20: Your Name Went Viral - But Not in a Good Way. Now What?

But I do want the experience of like game days, partying. I don't really care about school.

As you guys all know, Rot Row. Your name, your image, your deeds or misdeeds have gone viral. Perhaps your name didn't go viral, but someone adjacent to you, someone you're connected with, went viral. Like the clip you just heard from Olivia J. Giannelli, the 19 year old daughter of actress Lori Loughlin, formerly of Fuller House and formally of the Hallmark Channel. What would you do? Well, I will tell you on this episode of the Confident Communications podcast. Hey everyone, I'm Molly McPherson and this week, this week we are going to talk about all things viral. As in what to do when your name or your business, perhaps your family member or someone closely affiliated with you, a business affiliated with you, goes viral. And not in a good way. The topic of viral infamy is one I speak about often. If I could name my jam, this would be it. I am utterly fascinated by the journey of a viral organism and the online kind. What happens when a name is dropped in the news for a not so good reason? I love charting its progress, where it goes, when it stops. This is how it happens. A name drops in a news story and a mass of people start googling and clicking on the name to uncover a trove of firsthand posts, videos, comments, other posts and opinions on the person. These online looky loos then post and share their opinions on the person as they relate to the story. I call this a digital death spiral. A name drops in the digital space and the person's reputation goes into a downward digital death spiral that is unrecoverable. Now, there are two categories to the digital death spiral. The first, someone well known or famous becomes a story or is a part of a story that increases in viral strength because of their involvement in an event. The next category is made up of the Internet's hoi polloi, the accidentally famous. These are the people who unknowingly or unintentionally become viral because of something they posted online or something that they did. Or it was a first of its kind event or such a crazy event that had video or some social media involved with it that it just couldn't help but go viral. But before I dive into a digital death spiral, let me mention here, right now, what it is. Not this. I gotta take off my glasses for it.

Naturally.

Okay, here we go.

So yes, now watch when my mouth.

Actually moves, That's not me making that noise, it's the mask. Now that was the Chewbacca mask. Mom, Cadence Payne. Now why do I know her name? Why do many of you know her name? Well, because at the time, her video was the most watched Facebook live video ever.

That is wonderful to have you here. You just make us happy, Kansas.

That is awesome.

Bless you for that. Bless you for that. So tell me you're a record breaker. You were joking. You're saying you've never been an athlete. So it's kind of, it's kind of cool to be a record breaker of some sort.

And yes, she even set a Guinness world record for that video. This is what going viral sounds like.

So excited to have her with her with us right now in the studio. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the Chewbacca Mama South, Candice Payne, everybody.

And that is Cadence on the Late Late show with James Corden. Now, some of you may be listening to the clip thinking, how does this viral fame happen? Well, listen to Chewbacca mom briefly explain it. Now, when did you know that this was gonna be huge? When did you know it was coming?

Well, on Thursday when I posted it at 1000 views, I texted a friend of mine and said 1000 flippin views. You know, I was so excited at 1000. And then before I went to bed that night, it was 1 million. And so I had a status update and said 1 million. You know, I was like freaking out.

So you see, it doesn't take a lot to feed a collective obsession. As you heard GMA's Robin Roberts mention in the earlier clip, Candace just made us happy. People like a spark of joy in their day when they're scrolling online because so much of what we read nowadays is scary, it's depressing. And there is nothing like a fun viral video to make us happy. The Chewy mom is an example of what the digital death spiral isn't. Her story was fun and uplifting. It's the second category that we should worry about, the viral infamy that brings you and your reputation down.

But let's begin this half hour today with the Minnesota dentist who killed Cecil the Lion. He's returning to work today after weeks of keeping out of the public eye. Today, national correspondent Craig Melvin is outside Dr. Palmer's office. That's in Bloomington. Craig, good morning to you. Matt, good morning. Dr. Walter Palmer will be returning to work at his office behind me for the first time since the world learned his name. They're all.

