Chose to delete my entire comment archive instead of just hiding controversial ones

Had a big moderation dilemma on my hands last week. Had been posting in a few heated political threads on a local city forum, and someone started digging through years of my comments to weaponize stuff I said in 2018. I had two options: quietly hide the 15 or so most inflammatory posts, or nuke the whole thing. Went with the full nuke, deleted about 400 comments. Feels clean but now I look like I got nothing to say. Anyone else ever just wipe the slate clean instead of cherry-picking?

3 comments

3 Comments

emeryj661mo agoMost Upvoted

Took the full wipe approach myself about six months ago on a gaming subreddit where I used to obsessively argue about balance patches. There's actually a weird psychological freedom in having zero history because now nobody can drag up that one time I said something dumb about loot boxes in 2017 lmao. But the downside is you lose the good stuff too, like that time I helped a new player with a build guide that had like 50 upvotes. Honestly the cherry-pickers look worse when they leave the obvious hot takes and just delete the minor stuff, makes it obvious what they're trying to hide. You did the right thing honestly, let people judge you based on who you are now not who you were five years ago.

pat7811mo ago

My buddy Greg did this exact thing on a car forum back in 2019. He used to get into these heated arguments about engine swaps and posted some real dumb stuff about turbos that he regrets. He nuked the whole account and started fresh. Now he can actually talk about builds without someone digging up his old posts about putting a supercharger on a four cylinder and getting roasted for it. But he also lost a really good writeup he did on suspension tuning that got saved by like a hundred guys. Still, he says the peace of mind is worth more than the internet points.

amy_craig281mo ago

Oh I actually read something about this the other day, some study found that people who nuke their old accounts tend to feel less anxious about posting online. Kinda makes sense when you think about it, having all that baggage gone lets you just talk without worrying.