Tweeting about strippers.

My friend (and spring semester intern) Kevin tweeted a post from DeadSpin yesterday afternoon about a community manager from Major League Soccer who accidentally posted a picture of sign for a strip club to the MLS Facebook page with the comment “You had me at strippers.”

And naturally, the interwebs went into a frenzy. People made jokes about the CMs likelihood of being fired, others mentioned how they tweeted the picture to his boss. This isn’t the first time a community manager has made this mistake. In fact, it’s probably not even the twentieth.

So I have to wonder, is this really such a big deal?

Haven’t we all accidentally IM’d someone a message meant for someone else? Or replied to the wrong text message? While I am not equating a personal IM or text with a public message coming from a brand people know, trust or respect, can’t we all see this for what it is? An accident. And accidents happen.

I once screwed up a holiday contest from a HUGE brand and ruined someone’s Christmas – well, sort of – thanks to my awesome manager, a very understanding SVP and some VERY understanding/forgiving clients we fixed things for everyone. But the point is, people screw up. And sometimes it’s public and from a brand. People need to get over it.

Brands like the Red Cross quickly handled a mistaken tweet about finding some beers and everyone applauded them for doing so with humility and a quick wit:

So when will people stop caring so much? Do I think any less of MLS because their community manager opened the wrong app, or forgot to log out when he was done? No. I think it’s bad form. I think it’s sloppy work. I think that he or she may need to be on some sort of probationary period, or prohibited from using his or her mobile for tweeting/facebooking, but fired? That seems a bit harsh.

These things are going to keep happening as more and more brands invest more in social media. I think everyone needs to chill out and accept that there are people behind these brands and occasionally they will make mistakes.