The Dangers of Going Viral

So many people and companies dream of making their content go viral.  While going viral is extremely exciting since your post or content is being seen worldwide, it can be a very bad thing when something negative goes viral.  Here are some recent examples that have went viral for all of the wrong reasons:

1. United Airlines

United Airlines has had two viral incidents in recent months that have resulted in terrible press for the airline.  The most recent was a video gone viral of a passenger being forcibly removed from an overbooked flight in order to make room for crew members needing to go to fix something at the destination.  The officers went as far as dragging the man in aisle to get him out.

The other incident took place less than a month ago, when two teenage girls were denied access to a flight until they changed out of their leggings or put a dress over them. The teenagers were flying under a friends and family of United employees program, but this story still gave United a lot of bad press when the incident went viral. 

2. Pepsi

Pepsi intentionally tried to make their new commercial featuring Kendall Jenner go viral, but the internet did that for them.  However, it was not for good reason.  Pepsi's new commercial that was intended to be about uniting as a people, but it came off as offensive and not genuine.  The commercial featured people of all different races, ethnicities, religions, and sexualities joining a vague "peace" protest together.  The commercial ends with model Kendall Jenner leaving her photoshoot to join in and give a cop controlling the protest a can of Pepsi.  The whole crowd erupted in cheers when the cop took a sip, assuming all of the ambiguous problems were solved. After going viral for such negative reasons, Pepsi was forced to pull the commercial and apologize. 

Be mindful of the things you post online or what is being filmed- you definitely don't want to be next.