His name is Gideon Yapp. Neither he nor his family wants this shared anywhere, which is precisely why I’m doing it. This is a bad week to piss people off, and I’ve had enough. If you’re going to act out like this in public, you don’t deserve forgiveness. Not until you clearly illustrate that you deserve it and have changed and grown. That doesn’t happen in a month or two, so until such time this is the lesson, and here is the video that Gideon Yapp and his family don’t want you to see or share:
Even if you want to think the best of the kid, even if he’s going through something difficult at home, or having a horrible time with some unknown ailment, that still doesn’t forgive this kind of behavior. My best friend lost her father when she was fifteen years old – she came back to school a few days later and never acted like this. Not because she wasn’t upset, not because things didn’t bother her, but because at that age, you know enough about how to behave. Even if you were raised in less-than-ideal circumstances, you still know. And if you genuinely don’t, well, let this be the learning experience and lesson to enlighten you.
Gideon’s father, Robert Yapp, and his soon-to-be-likely-defunct Twitter account, may give further clues as to how this kid was raised and why he’s acting like such a monster. Check out the screen shot I grabbed of his last tweets – they’re lovely:
After the video was posted, Gideon’s brother reportedly sent out requests that it be taken down because it could ruin a young man’s life. Hopefully this does the opposite and saves it. When you see yourself in such a light, when the world reflects an image of yourself from a perspective you clearly don’t always get, that offers the opportunity for change. For improvement. For forgiveness.
Hatred is learned behavior. So is swearing and disrespecting other human beings. So is using the n-word. And anyone who does that is a racist. Sorry Gideon Yapp, if you don’t want people to see you act like a racist, hate-filled asshole, then don’t act like one. You have the power to turn this around – not by pretending it never happened, but by facing the hate within you, examining why you have it, and showing the world that you can change.
