The internet makes it all too easy to act in haste, whether it’s a careless “Reply all” or a click of a button that wasn’t quite ready to be clicked. (Perhaps it’s even a premature blog post… if you’ve ever gotten an email alert from us, then clicked to find there was nothing there, odds are, that’s exactly what happened!) We’re sharing our most embarrassing online moments—and we want to hear yours, too!
Ellen Byron
I did indeed accidentally hit “reply all” once. Luckily, it only went to one wrong person—but it was the person I was talking about in the email! Thank God it wasn’t negative, but it definitely revealed something he wasn’t meant to know. I somehow tap danced my way around it with the energy of Gene Kelly, but let me tell you, realizing you accidentally hit “reply all” is HORRIFYING. Like, iffy-call-from-the-doctor bad. But it did give me an idea for a movie called “Reply All,” about someone who accidentally hits that function and how it upends his or her life. I look forward to writing it someday. And accidentally sending it to the wrong person.
Marla Cooper
Okay, while I’ve had front-row seating for several reply-all travesties, I’ve never done it myself (at least not where it’s led to any problems). But, here was my brilliant moment. One night, I was wondering about a former co-worker. We’ll call him Brad Brewer (not his real name). While Brad was quite sure he was the most attractive man on earth, my curiosity was purely random, like, “Wonder what old Brad is up to now?” So. One night, I searched for him on Facebook. I typed his name in and hit return. Unfortunately, I typed it into the wrong place. And for a long moment—until I pieced together what I had done—my Facebook status said: Brad Brewer. Luckily, I realized my mistake quickly, but my face turned bright red and I couldn’t take it down fast enough. Thank God Brad Brewer didn’t go on to Facebook and see what he surely would have interpreted as a lovelorn whispering of his name. DELETE!!!
Kellye Garrett
So I haven’t had a super embarrassing online moment. Or maybe I have and I just blocked it out. Ironically, I am super into other people’s super embarrassing online moments. I even gave one to the main character in Pay Day. There’s a site called Lamebook that I visit religiously. It chronicles some of the most ridiculous (and, yes, lame) Facebook posts. They definitely are embarrassing…although not always to the person who posted them. You get things like people being really excited to share their new credit card info or someone who wanted to have a proper cremation for their deceased pet. Not to mention a whole lot of people who made really bad tattoo choices.
Like Kellye, I can’t quite recall any truly awesome online humiliations. Yeah, I’m probably just in denial. I also happen to be a champion procrastinator, so I always have plenty of time to obsess over my words before Google records them FOREVER AND EVER. However, I can tell you that I once submitted a resume listing a former job title as Executive Idiot rather than Executive Editor. (Gentle readers, I got the job.)
And finally, now that we’ve been doing this blog for a year, we wanted to share this with you. This is our boilerplate placeholder copy for our group-post template. We figured it was just a matter of time until someone accidentally published a post before it was done, and this is what you would have seen if it had happened. We’re proud to have gotten through our first year without deploying our failsafe!
THIS IS PLACEHOLDER TEXT. If you’re seeing this in the published blog post, that means someone hit publish before she was supposed to! Of course, none of us would ever do such a thing, so this message will probably never be seen by anyone. Then again, that big blue PUBLISH button is so much more inviting than the demure gray SAVE DRAFT button, so who knows. If you do happen to see it, feel free to have a good laugh at our expense in the comments. Because it should probably be a little longer, we’re adding an extra sentence to take up space. We hope you enjoyed this extra bit of communication.
Readers, have you ever let technology get the best of you? We want to hear you stories in the comments below…
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I did do an embarrassing email, not Reply All, but to the wrong group. The details are fuzzy. Fortunately, as Garrison Keillor says, “I have no regrets because of memory loss.”
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Leave it to Garrison to come up with exactly the right thing to say!
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I forget to attach my attachments. All. The. Time. I used to not attach spreadsheets for work and now I don’t attach chapters for my critique partners. The worst thing I don’t think it would be embarrassing at all if I didn’t do it so often.
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I do that too!!! We also have autofill at work and so I’ll email the wrong Jason or Darren or whatever all the time too.
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So after reading this, it reminds me that I have accidentally published blog posts on here. In my defense I realize really quickly.
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If I use gmail and say ‘attached’ or ‘attachment’ in the email it will check to if anything is there. This has saved me more times than I like to admit. hee.
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Ooo, I didn’t know this!!! So helpful…
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It really is… if you rememeber to write attached/attachment in your email. Which I frequently don’t. hee.
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Oh so many embarrassing moments as a mom for me. Lol. It’s only begun too! Thank you for giving me a laugh.
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I don’t recall any specifics, but I have done lots of accidental posts on Facebook, where I wasn’t done with my comment and instead of hitting another key, accidentally hit Enter instead, then had to frantically search for the post so I could click on Edit and finish my thought. Sometimes, though, the Facebook fairies decided to have fun at my expense and put so many other posts on top of mine that I never did find it again. Sometimes it’s something as minor as a typo (which I hate finding after the fact, and then can’t edit it) or another fun habit my computer has, is I’ll be typing along and suddenly my computer decides to move the cursor up to the beginning of a paragraph or page, and then I have to go hunting for it so I can delete the text I just typed thinking I was putting it at the end of my current paragraph. Usually Ctrl + Z takes care of the problem, but if the cursor went up to the top of the page, then that little trick won’t work and I have to go hunting. That happens several times a day, and it’s very frustrating. I wish I knew why my computer does that, but I’ve noticed it’s not just my computer, so I don’t know why it does it. I never used to have that problem, but ever since I got this laptop (granted it’s now 3 years old and should be a paperweight but I can’t afford a new one) it’s been doing the exact same thing. If I manage to catch it before I hit the submit button, all well and good, I can spend hours if need be tearing my hear out looking for and correcting the damage, but the way my luck runs, sometimes (okay a lot of times) I don’t notice till after the submit button has been pressed and then I go on a scavenger hunt to find and correct.
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It was fun reading your most embarassing moments, we all seem to have them in life.
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I’m late to the party because I’m in book jail. (Okay I’ve wandered away from my work detail again.) Lisa, I can only aspire to being promoted to “Executive” Idiot!
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Confusing samaritans for Sumerians.
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