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Yesterday, I think Twitter finally reached it’s nadir.

A man, who had previously made his employer around $1.6 billion, was fired.

Why was he fired?

Well, prior to being employed by the above, now nearly 2 billion dollar richer company, he had an “edgy” persona in his blog and internet life. A character if you will. Think of the off colour humour of Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr.

He tweeted, and retweeted off colour remarks that fitted his “comedy” at this time.

Prior to being employed by the above company, oh hell it’s Marvel and Disney firing James Gunn I’m talking about here, You know the guy who used to make Troma films? yeah him, well he apologised for this earlier incarnation of himself that used to go out to stir controversy and changed the way he spoke and acted. Pretty much so that if you only started following him online from the release of the first Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 these kind of jokes would come as a complete shock to you.

After being fired he again apologised, saying

“regardless of how much time has passed, I understand and accept the business decisions taken today.”

“My words of nearly a decade ago were, at the time, totally failed and unfortunate efforts to be provocative,” he said in a statement. “I have regretted them for many years since — not just because they were stupid, not at all funny, wildly insensitive, and certainly not provocative like I had hoped, but also because they don’t reflect the person I am today or have been for some time.”

“Even these many years later, I take full responsibility for the way I conducted myself then. All I can do now, beyond offering my sincere and heartfelt regret, is to be the best human being I can be: accepting, understanding, committed to equality, and far more thoughtful about my public statements and my obligations to our public discourse. To everyone inside my industry and beyond, I again offer my deepest apologies. Love to all.”

If you would like to read his tweets with the apology they are here

Now the original Tweets were pretty off. They’re shown below if you want to read them

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Terrible right?

Now think about it some more, they read bad in one handy jpg, with the bits the person bringing them to light wants you to feel most offended by helpfully marked up for you, but look at the dates and you’ll see these were made months and years apart. It’s not like every tweet was this kind of bile.

Oh,and did I mention his tweets were resurfaced by celebrities in far-right Internet circles, like Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec.

This “resurfacing” thing has become a tactic of the pro-Trump Internet — finding and “bringing to light” old social media posts by anyone who is a bit anti Trump.

And James Gunn certainly has been quite vocal in his dislike for the President.

Interestingly though, and something that probably won’t get mentioned in the mainstream media coverage of this is the kind of tweets Mike Cernovich has made in the past. Many might say, worse than the ones Mr Gunn made?

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The internet and social media should be an amazing tool, bringing knowledge to us anywhere in the world. Connecting everyone, allowing communication across cultures.

Instead we have a Mad Max, post apocalyptic barren wasteland of scum and villainy in which a man who works in the entertainment industry is held to higher standards than the president of the United States everybody’s waiting to be offended so they can attempt for their 5 seconds of internet glory.

So when you’re posting that latest hilarious gag that you just thought up, or calling someone a nasty name, even in jest, just remember one thing,

In ten years time, when you’ve finally made it. People will dig that out of the dirt and put it on the internet, without context and possibly slightly altered, and you will be fired.

See below for one of the tweets that’s been shown around as Mr Gunn having child porn videos on his feed being shown to be a clever piece of propaganda. I’m glad good nerds have more skills than horrible alt right people.

https://twitter.com/TempletonTJones/status/1020503801571299330

Surely we all want to live in a world were disgusting views, that are being acted upon or constantly preached, are brought to light and stopped, the people involved given the help that they need. However I don’t think any of us want for decades old jokes to be used as political weapons to make headlines and get people fired.

Surely Marvel need to realise they’ve been played here, and retract the firing or give us more reason as to why they’ve taken the action, especially given the fact that after being accused of sexual misconduct and unwanted physical contact, mr Disney Pixar John Lasseter was just given a bit of a holiday at the time.

Based on the evidence so far the whole thing’s a farce.

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