As most of us have learned over the last half-decade, while Twitter and other forms of social media do give users the ability to freely and instantly broadcast a message to the world, they also do nothing to stop users from firing off messages that would have been best left unsent. Case in point: A postcard company that is now having to do the apology shuffle after a Tweet effectively telling overweight people to cover up this summer.

The Tweet, since deleted but saved for posterity, reads “During this Heatwave please kindly dress according to the body you have rather than the one you aspire to. And send lots of postcards”

It was posted to Twitter by the account for ByPost, a company that makes postcards from customers’ photos.

Since posting that comment, the company has spent an awful lot of time apologizing, even going so far as to ReTweet angry comments like “Scum scum scum body fascist scum,” which ByPost describes as “an attempt [at] self inflicted punishment.”

Don’t know if this is big enough to join the Twitter Wall of Shame, but it’s certainly another example of why you businesses need to not hand over their Twitter feeds to some intern or the “funniest person in the office,” because one stupid comment can result in a massive backlash, even against a company most of us had never heard of until this morning.

[via Salon.com]

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