Many people Tweet and Tweet, reaching a point where they forget their Tweets are 100% public. They forget that people search Twitter for their own names and brands. And they forget that responses are public, too.
Enter Aimee Mann, an Oscar nominated singer/songwriter, who Tweeted a simple opinion: “Christ, there is no reason in the world anyone should ever have cast Ice T in a television show.” Aimee was about to become famous in a very different way than as a singer/songwriter, and becomes the latest example of Twitter failure (and then success, in this case).
Someone sent Ice T, a prominent Twitter user, a retweet of Aimee’s post. I pieced the “conversation” here in chronological order (reverse from Twitter default), with comments below:
It ended well, as you can see. Aimee apologized, Ice T showed his continued coolness by accepting and moving on. In the mean time, Ice T’s post (and therefore Aimee’s Twitter name) made it into several big sites due to it’s awesomeness.
- Presenting The Single Greatest Tweet Of All Time, Starring Ice-T, Aimee Mann, And A Hot Bowl Of Dicks
- Billboard.com’s Top 20 Tweets of the Week: 4/10/10
There are a couple of lessons here. Sure you learn to be careful what you Tweet, because it could become a famous Tweet, but, look at Ice T’s Twitter stream. In all the ruckus, many people Tweeted negative comments about Ice T. So he retweeted them! That’s right – he straight out retweeted the negative comments, and let it go. He could easily have been pulled into a downward spiral of stupid insults, but he didn’t take the bait.
In the end, what we see here is two people with class. Aimee apologized quickly, declared her carelessness, and did it in a way that showed her personality. Ice T accepted the apology and moved on, even trying to stop those who continued to Tweet negative comments about Aimee with this post, “Once again. She made a comment.. I replied… She apologized. Peace!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FLTG. Mooooovin!”
Peace.