Someone Just Pulled a Justine Sacco...
Meet 17-year-old James Charles, a famous Youtube beauty vlogger and the newest first male Covergirl spokesperson. He is currently traveling to South Africa for a school trip, and put out an insensitive tweet about the Ebola virus and the people of Africa.
Oops.
First of all, who's gonna tell him Ebola and E. Coli are two different things? Double oops.
We've seen this before. Justine Sacco, a (previous) senior director of corporate communications at IAC, who tweeted "going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" She was terminated before she even got off the plane.
When are people going to learn that poking fun at an entire group of people and a disease is not actually funny?
James Charles then tried to block the twitter users talking back to him and "move on."
CoverGirl then tweeted (and deleted) a photo and #tbt of Zendaya, who is also a CoverGirl spokesperson, and James Charles together. Coincidence? Probably not.
*When you want to say something but he's still a coworker.*
So, James deletes the tweet and issues out an apology, several hours later and after a few e-mails/phone calls from Covergirl, I'm sure. Good(ish) choice.
But then he called Africa a country. Triple oops?
CoverGirl issued out an apology on behalf of James Charles.
Yes, James made headlines recently for being the first male spokesperson. And yes, we all mess up. But be mindful. It is easy to avoid insensitive mistakes such as these! Think before you tweet.