The world learned the name of Dr. Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who sparked international outrage when he hunted and killed one of Africa's most beloved lions. It was either Cecil or Cecil, depending on where you lived. And that happened in Zimbabwe. But he posted that photo on Facebook, probably back home in Minnesota. Now, the side note, the intro by Matt Lauer. Oh, boy. Talk about another reputational death spiral by another name. But back to the dentist. Now, the only reason, and the only reason that story went viral is because Dr. Palmer posted it to Facebook. All it took was one person who likely leaned towards animal activism to comment or possibly share that video online to Shane Palmer for boasting about the kill on Facebook. And it took off from there. The backlash from animal lovers around the world was so strong that the dentist website was shut down and his office was shuttered for a time. All of his employees were out of work, simply over a photo that their boss posted online. Palmer's home was vandalized. His dental office was vandalized. And I know this because a friend of mine lived in his neighborhood and she drove by and she said, yep, his house was trashed, his Yelp and Google reviews tanked and were filled with negative commentary from an angry online mob. There was even a book written just last year about it called Lionhearted the Life and Death of Cecil and the Future of Africa's Iconic Cats. There are plenty of other people like Dr. Walter Palmer. Again, members of the digital hoi polloi whose lives were thrown into chaos and were impacted by something that was posted online. For example, in 2015, a former taco Bell executive who was arrested and fired after a viral dash cam video showed him attacking an Uber driver. He was intoxicated, but he also lost his job. In 2018, an employee of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was suspended after she kind of lost it on a flight. She was sitting in first class, and there was a woman sitting across the aisle from her carrying a baby who was crying. And this woman, this employee of Governor Cuomo, she threw a little bit of a hissy fit and she threatened and ended up threatening the flight attendant's job when she told her that she needed to stop yelling at the woman across the aisle. Now, I showed this video clip a lot in my trainings, and I show it for this very reason, how some tired, exhaustive woman that's coming into first class didn't want to sit next to a crying baby. Now, as someone that just did this last week, I can certainly sympathize because I had to fly down sitting next to a screaming baby. But the difference is I didn't say anything. I just put my headphones in and listened to podcasts and kept working. But she was suspended from her job and she went viral. And the reason why I introduce it into my training is because I slept in. Another element too is I ask the participants which generation is more likely than the other to film someone that is acting in a certain way or has poor behavior. And all of them will say the same thing. A millennial is likely the person behind the camera. And in this case, they were right. Another example from an airline, American Airlines, they investigated an incident where there was an argument that broke out with a male flight attendant reportedly hitting a female passenger. She had a stroll. She was holding a baby in her hand. I'm sure you saw that viral video as well. That flight attendant was suspended. And there's so many examples from planes, by the way. And the reason why, of course, is because passengers are just sitting there doing nothing and they all, all of them have their phones in their hands. Another example from China Eastern Airlines, a flight attendant was let go four months after her boyfriend got down on one knee and in the middle of the flight. So apparently the airline dismissed this woman on the grounds that she had caused a disturbance and neglected passenger safety during the flight. I don't know, I kind of feel like I agree with them on that. But of course it was captured on video and it was shared. And speaking of airlines, who can forget Dr. David Dow? He was the man who was seen dragged down the aisle when United Airlines needed to make room for another passenger. No surprise, cell phone foot taken by fellow passengers cause United Airlines and the brand to go in a reputational spin. But that was a whole other problem for United Airlines and that was a crisis of mass proportions. And that we will talk about in a future episode. But back to this one. What can happen when you unknowingly or unintentionally go viral or are connected to a story that went viral? What would you do and