• by Kellan Terry , Op-Ed Contributor, August 8, 2017

There will come a time when you’re the subject of social media ire. This is inevitable — like death and taxes. Any brand worth its marketing department should have a protocol in place for when the internet’s Sauron-like eye is staring at it unwaveringly. If such a plan doesn’t exist, you’re already dangerously behind.

Social media, however, wasn’t always this way. While information always moved at the speed of your internet connection, social users never used to be so quick to revert to outrage. Now, horror and shock hold a permanent residency. This is the era of peak, and seemingly perpetual, social backlash.

While it might not be apparent, this transition started with marketing. The jargon-infused “Oreo moment” kicked off this period of continuous shock — even if the shock wasn’t there. This isn’t Oreo’s fault. Their quick-thinking and reaction truly scored them a marketing win that is literally taught in classrooms. However, the resulting “real-time marketing” tactics social teams employ have seen many brands open up their DMs just long enough to stick their foot in them.

You’re familiar with this. Think of brands and their misguided attempts to relate. Think back to when news of David Bowie’s death broke and brands couldn’t resist such a large social conversation. They failed to realize people were in mourning. Even annual days of remembrance find misbegotten attempts to relateandengageaudiences, and these instances aren’t knee-jerk reactions, but planned social engagement. This outrage isn’t reserved for brands alone; personalities can encounter social’s wrath, too. Oreo, and their “real-time marketing” success, spawned copycat practices, and reinforced the internet’s want to be first — much to our own collective peril.

The second, more recent and far more obvious reason a culture of outrage and backlash is omnipresent on social media is the 2016 U.S. presidential election. President Obama introduced social media to politics, and last year’s election cycle saw social media become the battleground of differing ideologies. Like-minded users would rally together, and where debate could take place, it did — fervently.

The social landscape changed from discussion of new Starbucks Frappuccino flavors and “what color is this dress” to brands getting tangled up in political and policy debate. The 2016 election created a social rift that has users taking sides on any occurrence that’s remotely newsworthy. Product launches get scrutinized like Nike’s Pro Hijab. Quite literally, everything is seen as a battle between progressivism and abandoning our morals on social. 

This is the reason that you can’t be on social media and be unscathed by backlash. The time for trying to appeal to everyone is over.

There are certain variables that intensify social backlash. For example, recalling when Cecil the Lion was killed by a trophy hunter — social went into a frenzy. Cecil’s son, Xanda, recently suffered the same fate, and it was little more than a blip on the internet. There are two reasons for this massive discrepancy. The first, in Cecil’s case, there was a villain who had a name. In fact, the hunter’s name was so saturated in this story that he, too, trended on social, and he had to close his business for several days due to threats. Secondly, there were images. Outrage burns much hotter when there is accompanying imagery.

Another example of how pictures exacerbated a situation can be found by looking at United Airlines’ saga with David Dao. There is no argument that United didn’t deserve the outrage it received, but the backlash would have been significantly reduced if the video of Dao didn’t exist. A video of a bloodied passenger carries far more weight than text-only social posts attempting to fully describe a situation.

The ubiquity of social media is as vast as mobile devices. When you combine that fact with the shift of the social media landscape, there is no way any social account that commands an audience won’t come under fire. This is the time in which we live; all that’s left to do is prepare — and wait.