I wouldn't usually do this, but since you're arguing it's okay...
Here's you belittling someone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25349593
Here's you discovering that text doesn't always convey the tone you wanted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24518501
Here's you being rude: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055238
If you don't think these comments reflect badly on you, wait until the online mob has had a few hours to get angry and then try explaining. Remember that anyone going after you can take comments out of context, add commentary to twist the perspective, and pull comments from arbitrarily far into the past (extra useful if you've ever changed your mind).
None of them is "mean/rude". Perhaps not watered-down to the modern PC norms, but they are perfectly fine and would've not been out of place in an in-person conversation.
You appear to be mistaking expressing an opinion for showing a disrespect or trying to offend someone. That's a slippery slope.
This is obviously good advice, but the rest of your comment basically amounts to rephrasing "there is nothing to be afraid of if you have nothing to hide". The problem is that often times people don't have a choice about what they are forced to hide.
For example, one's sexuality is often something that needs to be hidden. It isn't just that some fetishes are embarrassing. Some orientations in some jurisdictions are illegal or not legally protected. It was just a few months ago that the US Supreme Court ruled that you can't fire people for being gay for example. And that is just the legal repercussions. There are all sorts of social, religious, and familial circles that will react negatively to a person's true self that might force that person to hide a part of their life.
Ideally we get to a place in the future when this isn't true. However it is true today and failing to recognize it is either of sign of naivety, privilege, or a lack of empathy.
Here are several maps[1] of the US that show the states and counties where it is legal to discriminate against LGBT people in housing, education, healthcare, public accommodations and whether or not hate crimes against them are recognized by the governments as hate crimes.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Stat...
You know the Gibson quote "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed"? The corollary is that the present isn't evenly distributed either. The past often lingers well past it's sell-by date.
So even if/when we get to such a place, I don't think the problem will actually go away for a long time, if ever.
Consider that the US is more than two generations past the 1964 civil rights act, and that while, as a country, the US recently elected and even reelected a Black president, there has subsequently been a significant reactionary backlash, to put it mildly, that is still ongoing.
This is to say nothing of the (however unfathomable) possibility of the country taking a 180 and walking this back.
Plus I really think people should be able to mature, just because you said something really mean when you were 19, doesn't mean at 39 you're a horrible person. In fact just because you said something really mean at 19, doesn't mean you're a horrible person at 19. But instead of it being a one-off comment at a party, it's now a part of you. I really think this is why so many young adults get so stressed out over social media, you constantly need to create this artificial image of some superhuman who's living a fantastic amazing life. Any misstep you'll lose fans,followers, etc. This makes so many people so miserable.
I know I became much happier after I got rid of my social media, but again to each their own.
Rereading my blog entries from 15 years ago, I wouldn't write the same things today, but if someone points at a 2006 blog entry to say something about 2021 me I also expect people won't take them especially seriously.
I suspect such claims will come off as very hollow to most people who have become upset with you. You would probably be questioned about why you had not proactively removed and apologized for your old writings on your own, as soon as you "changed your mind" about the topic. This of course ignores that changes are often slow, and rather unlikely to prompt you to recall every single trace you may have left of your previous thoughts. But that's all squishy context that the internet has thoroughly shown it does not care for, nor even recognize most of the time.
I do think it might be different if my entire online presence consisted of a handful of posts written a long time ago, but anyone trying to get a sense of me from my writing can tell very quickly that I have a lot of views about a lot of different things.
Your view seems quite naive to me. Not only do times change, with previously acceptable things becoming unspeakable (eg. "retarded", "transsexual", "transvestite"), but with taking out of context and selective quoting you can distort the meaning of almost anything.
They really leaned on the idea that you can get away with insensitive humor as long as it’s delivered by the crass idiot of the show (generally Gob)
It also seems to be very asymmetric, in that the ones most likely to attack are the ones with the least history. It's an asymmetric tool younger folks can use against older folks, and that asymmetry will always exist.
easy for you to say
When the UX is deliberately designed to make is seem more like a free flowing discussion in a bar, the responsibility is no longer sorely with the user.
However, there’s a really easy way to not worry about this: don’t be mean/rude to other people publicly, and think about what you say before writing it down.
It’s also hard to be “compromised” if you really own who you are. Embarrassing things about yourself are only embarrassing if you’re embarrassed about them.
Obviously, people have interests and fetishes they’d rather not be made public. Maybe they’d like to interact with those communities online and remain anonymous. I don’t have an easy answer for that - an alt account might not be enough.
Still, for many social media sites it really is in some ways the same standard as written letters. Don’t write things that you’re worried about being read and attributed to you in the future.
Security by obscurity many apply: if in 2050 everyone everyone has 30-40 years of social media data under their belt, it strikes my as unlikely that anybody’s going to care about the one thing you said 30 years ago, a needle in quite an enormous haystack.
After all, you aren’t a historical figure.