With no pen just draw off inspiration

Mofos wanna fine me, can’t Ns out-Aspire me

Bell so hard, mothafuckas wanna fire me

Well now they’re never gonna get the Blazers job

Gorilla mode

You guys just can’t help yourselves can you?

My parents barely know how to use the internet

Schools taught us about the internet first. Parents caught on (hopefully) afterwards

common sense tells you don’t be racist with ya face

My parents didn’t tell me anything about the internet because it didn’t really exist yet when I was a kid.

Crazier thing was that they didn’t vet this during the hiring process to either get him to delete it before it became a problem or move on with another candidate if it would be a deal breaker on principle and not just because it got exposed by a news outlet

Crazy thing was this was his current account that he used professionally

This is the thing most people miss.

It’s one thing to have posted racist shit while you’re a misguided young person (this being the most charitable explanation).

But if you’ve had a Paul on the road to Damascus conversion about your past, you need to be proactive about that. Delete your posts and repent. Undeleted tweets or posts should be read as a current reflection of your views. It’s not just the long-ago posts that are problematic, it’s that you didn’t think it worth your while to go back and correct those mistakes.

“high profile” lmao

social media post shouldnt matter

👆This 👌

Bigots and idiots hate this one simple trick!

not everything is racist, yall using that word like gaslighting or toxic a couple years ago

Speak for yourself, i jave written in MITWestbrook for the last 3 elections and i will do it till the day i die

I’d def hire the guy who made the James harden strip club post tho.

Let he who has never shitposted cast the first stone

Just for one side. The other you still lose votes for laughing weird

Its from the 60s and 70 which is why It came up so often in the 80s and 90s, because that’s what the kids who couldn’t quite fit into the school system remember when they became old enough to start bands and write their own tv shows.

Also the possibility he does remember his edgy phase, but thought nothing will become of it now that his account squarely focuses on sports. Or perhaps he thought those tweets will be buried so deep, no one would ever dig them up. Who knows really…

yeah idk what happened but I blame Tom DumDum

Per the article the racist comment he made was:

“I’m not racist, but I just don’t like Asian people”

Accompanied by a bunch of comments calling women sluts.

For a 15-year-old, not great, but hardly something most would consider deeply racist. As for the comments on women, not exactly shocking a for a teenager his age.

Most people grow a lot once they get out of high school and experience the world more.

I wouldn’t really call this guy a “racist POS” based on what the article posted.

An idiot though? 100%.

I was never making racist jokes on social media, sounds like a him problem

I mean you assume it’s randoms online, very well could have been someone he’s been a dick to in his life.

Generally speaking, people who are nice and likable don’t have this kind of stuff happening to them.

Sure but in this case the dude was still using the same account he had as a teen. You can 1000% delete your social media account and so long as someone doesn’t have screenshots of all your posts, it is gone.

Agreed, but also like… I was ignorant as fuck when I was a teen.

Like, I was saying homophobic slurs left and right, cuz that’s just how it was. I was ignorant as fuck when it came to racism, too, I’d make jokes and said things that I didn’t even know were racist.

I think it’s fair to allow people to grow up.

did you read the tweets? they were just kind of dumb teenager shit tbh. nothing super egregious

Many people, especially kids, genuinely don’t know any better. That’s how they were taught.

You are right, but it’s beyond that. Kids often lack the ability to comprehend that life is a lot longer than 15 years and might post a picture of them smoking weed or drinking a beer or writing something inane like about xyz far fetched opinion that can be twisted later on. As a kid who grew up during the war in Afghanistan I would post about how i don’t support the war but that stuff can be easily misinterpreted as “I don’t support our military” or something similar.

Yeah, if my livejournal account somehow got exhumed, I’m sure it would be deeply embarrassing for me, but it’s not gonna cause problems with my employer.

Bruh we said all kind of fucked up shit from 10-15 years old. We were molded by old school call of duty lobbies. Took time to fix that programming.

If you’re going to punish people the rest of their lives for their teenage years then just nuke humanity and be done with it cuz our species is over.

I’m sure you never said or did anything offensive when you were 15

I remember myself making dumb jokes like that, with my friends, when I was 14.

I was not racist or misogynist, really, it was more like an idiotic way to look “cool”.

