Twitter in a Wringer. What is it about Twitter that gets people into trouble?

Slate ^ | 05/12/2011 | Jack Shafer

[SeekAndFind]

Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall lost his endorsement deal from Champion sports apparel last week for tweeting his doubts that the World Trade Center towers were brought down by hijacked jetliners and for expressing his sentiments that we had "only heard one side" of the Osama Bin Laden story.

Mendenhall quickly backed off from the pair of tweets. He deleted the 9/11 remark and published a blog post explaining that he wasn't a Bin Laden supporter. But it was too late. He had already joined the ranks of high-profile users who've been burned by microblogging.

Keith Olbermann previously stepped in it with a tweet stating that conservative commentator S.E. Cupp was "a perfect demonstration of the necessity of the work Planned Parenthood does." This was interpreted by some as a wish that Cupp had been aborted, which Olbermann denied. Journalist Nir Rosen suffered almost universal condemnation when he joked about Lara Logan's sexual assault on Twitter.

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried lost his Aflac gig when he directed his dark humor at the Japanese tsunami. More than a year ago, Washington Post Managing Editor Raju Narisetti gave himself a Twitter timeout after tweeting this view: "We can incur all sorts of federal deficits for wars and what not. But we have to promise not to increase it by $1 for healthcare reform? Sad."

Others tripped up by Twitter's spontaneity include Octavia Nasr, who got fired by CNN for praising Hezbollah's spiritual leader upon his death, and New York Times reporter David Carr, who untweeted something he quickly decided was in poor taste. Tucker Carlson got in trouble for tweeting, "[Sarah] Palin's popularity falling in Iowa, but maintains lead to become supreme commander of Milfistan." He formally apologized and deleted the tweet.

[cranked]

My first guess would be - no edit button? /s =.=

[Responsibility2nd]

Sites like Twitter and Facebook are for the socially immature.

“LOOK AT ME!” I went grocery shopping! Woo Hoo!”

So what do you expect when things turn out badly?

[Grut]

To (more or less) quote Sam Clemens: “Drink never made a fool of any man, but it’s given many a natural-born fool a wider stage and a more appreciative audience.”

[kevkrom]

The immediacy of the medium allows people to post what they really think without the time normally taken to self-censor their comments.

I buy none of this "I didn't really mean that" nonsense -- it is a window on how undisciplined minds react when they forget that they will be socially judged on what comes out. It's one thing to be misinterpreted (by accident or willfully), it's something else entirely to have to disown one's own comments because they let something "slip".

[WinOne4TheGipper]

Twitter requires 140 characters and about half the IQ.

[apillar]

I avoided sites like twitter and facebook like the plague for just this reason, you can post something off the cuff or after a few adult beverages in the privacy of your own home and not realize that for all intents, you might as well have screamed it over the PA system in packed football stadium.

I recently created a facebook profile after finally caving from the pressure of coworkers and family members. But I went out of my way to keep my personal information as generic as possible and I limit my posts to best wishes on birthdays and other occasions, and "hope you feel better" type posts when friends are ill. I never post or respond to anything that might be taken out of context, or even controversial, such as politics or religion. (That's what Freerepublic's for anyway!) However, I'm amazed at what some people will post. Intimate relationship and medical details, blow for blow recounts of fights with coworkers or significant others, jokes, stories, and pictures that at minimum could be considered inappropriate.

[KarlInOhio]

Keith Olbermann previously stepped in it with a tweet stating that conservative commentator S.E. Cupp was "a perfect demonstration of the necessity of the work Planned Parenthood does." This was interpreted by some as a wish that Cupp had been aborted, which Olbermann denied.

That required about as much interpretation as when some Hispanic says "Buenos dias" to you.

[USS Alaska]

Much like blogging but for a celeb, the audience is massive, and they are too quick to send without re-reading, editing out stupid stuff and they take personal offense at an opposite point of view.

When this happens, an innocent slip or innocuous statement turns into a verbal fistfight, and the celeb, used to winning, never knows when it's time to put the shovel down and get out of the hole.