Think Before You Post .

In 2013 a 30 year old woman decided to tweet before an 11 hour plane ride to South Africa. She decided to tweet things such as, ‘Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!’  and, ‘Weird German Dude: You’re in First Class. It’s 2014. Get some deodorant.’ — Inner monologue as I inhale BO. Thank God for pharmaceuticals.’ Stupidly enough she decided to leave them up during the plane ride not thinking anything of it. That quickly changed once she arrived and saw what she had just started.

What comes with saying such disrespectful tweets come what some can say the best thing in the world, but in this situation it’s the worst, trending number 1 on Twitter. What comes with that are millions of other tweets commenting back to what she had to say. Many finding it all terrible saying stuff like,“How did @JustineSacco get a PR job?! Her level of racist ignorance belongs on Fox News. #AIDS can affect anyone!”.  Some finding it funny such as one person saying, Oh man, @JustineSacco is going to have the most painful phone-turning-on moment ever when her plane lands” .  Another tweet was from her work. An employee tweeted, “I’m an IAC employee and I don’t want @JustineSacco doing any communications on our behalf ever again. Ever.” And Justine’s the senior director of corporate communications at IAC so that only made it worse for herself. Workers at her jobs threatened to strike any hotel she’d book if she attended. Not only did she bring shame to herself and her career but the family she was visiting also was affected by it. Being that they were National Congress Supporters and longtime activists for racial equality they were disgraced by what he had said. Her aunt said to her,  “I’m an IAC employee and I don’t want @JustineSacco doing any communications on our behalf ever again. Ever.”. So without them she lacked the emotional support she needed in that time.

Permanence

In the situation the Permanence is how no matter if she deleted the tweets and comments (which she did) it was too late. Her leaving it up for hours also doesn’t help either because many have read it so they already know and have probably shared it to others.  Like any person knows, once it’s on the internet it stays on the internet permanently especially if it’s something so bold and dumb like what she did.

Just like permanence she lost total control on the situation by not realizing how offensive she was being and not deleting it. Now she has no option but to face that anyone can see it and judge her just by what she posted.

Immediacy

Being No. 1 trending on Twitter brought a lot of power to what she had stated causing more talk and attention to herself.

What I would’ve said to her for advice would be to think before you post. It seems that simple but honestly once you write something out there, even if it was a joke to you can cause a lot of unwanted attention. Once you put it out there thousands of different people with different opinions, cultures, beliefs etc. look at you no matter if you wanted them to or not, I would urge to, even if it’s positive to just stay out of the spotlight when it comes to social media because wrong or right someone will twist your words.