A lot of people did a lot of dumb things this week.
It’s easier than ever to land yourself in the public spotlight, what, with everybody in the world walking about with the entirety of the Internet in their pockets. And, as it seems, very few of us can handle that kind of power.
If you’ve been having a rough day, be grateful you didn’t pull a stunt like the one Sarah, a 14-year-old girl from Holland, did on Sunday when she tweeted at American Airlines’ account: “hello my name’s Ibrahim and I’m from Afghanistan. I’m part of Al Qaida and on June 1st I’m gonna do something really big bye.”
Which turned out to be a very dumb thing to do, because American Airlines was like “um, you really f***ed up” and then gave her information to the FBI. Despite Sarah’s best attempt at using the “I’m just a 14-year-old white girl I’m not a terrorist pls” defense, she was arrested by police in Rotterdam, Netherlans. For some reason, more people started tweeting fake bomb threats to American Airlines, including a guy who wanted to know if he’s allowed to fly even though his friends call him “the bomb.”
The difficult week for airlines on Twitter wasn’t over yet, though. Some disgruntled customer sent US Airways a snarky complaint, and it told her to visit its customer relations team. But instead of a link to the page, its reply contained a rather lewd photo of a woman with a model airplane that had apparently crashed into her vagina.
This spectacular public relations blunder got more attention than the Pulitzer Prizes and inspired a lot of off-color MH370 jokes. Miraculously, US Airways has said the employee who sent the tweet will not be getting fired. Whether it was an unfortunate mishap or some overworked social media strategist’s final straw being had remains to be seen, but the airplane-related social media idiocy between airlines and their customers was definitely balanced.
But by far the dumbest and most inflammatory thing that anyone did was cause a ruckus at the ceremony marking the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings. Some guy left a rice cooker full of confetti in a backpack near the site of the bombings, which was in poor taste because the actual bombs used were pressure cookers, filled with nails and explosives, hidden in backpacks. Once it was found, the backpack was “disrupted for precautionary reasons,” i.e. preemptively blown up by the Boston Police Department.
The guy who put it there was found running around in a silly hat, yelling “Boston Strong!” and looking absolutely ridiculous. He was promptly arrested and is now facing charges of disturbing the peace.
Sources are divided as to whether the suspect, who is an art student, was doing a work of performance art, being a crazy person or some combination of those two things.
Even though we’ve gotten along pretty well as a species, every now and things like those come up as really convenient examples of how easy it is to do something really stupid.
Summer is coming, and everybody and their mother is about to let loose. Many of them will be doing so on airplanes. Letting go is something we all deserve to do: After a long year, a break from reality is needed. And whatever that ends up being, just, for the love of God, keep in mind the potential unintended consequences of whatever you’re doing. Getting taken into custody by the FBI is up there with some of the best ways to ruin your summer.
[Alec Carver is a UF journalism freshman. His columns appear on Fridays. A version of this column ran on page 6 on 4/18/2014 under the headline "Summer is coming: Don’t be dumb"]
