Few things are so widely used today as social media in one form or another. The internet is full of social networks of all kinds, ranging from ones with a massive following and mass interest like Facebook and Twitter to smaller, thematic ones like art-focused Ello and Deviantart, image sharing networks like Pinterest and Flickr, regional networks like VK or Weibo, and many others. As you might expect, where there is a lot of user-generated content, there are also some epic screw-ups coming. And with the huge media coverage of such events, the news about them reach virtually anyone with an internet connection at the speed of light. So, considering only a little more than half a year has passed to this day, here are some of the 2017 social media fails that were truly massive.
News on Trump
US President Donald Trump is an avid Twitter user, and many of his tweets are simply outrageous. This time, in turn, we won’t dedicate any time and space to him – instead, let’s take a look at Fox News, one of his favorite news sources, for an epic screw-up that has happened earlier this year.
On March 27th, 2017, Fox News posted an interesting piece of a news alert: that the President is at the White House working over the weekend. Except he wasn’t – he was watching TV and playing golf at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. As you might expect, the backlash was instant – some followers were quick to point out the blatant lack of information of the news outlet, and many others pointed out that this news wasn’t even newsworthy at all.
News Alert: @POTUS spending weekend working at the White House. pic.twitter.com/kAtZVQE2Mr
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 26, 2017
A Mistake of Faith
On February 3rd, 2017, CNN broke the news of country singer Faith Hill preparing to release an album of duets she sang with Notorious B.I.G. 20 years after his murder. The news was great… unfortunately, though, CNN had the wrong Faith mentioned in the tweet. The album set to be released does feature a Faith – R&B singer Faith Evans who was married to the rapper at the time of his passing.
Faith Hill is releasing an album of duets with The Notorious B.I.G, 20 years after his murder https://t.co/AFZrE2RnjG pic.twitter.com/XBzxS8wejv
— CNN (@CNN) February 3, 2017
#covfefe
It seems that we can’t complete our list of major social media events this year without mentioning President-Elect Donald Trump’s frequent Twitter updates. One of them, in turn, left the whole world baffled. Unfortunately, the tweet was deleted but some users have it immortalized:
that was the moment Trump became prsiduvhirw pic.twitter.com/fKVPPNVFH0
— Anthony Brian Smith (@AnthonyBLSmith) May 31, 2017
The word “covfefe” (that Autocorrect insists to change to “coffee”) has since been printed on mugs and t-shirts, even inked on an Instagram celebrity’s arm, and made it around the world in a matter of minutes. Still, nobody has figured out what it actually means…