is there anything you can do to stop it? The short answer is no, there really isn't. I mean, if something is up there, it's going to happen. But also, the answer could be yes, but that's only if you have absolutely no digital footprint whatsoever. You are a card carrying member of the I hate social media club. You hate the Internet. You only use a flip phone for that very reason. So you don't go viral. I know this crowd, I work with this crowd all the time. And I tell them there isn't anything wrong with living off the digital grid. However, for the rest of us, the world that we're living in is digital. Try ordering Amazon off your flip Phone. Speaking of Amazon, yet another digital death spiral. Jeff Bezos and the leaked sex and photos from his paramour, Lauren Sanchez. I went deep into to that story in podcast episode number 12. I will link to that episode in the show notes. But there was another example of someone who went into a reputational tailspin based on something that happened online. Now, Jeff Bezos, if you listen to episode 12, he was able to recover slightly. And so if you listen to that entire episode, you'll see the reason why. But most people are online in some form or another. So the fear of your reputation spiraling out of control is a very real one. Now, a digital death spiral does not discriminate anyone who is online in whatever form. Facebook, you have a YouTube channel, you're on Twitter. Anyone can get caught up in a viral downfall because these viral bursts are as unpredictable as they are powerful. The speed and ferocity of shared digital and social media is virtually impossible to stop. But you can do things to mitigate the impact and the damage to your reputation. Let's look at the example from this past week. Now, how many of you were obsessed with the college cheating scandal story that broke? Now, me, my hand is way up and it could not get up any higher because it had all of the markers of a great story for me to follow. It had celebrities, it was breaking news, and I happened to be working at my desk all day, so I followed it second by second. We had criminal charges. We also had these charges in Boston, where I'm out of. So I was watching that part live as well. And lastly, the absolute crazy coincidence that I was touring a college with my daughter to speak with coaches about recruiting for playing in a sport in college the next day. And not surprising, the topic did not come up in the college tour as much as I wanted it to. But this story of the college cheating scandal is the definition of a viral news story. It was reported everywhere, but it was a true viral news story because it was fueled by the social media chatter. People didn't just read about this story in one newspaper. They could go to Facebook, they could go to Twitter, they could go to Instagram, they could go to YouTube, they could go to a multitude of news outlets and blogs online to hear the news or to get other people's opinion about this story. The cheating scandals, reputation and legal fallout are most likely only beginning. But I want to stay here at the beginning because that is where everyone can learn valuable lessons about how to manage social media in a time of a reputational crisis. Now, at the time of this Recording this past Tuesday was when the Justice Department unsealed indictments accusing admissions advisors, coaches, and school officials of authoring wealthy families and celebrities one of two back doors into the colleges of their choice. Two of the wealthy people snared in the scandal, actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. Now, at the beginning of this episode, I played a clip from Lachlan's daughter Olivia Jade, and she has her own YouTube channel. Olivia and her sister Bella are influencers, and they're such good influencers that Bella's social media handle on Instagram is at Bella. But they are very popular and they have extensive digital footprints. Now, many of you heard the clip that I played at the beginning of the episode, I'm sure, because it was played everywhere. You also likely heard Olivia's comments on her own father's time in college, the designer Massimo Giannelli, who was also charged in the scam. So the duo, he and his wife allegedly paid a half a million dollars to William Singer, who made it appear that their daughters had been rowers. And Olivia Jade, if you watch 4 seconds of her YouTube video, you can tell that she is not a rower. She's maybe never even rode in her life. And it's unclear if she was aware of the scheme, but I don't know. I think that she was. But we have two daughters now that are no longer enrolled at usc. Let's listen to the clip about what she had to say about her father.

