A 20-Part Archive by Calvin Hardie (Inverness)
You Didn’t Know Me, But You Still Decided I Was Disposable
They didn’t have to know me to ruin me.
They didn’t need the full story.
They didn’t wait for facts.
They didn’t ask questions.
They just watched something happen to someone they didn’t recognise and decided they had enough information to join in.
That’s the danger of digital harm.
You don’t need history.
You just need impulse —
the desire to be seen, to react, to contribute to the public shaming of someone who can’t reach through the screen to explain.
They didn’t see a person.
They saw an opportunity to prove something — to someone else, or to themselves.
They used my name like it was a button they could press.
They used my life like it was a punchline.
And they’ll say they didn’t mean to.
They’ll say they didn’t know.
They’ll say, “It was just a comment.”
But when your life becomes a comment section, the damage doesn’t stay theoretical.
I watched people throw my name around like it cost them nothing.
They didn’t even pause to consider that behind the username, behind the headline, behind the digital shadow —
there was a person who bled quietly for every word they wrote.
And it always starts the same way:
“Well, I don’t really know the situation but…”
“I’m not saying it’s true, but…”
“Apparently…”
Those words become weapons.
And the people who wield them feel safe doing it because they never had to stand close enough to see the damage.
I was just an idea to them.
A name attached to a narrative they didn’t create but happily passed along.
And when you’re only an idea,
you become easy to destroy.
That’s what made it so hard to heal.
Not just the harm — but the distance people kept from the truth.
The refusal to connect with what they’d done.
They didn’t have to hate me.
They just had to believe I didn’t matter.
That I was disposable, because they never got to know me in the first place.
But I’m not disposable.
I’m not a digital footnote.
I’m not a screen grab or a one-liner in someone else’s version of events.
I’m not the product of their speculation.
I’m the person who lived it.
Who survived it.
Who still carries the silence they created when they decided I wasn’t worth checking in on —
only reacting to.
This post isn’t written for them.
It’s written for the people who were reduced to nothing by people who claimed to know everything.
It’s written for those who weren’t hated — just dismissed.
For the ones who became characters before they were ever understood as human.
If that was you —
you’re not disposable either.
And this archive?
It’s the record they didn’t expect you to keep.
This is Post 14.
And I’m not your anecdote.
I’m not your projection.
I’m what’s left when you run out of excuses.