The Internet was filled with things to love this year – but a lot to hate, too, and 2013 was the year we decided that hate was more interesting. We started hate-reading, hate-watching and crowd-sourcing public ridicule. We turned our timelines into a non-stop stream of stuff that made us collectively cringe.
And the posts listed here really made us cringe. Sending a tweet, Vine or Instagram photo has always been just another opportunity for embarrassment, but these blundering brands and bone-headed tweeters stand out as the worst of the year.
In the interest of living and learning (and convincing ourselves that these massive slip-ups will never, ever happen to us), here are the biggest social media blunders of 2013. Let these ill-advised posts serve as a lesson to us all: In 2014, think twice before you press that tweet button.
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1. Justine Sacco and the tweet heard 'round the world
Justine Sacco, a former New York City PR executive, sparked a social media firestorm when she tweeted this right before boarding an 11-hour flight to South Africa. Hashtags #JustineSacco and #HasJustineLandedYet were instantly trending on Twitter, and Sacco was let go from her firm upon landing.
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2. #AskJPM
JPMorgan’s ill-advised live Q&A led to tweets like these:
Needless to say, they regretted it:
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3. No, Dr. Phil
Just, no.
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4. Atlanta-Journal Constitution fail
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution tried to inject a click-worthy reference into this tweet, of a seemingly innocuous news piece about a Georgia lottery winner.
But the problem with that reference should be clear to anybody who’s ever taken an American History class: “40 acres and a mule” were promised to former slaves as reparations. Hardly an appropriate analogy in 2013.
The newspaper never explained how exactly the offensive tweet got sent, but they did eventually apologize:
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5. This racist EMT
Joseph Cassano, 23 — who the Post revealed was working as an FDNY EMT in an apparent bid to fast-track his promotion to firefighter — regularly used the derogatory term “shwoog” when referring to black people, and once tweeted, “I like jews about as much as hitler.” His Twitter account has since been suspended.
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6. Epicurious on the Boston tragedy
At least they apologized:
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7. The time Bill de Blasio celebrated a racist rabbi
To put this into perspective, here were a few of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s thoughts on Hurricane Katrina: “Blacks will study the Torah? (God said) let’s bring a tsunami and drown them. Hundreds of thousands remained homeless. Tens of thousands have been killed. All of this because they have no God.”
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8. The NYU lecturer who hates fat people
A visiting NYU business professor didn’t think obese people could complete a dissertation. “My sincere apologies to all for that idiotic, impulsive and badly judged tweet. It does not reflect my true views, values or standards,” he later wrote.
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9. Home Depot's racist monkey tweet
Home Depot quickly rescinded and issued an apology, but not before people took screen shots of it and it was circulated on social media.
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10. Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs!
On the 72nd anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, SpaghettiOs sent this weird tweet trying to capitalize on the trending topic. The offensive image was taken down by 11 a.m. the next morning, but not before people mocked the lapse in judgment by pasting the cartoon ‘O’ into photos of other historic events.