Your Larry Flynt moment is coming.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc    /    lmmiami.com

• The social media lynching squads are coming for you.
• Sooner or later, you or the brand/s you’re in charge of will do or say something that will trigger their wrath.
• It is not if but when.
• The slightest of faux pas taken out of context can become a major troll storm these days.
• All of a sudden, you will find a mob of emoji pitchforks and torches at your digital doorstep demanding your head in a basket.
• Will you issue a carefully worded and usually useless public apology?
• Will you scramble to de-escalate?
• Will you pout&deflect Bill Clinton-style?
• Or will you double down à la Donald Trump?
• If we were in 2005, your PR team would recommend to apologize and defuse.
• Fifteen years later, the playbook might have changed.
• See, social media turns people into teenagers.
• It’ss done it to the best minds of our generation.
• Impulsiveness, short attention span, an inability to take a step back and make rational decisions.
• Never negotiate with teenagers (or terrorists).
• They consider every concession a sign of weakness.
• It fuels their fanaticism.
• I am not saying you should fight back.
• It is impossible to argue with armies of trolls with too much time on their hands.
• My suggestion: the best excuse is no excuse.
• Dig your heels.
• I know, I know: you are not Larry Flynt.
• It takes a very particular personality to undertake a public battle of this sort, especially in 2020.
• The average CEO or CMO is simply not cut for this type of dirty feuds.
• Only politicians and some showbiz types can play this nasty game.
• Unfortunately, we will have to learn the rules too.
• We as in marketing & advertising professionals.
• We are reaching a point in which every idiot with a mobile device is trying to blackmail us.
• At the risk of sounding as exaggerated as the trolling culture we’re navigating, if we don’t fight back it will eventually threaten our very freedom of speech.