Everyone makes mistakes, but what is most important is that we learn from them and grow as people.
Be careful what you write and share on social media as it is permanent. Sure, you can choose to change the privacy settings to limit the viewers or outright delete your postings but once they’re out there in the world, people will always remember or worse, take screenshots of it. That is exactly what’s happening to Azfar Firdaus, or more famously known as Azfarovski following his courageous confrontation with his body shamer on live TV recently.
With the public spotlight focused on him following his action of calling out a fellow panellist on Malaysia Hari Ini that cyber-bullied him on Twitter for being Albino, Malaysians were quick to search up his Twitter history and found a few postings that were disrespectful to their respective recipients.
Here are some of his less than savoury tweets a few netizens have dug up:
Source: IniAlannn
“Yeah, the person deactivated Twitter just now. Yesterday the person said “Goodbye. Bullying has won” and wants to commit suicide….for the 6th time probably.”
“I have literally been slapped by a fat girl at a bus stop because she was eating junk food and I said try to eat healthier.”
Source: Burhan_plays
Of course, after seeing revelations of Azfar’s past tweets, the Twittersphere came out in droves and began to criticise him, and some even called him a hypocrite for doing the same thing that Shazwan did to him; body-shaming and cyber-bullying others. In one tweet in reply to the original video shared on social media, a netizen slammed Azfar for his actions, saying:
“Speaking about depression, Azfar is the stupidest human being to shame Shazwan on TV. Stupid human. If Shazwan is depressed after this, it’s all your fault.”
Another reply to the comment pointed out that Azfar has always been the person to make fun of others in his tweets.
Source: Burhan_plays
However, do note the tweet said that “since people change, so does he”. This change in personality is echoed through other comments such as these tweet replies below:
Source: Burhan_plays
“One of them (Azfar) matured and learned from their mistakes and one of them (Shazwan) still continue to bully people after getting roasted on live TV.”
Azfar himself came out in response to all the negativity aimed towards him and even said he expected that this whole thing would happen once he did the confrontation on live TV. Here is a whole Twitter thread that he did addressing the matter:
Source: Azfar Firdaus
“Yes, I may have slipped in the past and said pretty insensitive things as well and I would like to publicly apologize for that. I’m sorry for not knowing better.”
Azfar continued by saying that he has learned that that kind of behaviour is wrong and is repenting, and one way to do so is by advocating against it. He knew that talking about it on TV would make people dig up his past comments that may be bigoted, racist or indulging in body-shaming. The highlight of his response has got to be this line:
“Even if my image goes down the drain, I would like to take a stance and say that it’s not and never will be alright!”
Source: Burhan_plays
That’s a pretty classy stance if you ask us. What do you think of the whole situation? Are netizens right to label him a hypocrite? Or has he learned from his past mistakes and moved on? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section!