The Montreal Canadiens had a very bad idea to celebrate reaching one million Twitter followers. The team started sending automated replies to fans who tweeted at @CanadiensMTL and, naturally, it quickly went downhill.
People with questionable usernames started getting personalized thank yous from the team. Some even got short videos from the players themselves.
This person whose username called for the firing of head coach Michel Therrien got a video from defenceman Tom Gilbert thanking them for their support.
Then there were the personalized jerseys. Oh god, the jerseys!
Things got really out of hand.
Really out of hand.
People quickly realized what a bad idea this whole thing was — looooong before anyone at Habs HQ realized it.
so maybe twitter should shut down the Canadiens account for the night...
Canadiens Twitter manager
The Canadiens Twitter feed...
Pretty much.
The Canadiens eventually pulled the plug on the disastrous automated tweets and apologized for the offensive messages, but not before screenshots of their screw-up had already spread far and wide.
We apologize for the offensive messages and have fixed the issue so it won't happen in the future.
Automated tweets are always a bad idea. Just ask the New England Patriots.