I don’t know what the guy thinks now, but I find very uncomfortable that you social media activity at that age is going to ruins someone’s life.

Incredible how this has to be said lol

woah woah woah. That makes *TOO MUCH SENSE*

I agree with that sentiment but I also have a little sympathy (depending on his age i guess i dont know how young he was). I grew up in a VERY Christian home and in my teens I held some beliefs about women and the LGBTQ community that absolutely disgust me today. What about the kids that grow up in racist homes and act like their parents until they know better? Those should be the people we appreciate most the ones who overcame the bullshit. I also cant really disagree with firing him though its not really in a businesses best interest to give the benefit of the doubt in a situation like this.

lol for some reason this is an extreme opinion in this thread

This is the only correct answer.

I hate racists, and want them to suffer. And I have no apologies about it. I want someone to make the staunch defense of the racist’s plight.

He’s not though. I’m sure you’ve said far worse.

Well congrats on being a perfect person that levitates above everyone else that did stupid shit as a kid. You’re like Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Jesus Christ all rolled into one

Oh, you know my father in law too?

And getting scammed by obvious Sandra Bullock impostors.

That’s the funnies shit I’ve read in a while 🤣bwaaa fucking morons

My neighbor showed me an altered pic of his five year old he made on ChatGPT. Couldn’t believe it.

Shiiiit, you can do that? Actually sounds pretty cool

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that

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It’s insane how there are so many stupid people on the Internet just waiting to be scammed.

Im around the same age and i remember deleting all my old comments/posts because i was told the same.

If i had to guess the most logical reason to why he didn’t wipe his profile was because he simply forgot he ever said anything offensive and never had the thought of needing to go back through years and years of comments to delete anything.

Judge how can this man be guilty.

that’s not even offensive

You forget your passwords?

Same bro

I got doxxed and someone threatened my earlier accounts. Even posted a picture of my dog. That’s why I’m on account number 3

If I do that now, I can’t use old.reddit, which I’m sure was part of the plan.

Coward.

[deleted]

you can apparently even be a nazi as long as you don’t rape

unless you’re donald trump. then you can do it all.

Well, unless you’re republican. Then it might actually help your political career. They love that.

Did he post info that only someone working at the company would know? Otherwise that seems insane for the company to waste resources on, but executives and their ego…

I might be the biggest idiot in this thread. I got a horribly stupid tattoo at 20. I spent years regretting it and thousands of dollars having it removed.

I learned my lesson and now I just get stupid tattoos that I don’t regret.

People really convinced themselves it was plausible for Platner to know enough military history to be familiar with the US-Phillipine War but not enough to recognize a Totenkopf he had on his body for 20 years

If you aren’t posting any personal information, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve had an account

Unless I’m missing some of the messages, they didn’t seem that bad? Just being in the vicinity of high school kids you’ll get something worse within 2 minutes. Find this kinda ridiculous

yeah this is just witchhunting but they also can’t really hire him or it looks like they’re condoning it

I’d wager 90% of male teens have said some vile shit that would have them not hired

Yeah see I literally never said that. My point is that it’s important to wipe that stuff. I cleaned out my Facebook account a few years ago because I was embarrassed at how many Onion articles I reposted back in middle school. People need to take accountability for their digital footprint, most of all when they are a public figure or trying to be one. Get a grip dude

Alex Torres finds out is nowhere near as good as the original.

Magic Johnson Karl Malone

Wasn’t he quoting a vine?

technically, he didn’t say he hates them. he said they piss him off. people I love piss me off all the time. 😂

He was 15………

It’s not about Portland being on the west coast. It’s about them having the only Chinese player currently in the NBA and them thinking this would piss off a Chinese market that the NBA really wants to capitalize on.

nba players have tweeted worse lol.

i mean KD goes around calling Curry a “lightskin” lmao.

EDIT: okay and all these too

Well like it or not if I had to choose one word to derail someone’s career there is no question what that world would be. He didn’t “think of black people” but a worst case scenario

correct, because that would be overturning a democratic election

Yeah, feels like KGW was out to ruin the guy to get some attention. Bell clearly should have deleted the tweets as a public figure, and the Blazers should have found it in the hiring process, but I don’t think that makes the media blameless.

