[motohagiography]

Who digs up a scan of a pre-internet article to post on twitter to take a shot at someone who is at best a marginal and obscure public figure with an influential job? I wasn't the one who tried to slander someone with decades old pre-internet comments, but I am certainly hypothesizing that the person behind the twitter account is, and that is bog standard politics, as are low quality sock puppet comments in forums.

[plonkle2]

So wait, you not only think a BuzzFeed reporter known for being on the politics beat for years is somehow interested in who is editor-in-chief at a Canadian fashion magazine, but you also think anything about retelling a factual story in a critical light is slander?

How do you think this went down? How did the person co-opting McLeod approach? I’ve got the scoop of the century, they said? Do you think he fumbled his iPad excitedly on the way to break this, in your words, obvious oppo? (Do you think he’d miss that?)

In general, and I’m not just talking to you here, if you don’t know how journalism works, maybe don’t comment on it nor speculate on its big moves. You say things like “bog standard” to communicate certainty, but your imagined narrative literally falls apart with ten seconds of critical thinking.

[afavour]

Maybe someone who remembers reading this story at the time and remembers how absolutely absurd it was? And maybe thought people (like myself) might be interested to read it? The person who tweeted this is Canadian and of the right age to have read it at the time.

I think you're imagining conspiracies here. It's an interesting and kind of funny historical artifact, that's all. And what definition of "slander" are you working with here? Nothing posted is untrue.

[burkaman]

I would, I do that kind of thing all the time. Finding obscure interesting things on the internet is fun, it's like solving a puzzle, and it feels good to show people who thought something was too old and lost forever.

[ianai]

Google: “ Bernadette Morra. Editor in Chief, FASHION magazine. ”

The twitter poster is a buzzfeed news politics journalist.

[motohagiography]

> The twitter poster is a buzzfeed news politics journalist.

I would say, that this sentence is meaningful expresses the gulf in perspectives on the question quite well. To me, that statement doesn't mean anything. The twitter poster was being small and bullying, and if I'm a conspiracy theorist for making a comment that embarasses some people who got off on it, call me Fox frickin' Mulder.

[albedoa]

The larger gulf is between who you believe to be embarrassed by your comments and who is actually embarrassed. It's incredibly weird to publicly spout baseless conspiracy theories and then make the equally unfounded claim that others feel shamed by your spouting.

[Eric_WVGG]

This sort of thinking fails the Occam’s Razor pretty hard.