Assuming that they didn’t just fire everybody, burn down their office, sow the ground with salt, and then run horses across the ashes to obscure that anything was once there.
The German sportswear giant launched its #DareToCreate campaign on Monday and invited people to get involved by liking and retweeting its post about Arsenal’s home kit.
Adidas would then generate a virtual shirt with the user’s Twitter handle on the back, along with the message ‘welcome to the squad’.
What’s that? Oh, no, why on Earth would they put in a filter to weed out horrible fake Twitter names*? Or have a human being look through submissions before they auto-Tweeted them out? Why do you ask?
Yes, yes, I know: fully justified cynicism. I don’t even need to tell you what happened next, do I? All I have to do is quote the phrase ‘horribly backfired’ and you can fill in the blanks. Moral of the story: social media is of the Devil, and don’t ever trust it. It’s like the ocean, if the ocean possessed actual spite and malice.
Moe Lane
*Actual horrible ones. I decline to put screenshots on my site, but Small Dead Animals is apparently made of stronger stuff than I.
The sad point is everyone *knows* what Twitter is at this point. They just launched BoatyMcBoayface this year fer goodness’ sake.
Boaty McBoatface–which they cheated on and named a submersible that instead of the actual boat–is old news. Hi-Point’s next 9mm pistol is the Yeet Cannon 9.
Yes, I’m serious.
The worst thing about this Adidas screwup is they aren’t even the first ones to do this exact thing!
At least Hi-Point has a better sense of humor about it. 🙂
One day, we’re going to look back on this time.
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At least, I hope we all live long enough for a look back to happen.
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I wonder what we’ll think we were thinking ..
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Mew
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p.s. *How long* does it *take* for “digital media companies” to read and apply the evil overloard list? “I will keep a sarcastic fifth grader on staff, s/he will review all my evil plans and any faults s/he finds will be corrected.”
“One day, we’re going to look back on this time.”
I believe the point of the yeet cannon is to help effectuate that end. 🙂
The stupid, it burns!
Quitting twitter was one of the best decisions I ever made.
A buddy got kicked off of Twitter for reporting one of those posts. And you’re assuming that they actually cared about the shirts. More than likely, they were shocked that people didn’t like it and will probably issue a “sorry you were offended, you bigot” kind of response.
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OK, I am feeling a bit acidic right now.
This isn’t even the first time this happened. How did they not know about this fiasco? (Caution: ugly racist Twitter name at the link.) That article needs to be required reading for every company’s social media team.
OMG, thanks! I knew someone had made this exact screwup but I couldn’t remember who (and I thought it was more recent.)
Personally I vacillate between “I’m damn glad I never got on Twitter” and “Twitter needs to be burned to the ground and the earth salted and a sign erected on that spot to warn future generations of the consequences of being blatantly evil online”.