One day they love you, the next day they leave (ahem), unfollow
you.
Seeing as this is a blog about social media slip-ups, it is
impossible not to talk about The Oscars Onion debacle on Twitter this week. Everyone
else is talking about it, so why not add more rubber to the tire fire?
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read this and get
yourself caught up...
Yes, despite what Miley Cyrus believes, “can’t” is in fact not the real "C" word.
Firstly, I’d like to point out what most media outlets have
neglected to mention: The Onion’s twitter account has not only retained its
over 4.5 million followers but has added some 6,000 new followers since the fiasco
was first picked up by major media outlets.
I’m not going to play the sage and say whether The Onion has
acted right or wrong throughout the course of this perceived public relations crisis.
However, I will make a couple of surface level observations, in the form of a
Top 2 List (just because Top “__” Lists seem to the be all the rage these days):
1. We all must learn
to exercise prudence in the real-time world that is social media.
Everyone’s had a status update or tweet (sometimes done in
haste, sometimes crafted in a state of drunken rapture) that they would love to
take back.
There must be some vetting process in any good social media
strategy –whether it be in regards to professional or personal accounts. I don’t want to hear about every single
initiative that a company is involved with, nor do I want to know that you are
going to the gym and your max weight is 400 lbs, bro.
2. Sometimes
controversy in the world of social media is not necessarily a bad thing.
Since Sunday, overall mentions of The Onion have spiked according to
social media analyzers NetBase, suggesting that new communications methods are
blurring the line between notoriety and fame in the digital realm.
Perhaps we are harkening back to a time where any publicity
is good publicity, or as Oscar Wilde famously said, “The only thing worse than being talked
about is not being talked about.”
Maybe we should ask young Quvenzhané for her opinion on
that.
