Alexandra Samuel

You know, it's funny you said that.

I've literally had that exact experience of rereading old journals, my college journals.

It was a quite – put a very different spin on my first love affair when I read it with the wisdom of hindsight.

And I do wish I hadn't reread it.

So I think we just all need to realize that, like –

By definition, anything that is a snapshot is a two-dimensional image of something that we experience, you know, as humans in at least three dimensions.

And whether you're looking at your own history of something that you did or even more if you're looking at something you come across where someone else said something that seems to you ill-advised, like, I just wish we could have a little more context.

tenderness and empathy and focus on what people learn and how we grow rather than like judging everyone by their most awful moment.

What I would say over now more than 20 years of working with people in organizations is that trying to have a social media presence where you never regret anything is a recipe for having a completely meaningless and stupid social media presence.

Now, conversely, I think it's important to resist the lure of the hot take.

Here are my insanely hot takes.

Here are some hot takes that might get me canceled.

But I think, like, what you need to do is...

Try and chart that middle ground where you've got to not court controversy for its own sake because I think when you're deliberately, like, pushing people's buttons, that's where you end up saying things that don't reflect what you truly believe.

But if your goal is to have a social media presence where you never regret anything, then truly don't be online.

And that's –

I actually think a really, really good option now.

And if I were not like you, a journalist for whom part of the job is showing up online, I do not know if I would use social media anymore.

That's real.

Yeah.