Could you imagine if online social media existed in your teenage years? Could you imagine your digital footprint marching back into your adult life to stomp out your career dreams or to stoke judgments from a newly woke society?

I said so many stupid, thoughtless, reckless things in my teenage years (and into my 20s). I cringe when thinking if some of those things could be captured on the internet through Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or any other online platform. I have no idea what I blabbered about during my adolescence and I’m thankful no one else does today.

This was my immediate reaction to news that 27-year-old Alexi McCammond was forced to step down from her new job as editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, a Condé Nast publication. She was supposed to begin that position this week, until staff members began publicly condemning racist and homophobic tweets McCammond posted a decade ago. Yeah, when she was 17(!).

Last week, the company announced the abrupt departure of their promising young leader after getting pressure from staff members, readers and at least two advertisers: “After speaking with Alexi this morning, we agreed that it was best to part ways, so as to not overshadow the important work happening at Teen Vogue,” Stan Duncan, the chief people officer at Condé Nast, said in an email obtained by The New York Times.

In her March 10 statement, McCammond, who describes herself as a young woman of color, said her “past tweets have overshadowed the work I’ve done to highlight the people and issues that I care about.”

McCammond posted an apology, appropriately, on her Twitter account, writing that “there’s no excuse for perpetuating those

awful stereotypes in any way. I am so sorry to have used such hurtful and inexcusable language.”

Those tweets in question, written in 2011, made derogatory comments about the gay community and also about Asians, such as, “Now Googling how to not wake up with swollen, Asian eyes…” Another tweet stated, “Give me a 2/10 on my chem problem, cross out all of my work and don’t explain what I did wrong… thanks a lot stupid Asian TA [teaching assistant]. You’re great.”

Two years ago, when these tweets resurfaced, McCammond deleted them and apologized, calling her words “deeply insensitive.”

“I am deeply sorry to anyone I offended,” she wrote in 2019.

Her apology wasn’t enough. Her future career has been stomped on by her digital footprint, for now anyway. The question looms: was it due to a cancel culture or consequence culture? And how far back should we go into someone’s past to cast judgments on who they are today?

“I have since deleted those tweets as they do not reflect my views or who I am today,” McCammond wrote in her public apology.

McCammond’s career rose to prominence as a political reporter at the media site Axios, where she covered the White House. She obviously knew about our society’s rising hypersensitivity toward inclusiveness of every population of people. This includes one community that has been off the radar for most Americans until this month.

On Wednesday, eight people were killed in shootings in Atlanta, including six women of Asian descent. Last year at this time, Asian Americans were beginning to be demonized in our country, again, after the COVID-19 pandemic began infecting the U.S.

There’s been a sharp increase in violence, hate crimes and derogatory slurs against the Asian American community. I know people who blame Asian-Americans for the existence of this new coronavirus and its global spread. I have no idea how these simple-minded bigots connect the dots between a virus in China and an Asian family who works at the Chinese restaurant in their local neighborhood. But they do. Racist discrimination always seems to find a way to connect imaginary dots that don’t exist.

I’ve experienced such bigotry firsthand since becoming a father 37 years ago. My two biological children are Asian Americans. Their mother was born in South Korea. My kids’ faces reflect their heritage.

When they were young, no one believed I was their dad. They look nothing like me, a pasty-faced white guy with Eastern European heritage. No, my kids weren’t overtly discriminated against (that I recall), but I remember answering a lot of questions about their race and ethnicity. Stupid jokes about their “Oriental” looks were just something I took in stride.

If social media existed back in the 1980s when they were young, I’m sure I would have posted often about this issue. If it existed in the 1970s, when I was a teenager, I would have posted too many stupid observations about life and hot-button topics, including things I would never say or think these days.

Back then, racial and gay slurs were commonly heard and written during my childhood growing up in Gary, including by some of my own family members. I’m grateful that Twitter didn’t exist back then. Their digital footprints, and possibly mine, would be muddied by regretful words that are no longer accepted or tolerated in society.

This brings us back to McCammond, who was 17 when she posted those insensitive tweets. She was old enough to know better, yet young enough not to care. Hell, this perspective would have defined my teenage years.

McCammond is only 27. She was honored in 2019 by the National Association of Black Journalists. And she would have been the third Black woman to serve as Teen Vogue’s top editor. Her career will bounce back just fine.

I’m more captivated by the broader issue about today’s cancel/consequence culture: should we be judged on our past mistakes or our present apologies? And how long will this be in vogue?

jdavich@post-trib.com