When the internet was still a fairly new phenomenon for the public, there was a kind of understanding that what happened on there stayed on there.
This wasn’t considered true if you were using it for anything illegal but unless your activity was suspicious enough to be investigated by a government agency, it was generally assumed that nobody else cared about it either.
Of course, that changed with the rise of social media and in the years since, more and more people have discovered that what they say online can carry some serious consequences out in the world.
But while high profile examples of this phenomenon have seen people lose their jobs and gain an army of detractors, a smaller case seemed to cost one man his wedding invitation.
Last month, Reddit user Quackers4Crackers came to the site’s r/AmITheAsshole community after doing something she didn’t feel sure about.
For some background , she said that she’s getting married soon and her wedding will take place in a Catholic church with several LGBTQ+ friends among the guest list.
This normally wouldn’t be worth mentioning except for the fact that it sounded like precisely the wrong environment for one prospective guest.
The bride wouldn’t have known this if another guest wasn’t planning on bringing him as her plus one, but this person’s Facebook activity made it clear that he was heavily anti-catholic, anti-LGBTQ+, and an anti-vaxxer who posts conspiracy theories about COVID-19 on a daily basis.
Even taking potential clashes with other guests aside, the bride said, “We don’t trust he will follow Covid regulations leading up to the wedding.”
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Since this activity made the couple feel that his presence would be unsafe for multiple reasons, they decided to uninvite him.
They did this through a written message because they felt it would put him on the spot and/or embarrass him less than if they called him. They also said his spouse was still welcome to the wedding, but that they understood if this decision made her not want to attend.
Although the former guest said he’d have preferred if they just spoke to him about his posts, he and his wife were obviously more concerned about the message itself.
As the bride wrote, “Understandably they were both really upset, and told us that he wouldn’t have been hateful towards anyone in person.”
With those statements in mind, the bride wondered if she was right to exclude him from the wedding.
But from the sounds of things, most of the Reddit users who responded wouldn’t have acted much differently.
As one person said , “‘I’m uninviting you because I’ve just learned you regularly spread hate towards a community that includes some of my other guests and i don’t want to risk having any possible conflict at my wedding’ is perfectly reasonable.
social media isn’t some fantasy land where your opinions disappear into the void, his hateful posts are very much real and he should have known there might be consequences.”
In the words of another commenter, “It’s your wedding and you handled it the least stressful way for you. People need to understand that their social media hate posts have consequences IRL, and this guy just learned it the hard way.”
They also weren’t encouraged by the response that he wouldn’t have been hateful in person, as it read to them as an admission that he truly is that hateful.
So if this man searched for any sympathetic ears after this went down, it doesn’t seem likely that he’d find them on Reddit.
h/t: Reddit | Quackers4Crackers