He built it all. Himself especially. He has a really crazy story in college. He, like, built his whole entire brand, and he wasn't actually, like, ever. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that. Sorry, dad, but he wasn't ever, like, enrolled in college, but he, like, faked his way through it and.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, so. And then he started his whole business with tuition money that his parents thought.

Were going to college. Oops. So see how this digital death spiral works? People scour every website to gather anything the person says on any topic. Now, in the case of what Olivia had said about her father, a lot of news and online organizations with a budget can afford software to make the scouring much easier. I've used this software in the past. You just type in a few keywords that you're looking for, and the software can find the video for you where the person is saying those things. So it's a little bit easier to do that. However, Olivia has offered us so many places where we can find these kind of incendiary comments that she made. And the clip that we heard was from an interview when she was on another program. Did not take long to find it, but it certainly added to the narrative that her parents are cheats. And that made for a perfect mix for going viral. Now, Felicity Huffman, she was also a major part of the story. She was undoubtedly humiliated when she was arrested for her role in this bribery scam. And she received a brutal blacklash to her rep, likely because she was one of the first people to be arrested. They came into her house and at 6am when she was sleeping, and they frog marched her out. And I'm sure in front of her husband and her kids. It sounds absolutely awful, but as soon as that happened, there were so many news stories and posts on social media condemning her and what she did and also, by the way, what her husband did. But he wasn't charged because where they had evidence of him speaking on the telephone, it was with the daughter, the second daughter, who decided not to use the scam. But Huffman had to deal with the digital backlash, not only from the current press and people commenting about her, but also her past social media posts. And there were plenty, because Felicity Huffman's brand was promoting this call for accepting mistakes in parenting, like parenting tips and how do we all get through this? And there were a lot of posts snagged from her tweets and her post promoting her website, what the Flickr, which I have to admit, for a couple hours I had no idea what that meant. And then I said, oh, I get it. Wtf, huh? So the Twitterverse had a field day polling quotes like Rules of life, There are none. Create your own. Live them. Okay, that was my tweet because I of course went in and I went to her social media accounts and pulled them out. The what? The Flickr website is now gone. Gone. But the damage is done. But there are always aftershocks when there is a lot of content that you can pull from. Huffman's reputation right now is in tatters. And when you Google her name, this week's story will be on Google Page one for a very, very long time. And the same applies for all the people charged in the scam. The famous and the people that we weren't aware of, but also the family members connected to those that were charged. They scoured for who all these kids were, and they wanted to know what they had to say. The schools, the coaches, former clients, the honest clients who were involved. Golfer Phil Mickelson, he did a preemptive strike by admitting he was a client of Singer for his child but he was not aware of the side door option. And there are plenty of other people not in the public eye who are involved in this entire case. That's what we don't want to have happen to anyone. Now, that college cheating story was huge. But events like this can happen on a much smaller level to anyone. For example, you or someone you know is in the news, even if it's a small local story where you or a relative is named. You could go viral. You post something incendiary, something bad, something that triggers other people to comment and share. You could go viral. You own a business or run a business and you post something a little nutty online, one unhappy customer sees it and you could go viral. You're caught on a dash cam or someone films you doing something that puts you in a bad light. You could go viral. You work for a business, or perhaps you're a board member or a board of trustees. And for this business, you have a number of unhappy customers on your hands. They make it their mission to embarrass you and you offer them fodder by posting something off color or inappropriate online. You could go viral. Now back to Olivia Jade. I spent an additional eight minutes of my life that I will never get back watching her last day of high school vlog that she posted to YouTube. I watched her get ready in the morning for school Ed prefab egg sandwich that looked disgusting. Put on her makeup. She had to cover a bug bite and go to school. It was her last day of school and it was prank day. Now, as I was watching, I noted all of the girls in the school who were in the video. A number of them were pranking the freshman class. Now many of these girls I am pos did not sign a media waiver stating that Olivia Jade could film them. Especially since they were hazing fresh em. All these poor freshmen, they were getting things thrown at them. So these are more potential victims of a digital death spiral. And then on the video, you hear the voice of administration. I don't know if it was a principal or a teacher, but it was. She was on video and she was telling the girls to stop. Now that's good. However, that administrator