*Please note that this article will contain sensitive topics including gun violence*
Former WWE Superstar Ronda Rousey has issued an apology which she very well knows should have been given 11 years ago.
In 2012 a tragedy took place which has become all too common in the United States. At Sandy Hook Elementary School in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, 26 people (20 children and 6 adults) were brutally killed in a school mass shooting. After this, Rousey watched and then shared a conspiracy video which would deny the shooting. She labeled the share with “extremely interesting, and must-watch.” Rousey would take down the video but then follow up that tweet in 2013 with “asking questions and doing research is more patriotic than blindly accepting what you’re told.” (as of the time of this writing, this post is still up).
You can see the apology post below.
You can read what Rousey wrote below:
I can’t say how many times I’ve redrafted this apology over the last 11 years. How many times I’ve convinced myself it wasn’t the right time or that I’d be causing even more damage by giving it. But eleven years ago I made the single most regrettable decision of my life. I watched a Sandy Hook conspiracy video and reposted it on twitter. I didn’t even believe it, but was so horrified at the truth that I was grasping for an alternative fiction to cling to instead. I quickly realized my mistake and took it down, but the damage was done. By some miracle it seemingly slipped under the media’s radar, I was never asked about it so I never spoke of it again, afraid that calling attention to it would have the opposite of the intended effect – it could increase the views of those conspiracy videos, and selfishly, inform even more people I was ignorant, self absorbed, and tone deaf enough to share one in the first place.
I drafted a thousandth apology to include in my last memoir, but my publisher begged me to take it out, saying it would overshadow everything else and do more harm than good. So I convinced myself that apologizing would just reopen the wound for no other reason than me selfishly trying to make myself feel better, that I would hurt those suffering even more and possibly lead more people down the black hole of conspiracy bullshit by it being brought up again just so I could try to shake the label of being a “Sandy Hook truther”.
But honestly I deserve to be hated, labeled, detested, resented and worse for it. I deserve to lose out on every opportunity, I should have been canceled, I would have deserved it. I still do.
I apologize that this came 11 years too late, but to those affected by the Sandy Hook massacre, from the bottom of my heart and depth of my soul I am so so sorry for the hurt I caused. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain you’ve endured and words cannot describe how thoroughly remorseful and ashamed I am of myself for contributing to it. I’ve regretted it every day of my life since and will continue to do so until the day I die.
And to anyone else that’s fallen down the black hole of bullshit. It doesn’t make you edgy, or an independent thinker, you’re not doing your due diligence entertaining every possibility by digesting these conspiracies. They will only make you feel powerless, afraid, miserable and isolated. You’re doing nothing but hurting others and yourself. Regardless of how many bridges you’ve burned over it, stop digging yourself a deeper hole, don’t get wrapped up in the sunk cost fallacy, no matter how long you’ve gone down the wrong road, you should still turn back.
