the kind of weekend Kevin Hart just had.
Be safe in these Internet streets, guys!
Kuuku believes that less is always more and this translates into his minimalist design approach. Although he has been a creative since childhood, it was after his degree in Business Administration, Marketing that he professionally pursued graphic design.