When in doubt, don’t tweet it out.
That should’ve been the motto for these blundering brands and clueless tweeters. Luckily for us, it wasn’t.
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 fails of 2014.
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1. #ImAMetsFanBecause
Twitter/@Mets In the spirit of good, old-fashioned user-generated content, the Mets invited their “fans” to tell them why they love the team — the same team that’s seen a years-long struggle. The resulting tweets were somber, heartbreaking, and downright hilarious.
They meant well. They really did.
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2. A forbidden kiss
The Duggars love love. They love couples showing their love through public displays of affection. They love it so much, they invited other married couples to do just that on their official Facebook page.
Facebook/John Becker But there was one tiny catch, as John Becker and his husband quickly learned. Apparently the Duggars left out “opposite sex” before the word “couples.” The famous family deleted Becker’s photo, along with similar photos from other same-sex duos.
You really ought to be more specific next time, Duggars.
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3. NYPD
Twitter/@justinwedes NYPD asks followers to tweet pictures of friendly cops… What could possibly go wrong?!
Surprisingly, NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis was not discouraged in the least: “People are free to do what they want. But we are doing it to get our messages out to the communities . . . We will not be deterred from our social media objective.” -
4. DiGiorno #WhyIStayed
The pizza company jumped on a hashtag about domestic violence — but clearly didn’t understand the context.
DiGiorno deleted the tweet within minutes, and issued an apology. “A million apologies. Did not read what the hashtag was about before posting.”
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5. What power outage?
Fox During a massive service outage in Boston, LA, Chicago, and Dallas, Charter Communications decided to ignore customers’ social-media pleas for help — and talk about the Simpsons instead.
Customers swiftly responded, calling Charter out for their ironic tweet.
Charter soon learned of the issue and spokeswoman Kim Haas acknowledged the problem.
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6. Cheerios
Cheerios’ Super Bowl ad featured a 6-year-old girl and her interracial parents, and someone at MSNBC figured everyone but conservatives would enjoy it.
A tweet from the company’s account read, “Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awwww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family.”
MSNBC President Phil Griffin fired an employee and personally apologized following the “outrageous and unacceptable” tweet.
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7. Delta giraffe gaffe
Delta Airlines only wanted to congratulate the US on winning the World Cup game 2-1. So they sent a tweet showing the Statue of Liberty to represent the US and used a giraffe to symbolize Ghana — but giraffes aren’t native to Ghana.
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8. Tweet #nomakeupselfie, adopt a polar bear
Instagram/Zumapress.com The social media campaign “#nomakeupselfie” went viral last week, in an effort to raise awareness and money for breast cancer research.
But thousands of people nearly adopted a polar bear instead.
In order to donate to Cancer Research UK, you had to text the word “BEAT” to a generic donations number, but instead, some charitable folks’ generous donations were auto-corrected to “BEARS,” resulting in them adopting a polar bear rather than donating to Cancer Research.
