Commiserate with Whole Foods cake backlash — GoDaddy can

Just like Whole Foods, GoDaddy had to defend itself against an incident that never happened.

Whole Foods found itself on the defensive this stretch following a gay pastor claimed a firm employee wrote a gay epithet on the cake he ordered in Austin.

He claimed to have ordered a cake that stated “Love Wins”, but that’s not what he stated he received:

LOVE WINS FAG. That’s not the cake I ordered, @WholeFoods and I am offended for myself & the entire #LGBT community pic.twitter.com/cuxuv6mL3G

— Jordan D Brown (@PasJordanBrown) April 18, 2016

This immediately set off my B.S. meter. Of all places, a Whole Foods store in Austin would write this? This is the last place I’d expect this to happen. Other parts of the claim didn’t add up, either.

As it turns out, the cake incident was almost certainly faked. There’s video evidence.

This incident reminded me of one involving GoDaddy last year. A job applicant claimed he was discriminated against since he’s an overweight Christian.

Like the Whole Foods case, it just didn’t add up.

It doesn’t matter that both of these incidents likely didn’t happen, though. The immediate backlash against the firms, where people blindly retweet or condemn the accused firm without thinking first, is harmful.

Headlines like “Go Daddy Fires Shot In War Against Christianity” are still out there. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t true.

There’s not much firms can do to recover from initial bad will. Whole Foods is suing, but a lot of people saw the initial news, believed it, and will never realize it was faked.

I don’t know what the answer is for firms . But I wish people would think ahead of retweeting or assuming something they see on Facebook is real.

Yeah, that will be the day.