Former UFC and WWE superstar Ronda Rousey issued an apology for sharing a Sandy Hook conspiracy video on her then-Twitter account 11 years ago, which she called “the single most regrettable decision of my life.”
Rousey, 37, said she “never meant to insult or hurt anyone” by sharing the post, which was deleted shortly after, in a lengthy statement on her X account Friday (August 23):
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 then 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.
Rousey’s apology came after she participated in an ‘Ask Me Anything’ on Reddit’s popular professional wrestling subreddit ‘SquaredCircle’ on Tuesday (August 20). The majority of the questions referred to Rousey sharing a video that claimed the December 14, 2012, massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, which killed 26 total people, including 20 children between the ages of six and seven years old, was staged.
Rousey ignored the upvoted Sandy Hook-related questions while participating in the AMA and instead answered downvoted ones in relation to the graphic novel she was promoting with indie comics publisher AWA Studios. Rousey shared and deleted a tweet calling the Sandy Hook conspiracy video “extremely interesting, and must-watch” in January 2013, at which point she had already become the inaugural UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion and arguably the most recognizable female athlete, having later been the first women inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2018.
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