Only thing similar is they both mention Asian and racist. Doesnt look like he was quoting that at all

…wtf? What he tweeted was not close to the Vine at all. I was there when it came out and reading what he said did not make me think of the Vine.

Lmao I remember her on Tosh.0 back in the day.

Doesn’t seem like he’s quoting that, or if he did, he didn’t get it right.

The lack of good judgement here was him, as an adult, not deleting and restarting all socials when he decided to become a public figure.

Because people change from childhood to adulthood…?

#racist just in case we didnt get it lmao

Oof

oof that’s real bad

hunter biden said “no yellow” and people love him.

He was 14 fucking years old man give it a rest

Do you know how much stupid shit we’ve all said as 14 year olds? I guess except you?

Who you are isn’t what you said before your brain developed.

Beef season 1

Any thoughts on Dominicans or Colombians?

Nah dawg. No race is going to make whites look like amateurs when it comes to racism. The aspiring artist from Austria made sure of that.

LMAO

Losers with no lives are just as worse for pulling receipts and causing this. Bro did nothing to these losers and they did this as if he owed them something. Nobody ever says anything about these losers who just want clout and play holier than thou police.

Deleting doesn’t do anything. There are many many mannnyyy a corporate tool employed to do this sort of extensive digging, even through web archives.

Deleting this would not have changed a single thing, I guarantee it.

You have to clean up your socials when you’re looking for a media job, idk what else there is to say this is one of the most simple parts of publicly representing an organization.

The fact he got aired out so quickly shows that it clearly wasn’t that hard to find, this is all on him.

Shit I deleted my twitter once I got an office job in the off chance I said something stupid because I tweeted a lot when I was younger for attention (smh) and that’s a 9-5 office job not a career move you worked on most of your life for. I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t just delete and start over on a new account on the off chance and to just start a professional fresh start.

He probably should have considering his public facing job.

Yes 1000%

I’d rather not have hands so I could skip those meetings.

The meeting wasn’t called “only hands”, you don’t need hands to attend.

I was so shocked when I realized gyp was referring to people, and not just some random work like janky or frick

Because people change from childhood to adulthood…? Lmao

I would 100% not expect to get a job commenting sports in a league that is 70% black if I had extremely easy to find public comments that were plainly racist. There are tons of lines of work that aren’t public facing that he can apply for and likely get.

If he was a ‘completely different person’ I think it’s reasonable to expect those comments would have been long deleted.

Yeah I think the older people in this sub have massive eye rolls for the others claiming purity.

Come on man.

“most people” yes but discounting that some people are just idiots from when they are 15+ on is crazy.

Yea this is such a weird sentiment lol, these people are just telling on themselves

They are some of my fondest memories! Thank you for asking. Go interact with a 15 year old for the first time in your life, and then we’ll reconvene.

I love the irony of a Portlander who will gladly approve of billions on trying to rehabilitate the drug addicted homeless in the city, juxtaposed with saying this man is the same person he was 15 years ago and is incapable of change and redemption for a tweets he put out online.

Huh? No, it just means you can’t have one of only 30 NBA play by play gigs in the world.

Is being racist a mistake?

Not that I wouldn’t erase if it was gonna cost me a job. You?

I feel like I’m going crazy reading these comments. So many are saying people change and grow up, and that he didn’t mean it. But we have absolutely no evidence of that? The only evidence we have is that he kept racist tweets for ~14 years and was too stupid to delete them. I understand giving people the benefit of the doubt, but he’s done absolutely nothing to indicate we should in this case.

At worst he’s foolish. I’m not judging a 30 year old by something they said at 15.

And if this shit didn’t matter when he was working for the Mercury, why does it matter now?

I managed to get through my teenage years without ever spewing racist and misogynistic stuff. Twitter didn’t exist, but forums and bulletin boards did.

[removed]

He probably didn’t even hold those beliefs. You just said shit back then.

If you said it as a teenager you are probably saying it as an adult in a different manner.

shut the fuck up

I’m sorry you weren’t able to connect such simple dots.

Who cares what a journalist said in their teens? This is dumb

Speak for yourself

Myself and many of the teenagers around me when I was teen had no problem not being racist

It is real life. Why must I forgive a racist? How does that make me or him a better person?

