Let’s imagine that there’s something in your past about which you’re embarrassed; not anything hugely serious such as a crime, but something that you’re not proud of. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to legally prevent anyone from knowing about it – you’ve made that clear – but equally you’d rather people didn’t know about it, if you have the choice.
Step 1: every time I see you in the street, I point at you and shout at the top of my voice “hey! hey everyone standing around! you see @oldgeek over there? He once did (embarrassing thing)! Ha ha ha!”
That’s not all that terrible. It’d get old pretty quickly, and it has the potential to cause you some further embarrassment – imagine you’re walking along the street with a potential client or a potential partner – but it’s not anything massively serious. Also, I’m not going to see you in the street very much; you don’t live near me, and I don’t know what you look like.
Step 2: I pay every shopkeeper and barperson and door guard to do the same thing. Everywhere you go, everything you do, is done to a chorus of people shouting about the thing you did. Everyone who knows you now knows about it. Now, you’ll overcome that embarrassment; you’ll essentially have no choice but to shamefacedly own up to the thing that you did. And that’s OK; we’ve brought a little more clarity to the world, and shown people that they can’t forget the mistakes of the past. But there is a difference between not being able to forget them and being forced to repeatedly acknowledge them over and over and over again. People who you’ve never heard of have now heard of you – you’re the guy that did that embarrassing thing. And that’s all they know about you. They don’t know anything else you’ve done; they don’t care about whatever else you’ve done with your life. All they know is that you’re the guy who did the embarrassing thing. Even if you wanted to correct them, you can’t; you don’t know who they are! And you’re typecast as the embarrassing guy.
One day you wander round to my house and say, dude, why did you do this? Fine, I can’t hide from my past, but I don’t see why I should have my face rubbed in it day after day after day. My life is materially worse off than it was before; I won’t claim that my life’s ruined, but I certainly feel victimised. I don’t see why this one thing I did should colour everything I do for ever more. Everywhere I go people laugh at me; fine, I made a mistake once, but I can’t see how I can erase it; I’ve spent the last few years since then doing nothing but selflessly digging wells in Africa and helping little old ladies across the road, but nobody wants to hear about that! You just keep telling them about the embarrassing thing I did, years and years ago! Why won’t you also tell them about my good deeds? How long do I have to pay?
And I put one finger on my chin, and I roll my eyes up, and say “well, you don’t want to erase history, do you? Are you saying that I’m responsible for you doing that thing?”
The court of public opinion doesn’t have a statute of limitations. And it should.
