In this new digital world of perpetuity, there is little that you can do to prevent your life from being recorded at every turn.

For those engaging in social media mischief, the future could be a rocky one.  Your every tweet, Yelp review, or video purchase could be subject to review by a future employer or spouse.  Heed the warning, folks.

But what happens when you don’t go willingly into the fray?  What happens when you find yourself in an awkward situation, with a camera in your face, and for the rest of your life you are now that person on that video?

That’s exactly what happened to one young man some months ago in Washington DC as he was confronted by protesters while on a high school field trip.  A photo of his awkward smile was construed as condescending in the mainstream media and, because of the student’s “Make America Great Again” hat, the story went viral.

The young man took legal action in a bid to clear his name, and the verdict is finally in.

A federal judge in Kentucky Friday threw out a defamation lawsuit filed against The Washington Post by Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann and his family over the paper’s reporting of an incident between the young man and a Native American man this past January in Washington.

The lawsuit, which was filed in February, sought $250 million in damages and accused the Post of practicing “a modern-day form of McCarthyism” by targeting Sandmann and “using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles … to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the president.”

In part of the ruling, the judge noted that the Washington Post did not mention Sandmann by his name in their original article on the incident.