I’ve followed jes for a while and thought she was really sweet and down to earth! After a while, the flouting lockdown rules and constant flaunting spending habits while so many struggled bugged me slightly, but I still enjoyed her posts and thought she was a decent person.
I saw all this come up and was intrigued as to what she said, thinking it wouldn’t be that bad, and someone (probably mistakenly, as imagine many have done the same as I) posted it was from here so I came to have a look. I got very into reading the comments, and some have been nasty and distasteful which I don’t agree is productive, so I understand why she’s hurt and I imagine that would be absolutely horrible to read and would really damage a person. To me those kinds of comments are wrong no matter what the person has done.
However, the majority of these comments I think have been constructive and are just a relatively normal debate on an online forum. She has done wrong in the past and I don’t agree she can brush it off as being ‘young.’ 5/6 years ago I was in my early 20s and I don’t believe my opinions/ideologies have changed much, I strongly disagreed with racism/homophobia/fatphobia then and I still do.
In my opinion, at that age, your brain is pretty well developed. You’ve seen enough and learnt enough to know what’s right and what’s wrong and to know more or less who you are. Of course you continue to grow but I think the foundations are there. You are smart enough to know. It’s not like racism etc. weren’t massive issues then. And while I do get that people change, a half-arsed apology isn’t going to cut it. We need actions. She needs to prove she’s changed and not just tell us. And it needs to be sincere.
Also her and her sister going on a witch-hunt for this forum seems very hypocritical and dramatic. (And not to mention, highly unlikely) Just be mature, be the bigger person, do better, and we can all move on and let this forum die.