Facepalm: Stories of social media accounts making ill-advised posts aren't new. It's not something limited to the Western world, either. MSI, for example, made the mistake of posting a jokey message about a girl deleting all her boyfriend's games on Chinese social media, a move that has led to the company making a public apology, replacing the social media team, and a high level of trolling by rival Asus.

MSI's January 17 Weibo post was supposed to be a joke about a girl using her boyfriend's PC to delete some of his game shortcuts because she felt neglected by him, reports ITHome.

While the person who created the message might have found it amusing, it seems they were one of the very few people to feel that way. The post was met with a barrage of complaints from users, many of whom threatened to boycott MSI's products.

Fellow Taiwanese rival Asus was quick to capitalize on the situation, posting a trolling message a day later that read: "Buy Asus, don't delete the game," (according to Google translate).

With all the anger and related hashtags appearing on Weibo, MSI issued an apology on January 20 and tried to explain that it was trying to make a funny joke. To ensure this sort of thing never happens again, MSI said it has stopped all work with the social media team behind the post and replaced it. The company added that at the same time, the relevant personnel are being held accountable - which sounds ominous.

While social media managers can massively improve a company's or product's image, they also have the power to tarnish it. One of the most famous instances of the latter was the Need for Speed account. In November 2022, the game's official Twitter (as it still was then) account, which had already received complaints and plenty of headlines over its antagonistic responses to users, called an individual who complained about NFS's early access plan a "Milkshake brain." More insults followed, and both the account and EA apologized. Not surprisingly, the person behind the messages was reportedly fired.