Peter Shankman has an interesting post about the alleged dangers of social media. The specific example is a gentlemen who works for a public relation firms doing business with FedEx. The consultant flies into Memphis, TN, and updates his Twitter account with,
True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say “I would die if I had to live here!”
Inevitably, someone at FedEx was following the consultant and sent a nasty e-mail up through the FedEx corporate chain and the consultant’s PR firm aghast at the Twitter,
If I interpret your post correctly, these are your comments about Memphis a few hours after arriving in the global headquarters city of one of your key and lucrative clients, and the home of arguably one of the most important entrepreneurs in the history of business, FedEx founder Fred Smith.
Many of my peers and I feel this is inappropriate. We do not know the total millions of dollars FedEx Corporation pays Ketchum annually for the valuable and important work your company does for us around the globe. We are confident however, it is enough to expect a greater level of respect and awareness from someone in your position as a vice president at a major global player in your industry. A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write.
And the e-mail goes on for many paragraphs afterward.
Shankman and most of his commentators seem to agree with the FedEx employee who drafted this, but I tend to agree with the minority — the FedEx employees who are offended by the offhanded Twittering of a negative view of Memphis need to get over themselves.
On the one hand, corporations, governments and consultants spout the “diversity” mantra as if simply repeating it will transform the world. On the other hand, when someone steps outside of being a corporate drone and always having a mask on, idiots like Peter Shankman and the offended folks at FedEx pillory them for being individuals with actual opinions.
Somebody doesn’t like Memphis. OMG make sure all the executives at FedEx know they’re doing business with one of those people.
Too many people seem to want to do nothing but sit back and play social media gotcha, but that’s a game we’ll all lose. Either we’ll constantly be worrie dabout somebody taking offense at something we’ve written or, even worse, we’ll make our Twitter and Facebook and blog posts as timid as possible if not just abandon it altogether.
This is not to say there aren’t limits. A teacher near where I live was fired after she posted an accusation on Facebook that she was certain a student had stolen a valuable piece of equipment and she was tired of the student lying about it. That was completely inappropriate, as it would have been if the PR person had Twitter “sigh, flying in to try to educate these idiots on employee communication.”
But FedEx is going to pillory the man because he doesn’t like Memphis? Seriously? That’s what it’s come to? God forbid he doesn’t share their taste in music or food.