WASHINGTON—In a fiery speech that had audience members frantically deleting their social media accounts right there in their seats, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) warned Tuesday that future generations will face criminal prosecution for the online behavior of their ancestors, declaring that “in 100 years, your great-great-grandchildren will be doing hard time for your 2023 tweet history, and honestly? That’s on you.”
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward retroactive justice, people,” Ocasio-Cortez told a packed auditorium at Georgetown University, as students in the audience visibly squirmed while panic-checking their phones. “Your descendants will be held accountable for every problematic joke, every poorly worded hot take, and every single time you used the laughing-crying emoji when you should’ve used the skull. That’s just how generational justice works.”
The congresswoman, occasionally pausing to sip from a water bottle with “Eat the Rich” stickers plastered all over it, outlined her vision for the “Hereditary Accountability Act of 2125,” which would establish a Department of Historical Social Media Enforcement with the authority to prosecute the descendants of individuals who posted content deemed offensive by future standards that nobody today could possibly predict.
“We’re not just talking about the obvious stuff like hate speech or misinformation,” Ocasio-Cortez explained while pacing the stage in what witnesses described as “uncomfortably new-looking” sneakers. “We’re talking about your great-great-grandkids getting five to ten years for that time you posted a vacation photo with the caption ‘living my best life’ during a global crisis you completely forgot about because there were like seven of them that year. The future doesn’t forget, even if you do.”
According to Ocasio-Cortez, who kept referencing a “100-year plan” she claimed to have drafted on the Notes app of her phone, the legislation would create a complex algorithm to track offensive content across generations, with penalties increasing based on the number of likes, shares, and the poster’s follower count at the time.
“Your descendants will be assigned a Social Debt Score based on your entire posting history,” she continued, while several students in the front row were seen quietly deactivating their Instagram accounts. “Did you post a selfie with a culturally appropriative Halloween costume in 2023? That’s a mandatory minimum sentence for your great-great-granddaughter in 2125. Did you share a meme that aged poorly? Your great-great-grandson is doing community service every weekend until he’s 50. It’s called accountability, look it up.”
The proposed future law would also establish “Accountability Colonies” where descendants of problematic posters would be required to perform community service and attend mandatory re-education seminars with titles like “How Your Ancestor’s Twitter Fingers Ruined Society” and “Your Great-Grandpa’s Cringe Is Now Your Prison Sentence.”
Conservative lawmakers immediately condemned the proposal, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) calling it “the most dystopian government overreach I’ve ever heard of,” before hastily deleting several tweets from his own account dating back to 2016. Sources close to Cruz reported he spent the next four hours frantically searching his account for any mentions of “Cancun.”
Legal experts questioned the constitutionality of punishing people for the actions of their ancestors, but Ocasio-Cortez dismissed these concerns with an exaggerated eye roll that several attendees described as “practiced.”
“The Constitution is, like, super old,” she reportedly said during the Q&A session, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “By 2125, we’ll have amended it to include the right to hold future generations accountable for your terrible takes. It’s called progress, look it up. Besides, have you seen what people post online? It’s literally violence.”
Social media companies have already responded to the congresswoman’s speech, with Meta announcing a new “Future-Proof” feature that automatically flags content that might be considered offensive by the standards of the year 2125, which somehow they claim to know already.
“We’re using predictive AI to determine what will be considered problematic a century from now,” said Meta spokesperson Jessica Chen, who admitted she had deleted her own Twitter account during the press conference. “For example, we now know that using the phrase ‘touch grass’ will be considered deeply offensive to the synthetic lawn community of the future. And don’t even get me started on what they’ll think about people who used the word ‘literally’ incorrectly.”
At press time, Ocasio-Cortez was reportedly drafting additional legislation that would allow future courts to seize assets from the estates of individuals who ever used the phrase “it’s giving” or referred to anything as “mid” in written communications, while simultaneously posting about it on her own social media with the caption “the future is watching #accountability.”
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