Stop what you’re doing and go delete every tweet from before the year 2016

This weekend, Brother Nature started trending on Twitter because — you guessed it — he was being exposed for problematic tweets. This beloved deer whisperer, who became famous for posting wholesome videos of himself feeding wild animals, was being criticized and outright canceled for his old tweets from 2011, which included statements like "Heil 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."

The "canceled" narrative is an extremely familiar one, and it follows the same pattern almost every single time. Someone digs through the Twitter account of a social media star, takes screenshots of their old tweets that are deemed problematic, and then publishes them for the world to see. People then react by "canceling" the social media star — often by unfollowing them, criticizing them, and otherwise retracting their support.

Dozens of social media celebrities have been canceled at various times in their careers — including Laura Lee, Nikita Dragun, Jeffree Star, Manny MUA, James Charles, and many more. And the consequences of being canceled are not insignificant. Laura Lee, for example, lost nearly half a million subscribers as well as many lucrative brand partnerships after her old racist tweets resurfaced.

So far, it doesn't look like a similar fate awaits Brother Nature. Especially since he was only 12 years old when he wrote most of these tweets (and also issued a pretty sincere apology), many people seem ready to forgive him. At the time of this post, Social Blade shows that he actually gained quite a few followers from this whole ordeal.

And good for him! Who among us weren't problematic little shits when we were 12 years old? I thank the stars every day that I didn't have a Twitter until I was 20 years old, armed with a fully developed prefrontal cortex and a college education that taught me about things like systemic racism and internalized misogyny.

But if I DID have a Twitter account back when I was a 12-year-old gremlin who slut-shamed anyone who was prettier than me, then the first thing I would do is delete all of my old tweets! Every single one of them! Because you know what's the only thing dumber than tweeting about Chris Brown beating Rihanna when you're an edgelord preteen who's trying way too hard to seem cool? Not deleting it when you're an adult who (hopefully) knows better!

And this is especially true if you're a famous person with a huge social media following. There are literally entire social media accounts dedicated to dragging celebrities and spilling the tea about them, or whatever the kids are saying these days. Do you REALLY think that a teenager with way too much time on their hands won't scroll to the very bottom of your Twitter archive just to find something that they can take out of context and make a 10-minute video about? Trust me, they will.

So what're you waiting for, folks? Delete your old tweets individually, or use a service like TweetDelete or TweetEraser to mass-delete thousands of your old tweets at a time. And with that simple step, all of your idiotic tweets of yore are gone. Try and cancel me now, haters!

@nian_hu