This Is What It Cost Me.

Everyone saw the post.

Everyone saw the video.

They saw the performance, the punchline, the platform.

They watched it spread.

What they didn’t see — and what they never asked about — was the cost.

Because while they were laughing, scrolling, sharing, or staying silent, I was trying to survive something that didn’t end when they closed the app.

This post isn’t for drama.

It’s for documentation.

Because I need people to understand that digital harm doesn’t stop at the screen.

It follows you.

Into your inbox.

Into your job prospects.

Into your health.

Into how you speak to people who used to know you — and now hesitate.

It followed me into every corner of my life.

And I carried it all without asking anyone to carry it for me.

I lost sleep.

I lost opportunities.

I lost pieces of myself I didn’t know I had to protect — until they were already gone.

I lost the ability to walk into certain rooms without feeling like someone had already formed an opinion.

I lost trust — not just in others, but in the systems that were supposed to keep reputational violence from being rewarded.

You don’t see that part in the post.

You don’t hear it in the video.

But Calvin Hardie — the real one — lived it.

Calvin-Lee Hardie, from Inverness, became a punchline in rooms I’ve never walked into.

They didn’t break me. But they chipped away at things they’ll never know they touched.

That’s what it cost.

And still, I stayed.

I stayed visible. I stayed present. I kept documenting. I kept showing up — even when everything in me wanted to go dark and stay there.

I built this blog not because I needed a platform, but because I had no other choice.

You don’t erase digital harm by hoping people forget.

You outlast it — publicly, painfully, and permanently.

That’s what Playback is.

It’s what they didn’t expect:

permanence in the face of erasure.

So no — this wasn’t just a video.

It wasn’t just a post.

It was an attack I didn’t choose.

But it’s also a story I now control.

And this post is for the cost — because someone needs to say it plainly.

I didn’t just write through the pain.

I paid to keep writing.

— Calvin-Lee Hardie

Inverness