There is no excuse for online idiocy

Except they did. As she peacefully slept, the tweet somehow went viral, far beyond the paltry 170 followers she had at the time. It traveled so fast that #HasJustineLandedYet trended worldwide while she was still in the air. A Twitter user actually went to the airport to document her arrival.  

While taxiing to the gate, she unassumingly fired up her phone, and all hell broke loose. Tens of thousands of angry tweets had been sent in response to her joke, according to the Times. Her family in South Africa, longtime activists for racial equality, told her she’d “tarnished the family.” The company for which she worked, aware of her tweet and the resulting firestorm while she was still in the air, fired her. The next year was spent “crying her weight in tears” and trying to put her life back together.

If only it were an isolated case. The article recounts a number of similar instances with varying degrees of self-inflicted stupidity by those who were persecuted. The man who made an off-colored (but quite frankly, rather mild joke) to a buddy while attending a conference that was overheard and tweeted with his accompanying picture certainly didn’t deserve the backlash that followed. It’s hard to muster as much sympathy for the young woman who posted a photo of herself in a Halloween costume dressed as a Boston Marathon bombing victim. 

We believe in the basic goodness of people, but also recognize the enjoyment of some in the crowd as the condemned are led to the guillotine. You’ve worked hard for your reputation, on that’s inextricably tied to your business, but even the most innocent, seemingly innocuous—and yes, ethical—of actions can be misinterpreted or deliberately misconstrued. You’ve seen that it can happen; now ensure it doesn’t.