When I was looking into the Graham Platner drama, the thing that stuck out to me most was his controversial Reddit posts, and I came away with a much broader question:
If you were to run for office, and an advisor asked, “Is there anything out there on the internet that would disqualify you?” what would your answer be?
Keep in mind, we’re talking about your entire internet history. If there is something compromising out there, anything, no matter how disconnected or hidden it may be, the opposition will find it.
I’m assuming for most millennials and Gen-Z, the answer is either “Yes, and I’ll just show myself out,” or “No,” followed by spending the next four hours locked in the bathroom, hurriedly scrubbing your shame from the internet.
Me? I’d be running for the hills the second somebody said, “You should run for office.”
Show me a young-ish politician who has zero embarrassing photos or posts out there, and I’ll show you someone who was grown in a lab. Realistically, it just means some political firm spent a long time hitting delete.
Millennials in particular are especially vulnerable to this. Their entire generation was introduced to social media and digital cameras with no concept of how permanent the internet could be.
It’s impossible to prove a negative, but I shudder to think how many great minds of my generation have personally removed themselves from consideration for political office over their web history.
How many potential congressmen were a little too wild in their 20s and didn’t even try to run?
How many potential congresswomen gave up on their political ambitions because some a-hole ex posted revenge porn of them a decade ago?
Every party had a friend snapping pics of our drunken antics and posting them on Facebook or Myspace. That friend never thought, “This is going to destroy a potential congresswoman,” but that’s exactly what happened to Breaking Points cohost Krystal Ball during her 2010 congressional run.
And the worst part about those pics is they’re as spicy as Taco Bell mild sauce. Hell, there are photos out there of me doing the exact same thing, in drag, and to a raw turkey neck during Friendsgiving… Not at the same time, obviously. Everyone was going around giving invisible man BJs to the camera. We only had two options back then: dick suck or duck lips.
The culture was also extremely different in the late 2000s and early 2010s, for better and for worse. Mostly worse.
Like, easily 95% worse.
Electing Obama had so much of America convinced that racism was solved. So much edgy comedy from that era was basically some comedian starting with, “Nobody is racist in here so we can laugh about it,” then proceeding to say a lot of racist things. And anyone who complained about it? They were being a b*tch and needed to lighten up.
The internet around that time was a cesspool. We were all hiding behind usernames and avatars, and the conversation reflected that. It was the height of 4chan humor, everything was “gay,” and everybody going around calling each other f*gs as a term of endearment. Try explaining that to a younger generation and not coming off as a homophobe. 🤦♂️
The simple fact that 2 Girls 1 Cup went viral back then pretty much sums up the lawlessness of the old internet. Can you imagine trying to share that video today from an account tied to your real name?
Best case scenario, you get banned instantly and HR bursts through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man and yeets you straight out of the building.
Worst case scenario, “They didn’t want my consent and laughed at my trauma” becomes permanently attached to your Google results.
And throughout this entire era, millennials talked crap, said terrible things, and trolled, not really thinking about the paper trail we were leaving behind, because it felt like none of it really mattered. It was all on the internet, and back then, that was the equivalent of saying it didn’t exist.
What Reddit user p-hustle wrote in 2013 was never supposed to haunt Senate candidate Platner in 2026.
Former Reddit user LoHubb56 never thought he would become a California congressional candidate, and now Lourin Hubbard finds himself attempting to explain pseudonymous comments and a resurfaced video of a fifteen-year-old homophobic slur.
While expecting our politicians not to be bigots should be the bare minimum, scandals used to come from something they did or said recently. Not something the internet kept in cold storage for over a decade until the exact moment it became useful.
One of the disconnects people seem to have with Graham Platner’s popularity is how willing his supporters are to wave away those old Reddit comments. I don’t think they’re saying the comments are fine. I think they’re saying they believe people can grow.
Modern internet morality often feels like people throwing stones from inside a glass house, convinced they’re safe because the windows are tinted from the outside.
I won’t be surprised when someone inevitably says, “Well, I would never post what Graham Platner posted.”
Yeah, but you posted something. There’s probably a picture or two out there. Do some mental Oppo research on yourself and I’m sure you can come up with your own thirty-second attack ad.
I can practically hear the deep, scary voiceover in my own head:
“Kevin Kane once jerked a raw turkey neck to completion because he thought it was funny. Do you know what’s not funny? Having a necrophiliac in the governor’s office.”
That’s our normal, and that’s okay. Most of us said stupid things, believed dumb crap, or acted like a-holes at some point, then eventually grew up. That’s part of being human. What’s new for the 21st century is the fact that we started preserving those dumb thoughts online, and recording those stupid things we did with our phones.
That’s why it’s actually a little disturbing to look at other young-ish political aspirants like Pete Buttigieg, JD Vance, or AOC. They don’t really have any of that web baggage hanging over them, and honestly? That might be the bigger problem.
If millennials and Gen-Z want representation, but our politicians must have lifelong spotless records, that’s going to leave us with one of three types:
The shill that has enough connections to hire a professional and bleach the crime scene.
The Ted Cruz type so boring they never left evidence behind in the first place.
Or worse, the politician is so alien that they started pretending they were normal long before the rest of us knew we were being recorded.
Personally? I’ll take the flawed guy who said some dumb crap thirteen years ago but says some pretty smart things about the state of the world now.