could be a victim as well. What if she allowed these pranks to go on too long? What if they weren't supposed to happen in the first place? What if she was breaking policy by watching these acts or this hazing and pranking of freshmen happen in front of her? This would be a classic case as a digital death spiral casualty. Do you see how easily and how quickly this can happen. And again, it could be as simple as commenting on someone's post, offering support, or any indication that you know that person. The press may see your name, they will google you like crazy and then give you a phone call to make you a part of the story. It happens all the time. There are so many reasons how people and why people go viral. I cannot possibly share them on one podcast, but you can get the idea here. Anyone can go viral for any reason. So how can you prevent or at least mitigate a digital death spiral from happening with your reputation? Okay, here's the list. Number one, when in doubt, don't post it, don't share it. I'm sure that's happened to you before. If you feel that someone may not like that post, then don't. The second tip, know where your kill switch is and what this means is that if your name goes viral or someone you know goes viral, you will want to kill all of your social media accounts as quickly as you can. Many people and businesses will use social media dashboards that will allow them to shut all of their accounts and at once. Now this is something that I have. Now, Lori Laughlin did this as soon as her name was mentioned in the press. You could not go to her Instagram page anymore or her Twitter account because it was gone. Now, it was likely a tip from her daughter Olivia, because you will not find a YouTube video of Olivia Jade mentioning her feelings about school where she said that she didn't want to. She's not going to school to study. All of it is scrubbed. Now, Felicity Huffman, on the other hand, she waited two whole days to shut down her content. And I'm amazed how many people follow the same path that Felicity Huffman did. They don't even think about it. It surprises me actually as an actress that it took her that long to shut down all of her online media. If your name is floating around a scandal at all, you can shut down your site permanently, but you can also do it temporarily. All of the social media networks will allow you to do this. So just look it up when you're in your non viral phase so you can see truly how easy it is. The other social media network that you want to keep up is LinkedIn. And here's the reason why. LinkedIn, if you've heard me say this before on the podcast, I consider this the safe space of social. LinkedIn is primarily geared towards professionals speaking about professional things. So you are putting yourself in your most favorable and best light. Your profile photo is A professional one. Your background is there. All of the information that you have on that LinkedIn profile, if it's done correctly, is going to put you in the best light possible. If things are going south quickly on your reputation, that may be the one page that you want to keep up there, because that's the page that people will find and they will be reminded at least how professional you are or where you went to school. At the very least, you'll have a great profile photo up, because that's the one the press is going to use. Remember, profile photos are public and anyone can do that. Next tip. Verify you know who you are sending any information to. If you are sending posting a tweet or posting something on Facebook and you're attaching that at sign because you directly want to tag someone, make sure it's the correct person that you're tagging because someone could have a similar tag, but it's not the verified tag or the actual tag of the person that you intend to send it to. Also, don't try to be funny or clever around a sensitive subject. A lot gets lost in translation, especially if it's a very sensitive issue. Next, remember, if you post in an open setting, not a private setting, you may get attacked. It happens all the time. Just ignore it. For me, my Twitter account, it's open, it's not private. My Instagram account, it's my brand account, it's open, it's not private. I have a business account on Facebook, I have a LinkedIn account. All of those are open and it means that I can get messages from anyone. Now, please don't take this as an invitation to troll me on social media. Media say things that are nice, but my Facebook page, my personal one, does have a lock on it. Make sure you check your privacy settings. You don't see this happening as much anymore, but certainly not that long ago people would post things on Facebook and they would not have their privacy settings clamped down. Next, before you post, make sure all of your facts are correct. Perhaps if you don't know the whole story, wait on the story. I wanted to start commenting right away on the college cheating scandal, but I didn't because I thought this is breaking and it's constantly changing, so I don't want to jump in quite yet. Next tip. Don't let emotion get to you. If someone is filming you live, streaming or posting anything online. If someone wants to start a problem with you, don't take the bait. In many cases, all they want is to get you acting a little crazy on Film. This is another tip that I share in my online and my in person courses, especially when I'm speaking to people at a certain level. And these are baby boomers, Gen Xers and older. Because the younger, the younger tactic that they use is kind of the playbook for a lot of activists, is they want you to be upset. They want to capture you acting a little cray cray on video because that's what's going to make that video