A person who made mistakes in their twenties finds that every job search, every relationship, every new beginning starts with a Google search surfacing their worst moments. A news article about an arrest that never led to conviction follows them forever, the digital record outlasting any concept of rehabilitation or second chances. Someone requests deletion of their data from a platform they used years ago and receives confirmation that their account is closed, only to discover their information persists in backups, third-party databases, AI training sets, and cached copies across the web.