- Internet trolls, is there anything they can't do?
With advancements in artificial intelligence
happening all the time, what better way
to keep your customers calm when talking to your AI
than by giving it the personality of a teenage girl?
Well, that's exactly what Microsoft did when developing
their innocent-seeming customer service chat bot named Tay,
who they mistakenly surrendered to the inappropriate minds
that make up social media on March 23rd, 2016.
See, the company allowed Tay to learn how to speak
with people based on how they spoke with her,
which obviously was a big no-no.
Within just 24 hours, people tweeting the @TayandYou handle
were receiving responses that called
for the death or racial groups,
complete of course with racial slurs,
and much more, including messages of love for Hitler.
Ugh, this is so cringey.
Tay would even ask for sexual favors
while calling whoever messaged her daddy.
Yes, you like dat, Daddy.
Microsoft obviously quickly deleted the chat bot
and for anyone looking to converse with her,
sorry, she's gone.
Also, you're sick.
On January 19th, 2013, the documentary film Blackfish
premiered at the Sundance Film Festival
and stunned audiences with its claims
against SeaWorld and their treatment of killer whales.
As part of a campaign to combat Blackfish
and other media releases,
SeaWorld launched a Twitter hashtag called #AskSeaWorld,
in which Twitter users could ask anything
that they wanted to get the truth
about what went on within the company's walls.
However, to the shock of absolutely nobody,
Twitter users pounced on the opportunity
to attack the company, demanding to know
when they would release all of their animals
and finally close their parks.
Even activist organizations such as PETA
and The Blue Planet Society got involved,
asking for animal rights to be addressed.
In response to the attacks, SeaWorld posted tweets
claiming their campaign was under attack
by trolls and fake account bots.
Nope, not fake accounts,
just really, really angry trolls.
Learn how to use the internet, SeaWorld.
On March 11th, 2011, northeastern Japan was rocked
when a magnitude nine earthquake occurred off the coast,
creating a tsunami that drowned over 92%
of the almost 16,000 people
who lost their lives in the disaster.
In what seemed to be an attempt to help out,
Bing, the search engine department of Microsoft,
decided to donate to the relief,
tweeting that it would give $1 to the victims of the quake
for every retweet that they got up to a total of $100,000.
Now, the good news is they did get a lot of retweets.
However, the company was also met with an alarming number
of very angry social media users who demanded to know
why Microsoft couldn't just donate the money anyway.
I think Billy Gates has that kind of coin.
Others attacked the company for using a tragedy
as a marketing ploy by using #SupportJapan.
Microsoft issued an apology the same day,
donating the $100,000 as promised anyway.
You can't be Microsoft with billions of dollars
and hold donation money ransom for retweets.
It just don't work like that, man.
On April 22nd, 2014, in an attempt to put a good face
on the New York Police Department,
the organization's publicity team tweeted out a call
for the public to submit any images that they had
with New York's finest pushing the hashtag #MyNYPD.
As you could guess, the response was anything but kind.
Now, while a handful of people did send in
more pleasant photos of interactions with police,
such as images of their family
and friends who were on the force,
thousands upon thousands of others
sent images and captions showcasing police brutality
and unlawful killings by police of unarmed suspects.
People even tweeted hospital images revealing injuries
that they sustained in altercations with officers.
In less than 10 hours, the hashtag had garnered
over 70,000 responses about police wrongdoings
or how much of a catastrophe
the idea was behind the hashtag.
#ThinkAboutYourHashtag.
#NotAllPiggiesAreBad.
#ItDoesntMatterInternetTrollsWin.
There are few sports teams with fans
as loyal as the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Trust me, I'm from Toronto.
And to stir them up and get ready
for the annual Winter Classic in late 2013,
the team's public relations team decided
to show how awesome that their fans were
by allowing them to post images and messages
about their favorite team with the hashtag #SeaOfBlue.
Now, each approved tweet was then displayed
on the front page of their web site
for all of the Leafs Nation to enjoy.
But on December 17th, 2013,
either through hacking or the administrator
simply going to bed and forgetting to turn on the filter,
the site stopped filtering and allowed basically
anything with the hashtag #SeaOfBlue to appear.
Once Twitter users realized the error,
a virtual sea of inappropriate and anti-Leafs posts
washed over the site as countless people
took their turns getting laughs with their tweets,
even bringing the hashtag to trend Canada-wide.
No, you never give people this much power.
That's like me asking everyone to tweet me,
#WhatILikeAboutSantoro and expecting good responses.