I want someone who doesn’t have to suffer racism to try and convince me that forgiving the thing that gave me a lifetime of misery is the best decision for me to make. Please, tell me how it makes my life better, and how it helps to fix the overall issue of racism.

When you’re in the shit, you learn fast that zero tolerance is the only solution. And fuck any racist whose feelings get hurt. They can kiss my black ass.

Sorry. I wasn’t targeting you. The “you” I use is directed at the actual racists who’ll read my message.

Especially in the 2000s when kids were dropping homophobic and racist slurs in COD lobbies

You did, not everyone else.

Why is it hard for some of y’all to accept most were spamming the n word on their socials back then? Just you and your weird group of friends were. I lived through the era and it was absolutely not the norm for people to be spamming it. Lots of revisionist history ITT.

Memphis trying to trash talk Portland is hilarious tbh

Could be worse; could be Memphis.

That sounds pretty performative and dystopian. Why do they even care about people who can’t get over this? It’s an insignificant amount of people. More people are angry they fired him over this than would have been mad if they let him apologize and move on.

he was on the internet in 2012, he definitely grew up thinking being a racist/sexist edgy kid is cool.

This is it. I grew up in a racist town. I knew better than to put that shit on social media. But as a kid I took part in the jokes and stereotyping because I was a fucking kid and that’s all I knew.

But I grew out of it because as I approached adulthood, I had the ability to critically think and change my worldview. I think a lot of people who grew up in small towns had the same experience.

Acceptance of gays is barely 2 decades old. Racial equality has been a thing since like the 60s. Two completely different things.

We are all a little racist, especially in the early 2000’s

yeah those culture warriors bitching about “woke” don’t realize they’ve become a version of the overly sensitive social justice warriors they raged about

Imagine if people could, you know, be in the middle of the road on topics instead of needing to be radical one way or the other.

>Reddit liberal task force

i mean you have to admit this is a real thing tho. just go around to random subreddits and post even the mildest conservative opinion about anything and see what happens lol.

I love how you can just hand wave racism as being edgy

You’re responding to one, just with a different ideology.

I suspect you are also one.

You didn’t make a recording of yourself saying those things. What you said can’t be traced back to you unlike how what this guy did. I can’t really think of any brand that wants to be associated with something controversial.

I personally don’t think he should have lost his job. Maybe a statement on his part all out how he was just a teen and that he has grown since the. And he could have also volunteered his time towards an Asian organization.

Sorry boss I didn’t hop on Call of Duty and start dropping N bombs and making fun of Asian people. I just played the game, and only had lobbys with friends I knew irl, like a normal person. Not saying you should be fired or whatever but that behavior isnt normal. That’s kind of the issue nowadays, people think shitty behavior anonymously is okay.

Mistakes = Casual racism

Well, teenage mistakes don’t mean racism lmao

Yeah most people don’t post racist tweets even as teenagers. Wild you’re acting like casually blasting your racism all over the internet is some coming of age experience.

Well I certainly didn’t put out any racist tweets or do overall scumbag human shit, like this. So yeah, I’m going to judge people that do. Fuck you for being ok with it.

Was he fired for racist tweets?

Huh, Yes, I can say that I haven’t said racist shit in the last 13 years. (which is what the OP had before the ninja edit)

Way to also call yourself out though I suppose.

I Do appreciate when racists just admit it.

Ad Hominem off the rip eh

brotha you gotta learn your history… our team done changed the game for POC… our city’s history a different story maybe but damn

Ok. I slept in school and forgot homework. I didn’t post racist shit online because I had basic morals and wasn’t a racist shithead trying to shock people.

People are allowed to learn and grow. That’s true.

But I’ve been lectured to for decades about personal responsibility and actions having consequences.

Are these consequences more extreme than what I might impose if it was one of my employees. Probably.

But because you personally feel vulnerable by this situation…then that goes more towards your conduct and the responsibility that you might hold for it than anything else.

He lost an opportunity for what he did and not for who he is and given the choice between the two I can live with the former over the latter.

Well… when one wins the lotto there will be signs and when there are signs, people can choose to ignore it or not. The Blazers chose not to ignore it.

No one cares whether its 20 years ago. Racism is a character issue and its not 100% guaranteed that it just changes with time.