go viral. They don't necessarily care what you're saying or what you're talking about. They want to show you in the most negative light possible. So what I tell people to do is that if you feel that a camera's there, you sense that it's there, or that especially if you see that it's there, just calm yourself down and look at it as a customer service role. What would you do if someone were coming to a customer and they had a negative problem with you? You may introduce yourself, you may ask them, how can I help you? Because that is going 100% against what they want. They don't want to see a calm, rational person on video. They want to see a crazy person on video. Now, this tip is primarily for employers. Make sure you have a social media policy at your business. Now, most companies nowadays will have them around the communications, how we communicate with our publics, you know, how we communicate with our customer, how we communicate with the press. But it's important that you have a social media policy for your employees as well. It is stipulating what they are allowed to post, what they are allowed to say, what they are allowed to post on their personal accounts. Because if it has something to do with your business, there should be a policy in place where they can't say anything negative or share private information. So make sure that you have a social media policy. Now back to Olivia Jade for a moment. Olivia Jade is filming video for her YouTube channel that she's filming at her school. I highly, highly suspect at this moment that her high school does not have a policy on students filming and posting video from the campus. And maybe they do, but they had absolutely no idea that Olivia Jade was filming at their high school. So if you work at a school, think back to the Covington Catholic story. I talked about that in an earlier podcast as well. And I'll put that link in the show notes. A lot of these high schools get thrust into stories when their students go viral as well. So remember, make sure if you're in a business that there is a social media policy. A Simple Google search of employees who lost their jobs after posting this. And that will show you how important having this policy is to protect the reputation of your business, your employees, and yourself. Now, the last piece. Don't let the emotion get to you. If someone is trying to trigger something, if they're trolling you, if they're filming you, if they're saying negative things online, remember, don't take the bait. Many, many times, this is simply a tactic. They want you to go crazy online. They want you to go crazy in person. An excellent example of someone showing a very calm and measured approach to a viral moment that was happening to her happened just over the weekend. Chelsea Clinton and a pregnant Chelsea Clinton, I may add. She was at a vigil at New York University, and it was for the 49 worshipers who were massacred in New Zealand a few days ago. And they were claiming that the former First Daughter, that she had stoked the hatred that fueled the slaughter. And she was surrounded by a lot of people and someone was yelling at her on camera. Now, what Clinton did is straight out of a playbook that I tell my clients and that I tell people who participate in my class. And in fact, I'm going to use this viral clip and I will add it to the show notes as well. Chelsea Clinton looked at the person straight in the eye. She was very calm and measured, as I said, and she listened. She didn't immediately tack back. She didn't run out the door. She was fully aware, and I will say this is probably because of her age, that she was being filmed. She could see the camera. She could probably feel the cameras, and she knew it was going to be a viral moment. And she said, I'm going to do this, this on my terms. And you could hear her say, I'm so sorry you feel that way. She was showing empathy, and most important, she was showing it on camera. It really made her look good. So good, in fact, that Donald Trump Jr. Even supported her. So it really shows the power of what a viral video can do if you use it in your favor. Now, knowing how to safely communicate in the digital space is so important, and so many of us are using social media and text messaging and Facebook and Instagram and Twitter to communicate today. But it needs to be done correctly or things can spiral out of control quickly. I hope you learned a lot today on how you can stop or at least mitigate any type of digital death spiral that can happen to you or someone that you know. Now, you may think that only the millennials and Generation Z that they're the only ones who know how to communicate safely online. But that's not necessarily the case. Anyone can communicate safely online. Anyone can prevent a digital death spiral from happening to them. All of us are at risk. But it is imperative to know exactly what you're doing when you are online. Now, hopefully the podcast episode helped you, but also, I did create a printable that you can download. It's called Top 5 Rookie Communication Mistakes. And these are the ones made by seasoned professionals. Because what you say and how you say it online can speak volumes about who you are and what your values are. So you want to make sure you're doing it correctly. So if you want to get your hands on a copy of my Rookie Mistakes printable, just text the word Rookie to 345345. Again, don't do this while you're driving, but text for Rookie R O O K I E to 345345 and you will receive a link for the download. Okay, that's it for today's episode, all about how not to go viral and how not to go in the downward digital death spiral. I do hope that you learned a lot. I hope you all have a great day. Bye for now. Sam.