These tweets are totally unacceptable. For someone who presented as so passionate about social justice issues the tweets are at odds with what we loved about her. This is in no way defence of what she has said, but in my attempt to understand it I suspect there’s something mixed in here about attention-seeking, playing with the idea of what’s acceptable to say online, a crass attempt at humour, and plain immaturity. Although it’s incredibly disappointing, I think about the line in Cat’s Eye by Margaret Wood - There is never only one, of anyone - and how it applies to our perceptions of people. Shows like Big Brother work by quickly presenting the characters as one particular thing and then creating narratives where those tropes can play out. It’s incredibly confusing to see that someone we loved offline has been terrible online, but two things can be true at the same time.
Coincidently, I was looking back at a thread on Moopy from 2012 the other day and some things some of our most highly regarded posters said would have been unacceptable then and certainly not said now. We all leave a digital footprint, and I suspect each new generation will be wiser to this than the one before.