Twitter can be far too much of an amplifier to be used casually or carelessly.

What she said was shockingly badly tweeted. Whatever sentiment she was trying to express, I would bet that was not quite it. Yet her entire life has been turned up-side-down by it. No one gains.

Firing people for offensive tweets, posts, etc has become a serious inhibitor of free speech. Even stupid and offensive speech, is speech. Perhaps companies should at least speak to their employees before firing them. There might well be intermediate actions that would improve the world more than firing someone for being briefly very, very, dumb. Admittedly it does not help, in this case, that she is supposed to be a PR person. Firing might be appropriate here, but what is the rest of her history? (Probably pretty good if the person that dug out her entire twitter history could not find any more bombshells.)

Reactions such as the one for this tweet, are not only excessive, but can be dangerous. It may be fun to prove that you are so clever that you can meet her (a stranger’s) plane, but does the punishment really fit the crime?

If you put it out as a tweet, prepare to live or die by your 140 characters.

S. McC (tweetless)