It was clearly implied. Get over yourself.

Slur prime 😭

But we are also learning that racism isn’t going away unless we press on you bigots. As soon as we let up, you let trump do your talking for you. I mean for Christ’s sake, why do you people have to hate so much?

Hilarious analogy.

racists can’t fathom that other people didn’t say racist things when they were kids and it was just them, you’re just a bad person

Ya because the white kids saying racial slurs all totally stopped when they… apparently identified the presence of all black people by voice alone?

And you and your friends totally never called someone gay who you thought was gay?

Like, why lie to yourself this much? You and your friends were/are bigoted sheep. You did what was popular and what was popular was bigotry.

If you can’t admit that then you’ll never become a better person. You can do it!

Bloody hell mate, settle down and take the meds you must have missed. Im not sure what your projecting but i wasn’t an older teenager or young adult ‘bullying’ teens on Halo or COD, i was literally a 11 to 14 year old teenager during the years i mentioned (i was 11 in 2007).

The only bullying, if you can call it that, was happening to ME because the moment i turned on my mic i was blasted with ‘SHUT UP SQUEAKER SHOULDNT YOU BE IN SCHOOL KID’, ‘I FUCKED YOUR MOM’ and other such insults to tweens and young teens.

I heard that type of shit for years and i never once felt like i was bullied or having a desire to stop playing.

That’s pretty impressive. You’ve lived your entire life without ever once saying anything that has ever offended anyone at any time. Or, you know, you are full of it.

Lmao nobody believes it when yall virtue signal online.

Cap. Nobody is perfectly spoken at 15.

Well you didn’t have fun friends, then.

I never said I never said anything stupid. Just that being racist wasn’t something I partook in.

I’ve never been fired for racism so yes it does feel nice

You’re getting very defensive in this thread

Why do you assume everyone was as stupid as you when they were young?

Nah you’re not.

“Rewarded with a job” as if any fucking person in this world wants to work instead of spending time with their loved ones, and as if this society doesn’t literally depend on you having one to be able to afford essentials to stay alive.

You guys are fucking stupid. It has nothing to do with being racist and everything to do with someone being punished very quickly and harshly without a chance to show any sort of remorse for their actions that they did over a decade ago, before they understood the consequence of their own actions.

That’s the entire point that people are making in this thread.

Humor was definitely edgier back then and shock jock type jokes were popular.

It’s not even that times were different. You were a literal child without a fully formed brain and world experiences

Yeah, people are forgetting the context.

Not justifying the tweets or the misogynistic behavior, but as I replied on the Blazer sub- people forget that it was peak rape culture as well, before the MeToo movement took off.

Misogyny was everywhere, and that kind of language was tolerated and somewhat accepted by the media.

And I’m writing this up as a woman. Only after MeToo, I understood the effects that this culture had on me, even in terms of “what is a consent”.

“It was just a different time and acceptable to be racist”

Bro what 💀

Na, I just wasn’t racist

Are they in the background pictures of the freedom riders? Which side?

I can see why first grader shit is hard for you.

Dudes a cosplay communist

It was in the article

Is there any evidence of change prior to being questioned about it?

Yeah, people can for sure change. But if you’re not even taking the most basic of steps to convey that, then what proof is there?

Homie didn’t get fired for saying dumb ahit when he was a kid. Homie got fired for saying dumb shit when he was a kid and still having it publicly facing.

Dude had 15yrs of brain development to do the easiest thing (making a new Twitter) and just…didn’t.

I’m going to try to be thoughtful, even though this probably isn’t the best place to do it.

When you say he’s being punished, you’re presuming that the position he had was owed to him and taking it away is making him lesser.

This is a consequence. There was an action in his past that came to light that caused his employer to reconsider his employment.

When you’re saying that he was only 15 years old, you’re saying that it’s okay for 15 year olds to do it.

And when you blame wokeness, you’re saying that you’re observing that enough people found what he did was bad enough that it impacts the finances of his employer and that is a bad thing.

If you go down that list and say, yeah, that’s what I’m saying, then that’s one thing.

But if you go down that list and try to argue with yourself that it’s not what you mean, you should probably do a bit of self reflection.

There was a choice, there was an action, then there was a consequence (albeit delayed). That’s how the world works.