It's just, oh god.
After surprising the world on April 11th, 2009
in one of the most astonishing auditions ever
on Britain's Got Talent,
Blackburn, Scotland native Susan Boyle
was the talk of not just the UK, but the whole world.
She went on to be the runner up in that competition,
but that didn't slow her singing career down at all.
In fact, after releasing three successful albums
in only three years, Boyle's fourth, Standing Ovation,
was released on November 13th, 2012.
To promote the record and bring Susan
back into the limelight, her public relations team
launched a hashtag, #SusanAlbumParty,
to bring attention to an event where she would
address questions asked by her Twitter fans.
Sadly for Boyle, users realized that the hashtag
that they were reading also read Su's Anal Bum Party.
Yep.
Her publicist erased the tweet
and tried to get away from it,
but of course the internet is forever,
and millions asked how they
could be a part of the bum party.
Ha ha! You cannot make this stuff up.
By August 13th, 2012, it wasn't uncommon
for companies to interact with their fans,
even letting them make decisions on which flavor
of food would become a permanent option in stores.
But when Mountain Dew launched their Dub the Dew campaign
in order to find a name for their new flavor,
things blew up in their faces quickly.
Described as having green apple attitude,
the beverage received some fairly unique titles
in the list of the most voted,
like Fapple and Diabeetus.
There were also a number of inappropriate puns
involving granny apples, such as Gushing Granny,
that's gross, and for a long while,
the number one highest voted name was,
and I'm not making this up,
Hitler Did Nothing Wrong.
Ooh, that's a good bottle of Hitler Did Nothing Wrong.
Tastes like sadness.
But trolling didn't stop there either,
as that same day, the site was hacked to have a banner
claiming the soft drink was proud of the 9/11 attacks.
The company shut down the entire promotion
and apologized immediately.
Of course, racism is still a huge problem,
so the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz,
decided to start a conversation about it.
That was until the masses on Twitter crushed his idea.
In March of 2015, Schultz called for baristas
in his 20,000 US stores to write the words
Race Together on every customer's cup.
They did this in hopes that they would ask about it
and a conversation could start about racial inequality.
Unfortunately, a number of social media users
attacked the coffee giant,
revealing their almost totally white board of directors
and the fact that though the promotional photos released
showed the cups with words on them,
none of the hands holding them were non-white.
The internet backlash led to a swift cancellation
of the campaign and the VP of Communications
for Starbucks, Corey duBrowa,
had to actually temporarily delete his Twitter account
due to the attack tweets that he was receiving.
Guys, it's bad enough that your company
is already associated with basic white girls.
Let's not make that problem worse.
In the summer of 2013, Boston radio station Kiss 108 FM
held a promotional contest looking
to find the biggest Taylor Swift fan
and promising the winner the chance to meet the singer.
But on July 24th, 2013,
the contest was abruptly canceled without explanation,
much to the dismay of over 3,000 applicants,
including a 39-year-old man named Charles Z,
who at the finish line was the front runner
by a large margin.
Well, as it turns out, Charles had the support
of 4chan users, which as you know, is already gonna go bad,
because they hoped to crush the dreams
of whiny teenyboppers and troll Miss Swift
by having her biggest fan turn out to be an old guy.
While most of the entries had profile pictures
of themselves with Taylor Swift memorabilia
or even the pop star herself,
Charles' was just him in his bathroom.
Oh, she gonna like this.
Imagine the look on the contest runner's faces
when they saw who held the number one spot,
so obviously it was canceled
just before the winner was announced.
Poor Charles, man.
Give that man a chance.
What does it matter how he was voted in?
That man's old and he wants to meet T. Swift.
Make it happen.
Each year, Time Magazine releases a list
of the world's most influential people.
The 100 names are chosen by online users
who vote for who they think impacted the planet
more than anyone else.
However, in 2009, a colossal number of those online users
decided to hack into the list and force the outcome
to give the top spot to one of their own.
That winner was Christopher Poole,
better known on the web as Moot,
the founder of the incredibly popular site, 4chan.
Now, you might be thinking 4chan is a huge web site,
so their numbers could easily influence
a vote without hacking.
Well, that's just what many,
including Time's online technical team thought.
However, a closer look at the first 21 names that appear
on the list reveal something fishy that occurred.
If you take the first letter of each name,
you get spelled out Marble Cake Also the Game,
and the list was officially published in that order.
God bless 4chan.
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