Anyone who has been on the Internet for a long time may remember the saying of advertising copywriter Jean-Remy von Matt that weblogs are the “toilet walls of the Internet”.

That made for a medium-sized shit rake in 2006.

A lot of time has passed by now, and if anything on the Internet is reminiscent of toilet walls right now, it's probably Twitter.

In contrast to physical toilet walls, however, every scribble is immediately given a name and a time stamp, can be photographed and used against the author.

And quite often, that's exactly what happens.

Sarah-Lee Heinrich was thirteen or fourteen years old when, in a context that is no longer really comprehensible, she commented "Heil" under a picture on which a swastika was depicted in a context that was also no longer comprehensible.

In other respects, too, she expressed herself in the way that pupils at thirteen or fourteen sometimes talk to one another in schoolyards: unfiltered, drastic, often using strong expressions.

She was young and angry, like many.

Schoolchildren have been like this ever since schoolyards and toilet walls existed.

So far this has not been a problem.

And there were no consequences for later life.

Nobody knows who's taking screenshots

In the meantime, however, these statements no longer go unheard, rather they manifest themselves in writing on the Internet, in social media and in chats, and no one knows who might resent you and take screenshots. It is a generation that grew up alone on the Internet and was usually unable to rely on the accompanying media skills of their parents.

In the meantime a lot had happened in Heinrich's life. At seventeen, a Twitter thread from her caused a sensation in which she described her financial needs as the daughter of a single mother who has to live on Hartz IV. It makes it into some media. She begins to get involved, joins the Green Youth, founds the Unna branch, looks after the members' magazine, begins studying and is elected spokeswoman for the Green Youth. Then she becomes a target: Tweets from the years 2014 and 2015 are circulating as screenshots, she is accused of her insulting language, and above all: what is the point of “salvation”?

Taking Twitter screenshots out of context and posting them with accusatory gestures has now become a kind of popular sport.

All context is lost, such as whether a comment is about teasing friends or irony or sarcasm.

The date is also often cut off so that it looks like the tweet was recently posted.

Long-deleted tweets are also shared.

This is called "growing up"

In addition, in this case it does not matter how likely it is that the daughter of a German and a father from Guinea will utter folkish slogans. It is probably easier to hold this against a young woman than to those who mean business. Ironically, an AfD spokesman in Baden-Württemberg accuses the Green Party youth of “totalitarian attitudes”, Sarah-Lee Heinrich in particular “group-related misanthropy” and “sedition”. It is curious when the rude statements of a fourteen-year-old, for whom they have long been embarrassed, cause more worries about social peace than the extremist wing of their own right-wing popular party observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

"Measure me and like to criticize my positions and my political work," Heinrich says meanwhile.

"I'm not going to declare myself to everything that I once thought and said when I was 14, I don't ask anyone for that either." She is right, nobody should ask anyone for that.

No thirteen-year-old should fear that a thoughtless statement in a class chat could later cost him a job.

A lot can happen in eight years, people can change, they can change subjects, and political attitudes can change.

It's called “growing up,” and it hasn't gotten any easier in the digital age.