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This is the whole problem with treating social media as life-people base everything they think about their outgroup based on the most unhinged viral Twitter personalities, and if someone doesn't have a "trail" (i.e., a Twitter history or something) showing them getting into pointless arguments with trolls then how are you supposed to prove what you say and believe in real life? The idea that anyone who says "No, I don't actually believe the thing you say everyone on my side believes" has to prove it to you by showing their online posts from the Obama years is absurd.
I'll grant it's not a fair standard to apply to any particular individual you're having a conversation with. Maybe they really were one of the extremely few principled people all along, and after years of zapped accounts, or basic opsec, they can't provide receipts. Maybe they're too young to have participated in the culture war battles of the past to begin with. Hell, maybe they had an honest change of heart.
But come on, the idea that the mistake is treating social media as life is absurd. Crowds at anti-war protests dwindling to a chorus of crickets and 5 libertarians the very moment Obama got elected did not happen on social media. People moving on from pet issue to pet issue, pretending it's all a matter of principle, and then forgetting about those principles when a new pet issue contradicts them, is all just part of human nature.
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Credibility doesn't come from nothing. The modern internet is absolutely filled with false flag shit. It's assuredly automated, even. "I'm a Trump voter, but I'm so mad at him about Current Thing that I wish I'd voted for Kamala, darn tootin" is practically an entire genre of reddit post. And this week's thread has multiple brand new accounts claiming that they've definitely been long-term principled civil libertarians.
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