Shawn Mendes should be having a pretty good week — his song Senorita is climbing the Billboard charts, his new romance with Camila Cabello is blowing up all the tabloids, and he’s one of the world’s biggest pop stars.
Unfortunately, his week took a bit of a turn after his answer to a fan’s question about old, racist posts wasn’t deemed very satisfying.
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At a recent Q&A session with fans, Shawn was asked a hard-hitting question.
A fan confronted Shawn, saying, “Um, in the past there is a lot of kind of ignorant tweets I guess I could say. Why has it never been acknowledged? Or why has there never been anything about it?”
The tweets the fan was referring to are reportedly from as far back as 2013.
While the tweets no longer exist on Shawn’s feed, some fans claim to have taken screenshots of the alleged tweets before they were deleted. Shawn would have been around 15 at the time of most of these tweets.
Shawn’s answer for the tweets seemed to some as a cop-out.
“A lot of things just need to be moved on from, but I also think that the things that [you] saw, like I had friends when I was 14 who would like take my phone and post things of them because they thought it was funny that I had like 2,000 followers,” he said.
“I had no idea I was going to have 50 million followers, which doesn’t make it any better.”
“But um, yeah totally I apologize for everything insensitive I said in the past, but with that being said, yeah, I think that’s not my personality,” he finished. Fans were not happy with his apology and claimed he was trying to pass on all the responsibility.
People are upset that Shawn didn’t take responsibility for his actions.
Many are saying they would be forgiving if Shawn had just admitted that he was young and didn’t know any better, but that he knows better now.
Do you think fans are overreacting? Or do you think Shawn owes them a better apology?
