We really are starting to reach further and further for dirt on people, it seems like.

By the way, if you want to be hip, you can start calling gossip or dirt on someone ‘tea.’ For example, “I have some hot and ready-to-be served tea on Katie and her boyfriend Zach (just an example, no one implied).”

So party like it is 1773 Boston and throw that tea everywhere.

Anyway, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become a hit in politics after winning a representative seat in New York in the midterm elections.

Of course, the natural progression of things has to lead to the fact that since she is now popular and received a lot of positive attention, she must have her past come into question.

So, naturally, a video of her dancing in college surfaced as people decided that was a great video to show the world to prove that she is scandalous and that she is not a good person.

She is not the only victim of this weird attacking strategy, and she will most certainly not be the last person to encounter it.

The video literally shows nothing anywhere near the grounds of being scandalous.

She is shown dancing on a rooftop of some building with a few others, who I would guess are some friends of hers.

One tweet that shared the video said that she was in high school when she did this, but I am not sure exactly when it happened.

Anyway, the tweet reads out like this: “… High school Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—Congratulations New York!”

Now, could she have been ‘trespassing’ on that rooftop, and by that I mean it was a restricted area, yes possibly.

But even that is a far stretch to say that she has a controversial past. Man, you got her. Dancing on a restricted roof, she is a real menace.

But the chance of her getting on a restricted roof is very slim anyway, so it was probably an open roof or she knew the people who owned the building and they let her up.

No matter the case, she is literally just dancing.

We need to stop reaching for these far-out ideas and claiming them as controversial and scandalous.

The only way that I could maybe, barely maybe, see an argument to be made is if she was dancing in a provocative way. Maybe, that is enough for a small argument. Even then, it is a bit of a reach.

But she is not dancing in any provocative way at all.

If I had to guess, it looks like she is dancing as a celebration because she just graduated high school or got accepted to Boston University, since she had the school’s shirt on.

As someone who hates stupidity and also loves to trash talk, this is my final thought: stop trying to use these lame things to smear someone’s name. It makes you look bad.

Secondly, dancing on a roof is so innocent. You want to make someone look bad, go find out that they have avoided paying taxes or have committed insurance fraud or something.

Make and deliver the tea the right way, people.

Dillan Schorfheide is a junior journalism major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or dtschorfheide@eiu.edu.