Are you what you post? Social media and the accountability debate

Over a decade into the rollicking era of tweets and online posts, the nation is still grappling with the mores of online speech and conduct.

Over the past month or so, a number of high profile journalists, talk show hosts, and entertainment bigwigs have seen their past outpourings resurface in a negative light. A number of young professional athletes, too, have had to answer for racial slurs and anti-gay comments posted when they were teens.

The issue of online vitriol isn’t new, of course. Not a few people have lost their jobs and their social standing after making an ill-advised momentary quip.

But it’s become something of a virtual bloodsport. Online trolls and political rabble-rousers comb through the social media archives of the famous and politically active, looking for past “gotcha” posts that might have crossed a hard-to-define cultural line that marks off the offensive and unacceptable.

Now, after a decade of celebrating the

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