You Can’t Redact Damage.

It’s one thing to delete a post.

It’s another to think that doing so erases the damage it caused.

But that’s what they do, isn’t it?

They hit delete and act like it never happened.

They remove a video, a story, a caption — and then they carry on.

No acknowledgement. No accountability. No reckoning for what it left behind.

But the internet doesn’t work that way. And neither does harm.

Once it’s out there, it’s out there.

It doesn’t matter that the video is gone.

It matters that it was there long enough to spread.

To imprint.

To alter how people see me — how people see Calvin-Lee Hardie in Inverness, online, and in real life.

You don’t get to retract a lie without first acknowledging it was one.

You don’t get to remove the post but keep the silence.

And you don’t get to cause harm and expect the record to stay blank.

That’s what Playback exists for.

Because I’ve learned that damage doesn’t vanish with deletion. It gets filed.

It gets tracked.

It gets tied to every consequence that comes after.

What they don’t understand — or maybe what they refuse to acknowledge — is that digital harm isn’t like paper. You can’t just scribble it out and pretend it’s clean.

Screenshots exist.

Shares exist.

Memories exist.

People remember how something made them feel — even if they can’t find the link anymore.

That’s the danger of the era we live in.

And that’s the lie people use to their advantage when they want to pretend they didn’t cross a line.

They think that if the post is gone, the evidence is gone.

But I don’t work from what’s public.

I work from what’s proven.

I don’t care that the video was removed.

I care that it existed — and that it was weaponised with the assumption that I’d stay quiet.

I won’t.

Because you can’t redact damage once it’s done.

You can only document it — and demand accountability, post by post.

That’s what I’m doing here.

That’s what this series is for.

This is Playback.

And I’m recording everything they hoped would be forgotten.

— Calvin-Lee Hardie

Inverness