One Tweet Can Kill Your Career
Be careful with what you tweet…. Past tweets can destroy your future
Imagine being offered a life-changing job in one of the worlds largest magazine brands. Everything you have worked for has paid off, and this position will be a stepping stone to some of the most prestigious roles in the future.
Imagine losing the job offer after someone went through your Twitter account, highlighting tweets you wrote 10 years ago and then forgot about.
This is what happened to Alexi McCammond. A successful political reporter who covered the 2020 elections, she was recently named as the next editor-in-chief for Teen Vogue and due to start her role on March 24th 2021.
While some (male) readers might not think being editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue is such a prestigious role, the magazine is part of the Conde Nast group, which also includes Wired, GQ, Glamour, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Architectural Digest, as well as many other publications. Once you prove yourself as editor-in-chief of one magazine, it opens up doors to countless other prestigious editing roles.
It is also worth noting that Teen Vogue is about so much more than just fashion and make-up. In the last few years, the magazine has been publishing more political and social content, reflecting what teens today are actually discussing. One of the most popular opinion articles recent was entitled Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America, in which Lauren Duca dug down into Melania’s fashion statements and its hidden messages:
Sometimes, we talk about fashion statements, and the things clothes express at some implicit, subjective level, but, no, this was written on the jacket in bold lettering. It wasn’t a hidden message — it was written right there on her back. But suggesting that we shouldn’t focus on the target so readily dangled in front of us, did hint at the Trump family’s ulterior motive: to make us mistrust our own instincts.
Let me get back to Twitter and the forgotten tweets that stopped Alexi McCammond in her tracks before she even began. 10 years ago, while she herself was a teen, McCammond had tweeted some racial comments. This led to some Teen Vogue employees screenshotting them and writing a letter to HR protesting against her appointment as editor-in-chief. Days later, in the aftermath of the Georgia shooting, 6 Asian-American women were killed, her tweets became even more distasteful, and her job offer was revoked.
Seemingly harmless tweets have damaged many other careers, notably James Gunn, director of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’, who was fired for crude tweets he’d made a decade ago, as well as Neera Tanden, who was due to join President Biden’s team until her tweets directed at Republicans were discovered. Even former President Trump has made some tweeting errors over the course of his presidency, which have had unintended consequences.
Why is Twitter so damaging?
The problem with Twitter, and many other social media platforms, is that they are made to feel like conversation — spontaneous, witty, sharp — but they are judged like writing. Twitter’s 140 character limit resemble talking and are woven together into conversation through fragmented sentences. Likes and re-tweets are a form of rewards, so people tend to lean towards more risky, attention-grabbing comments and controversial opinions or colloquial humour.
These kinds of comments work well in speech, but they can be dangerous when putting them down in writing. While a single tweet gets lost in the endless scroll, it is still present in black and white, and with one screenshot, it will live on forever and come back to bite you when least expected (and usually when you are on the road to success).
Over time, society may regard these skeletons in the closet as more normal. Still, at this present time, the media also thrives on short, sharp bursts of entertainment, and public figures’ Twitter accounts are the perfect target for them.
As individuals, regardless of if we are in the public eye or not, it is worth going back to see what our 20-year-old self tweeted and removing it if it is no longer something you’d be proud of today. We should also consider keeping our risky jokes offline and in person, lest we are prepared to potentially take a hit in the future. This would make Twitter duller, and in the short term, you will sacrifice likes and re-tweets, but in the long term, if you want to be editor-in-chief (or to score your own version of a career-changing job), then it might be better to keep your Twitter more on the dull side.
