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Ashton Kutcher Takes a Break After Twitter Fumble

Posted: 11/10/11 02:28 PM ET

So how did Ashton Kutcher, a vocal advocate in the battle against sex slavery, tell the world that he allegedly supports child trafficking -- so long it's with college football staff?

With a tweet of course.

Wednesday night, Ashton Kutcher, the granddaddy of all Twitter influencers committed the cardinal sin of Twitter: He tweeted before he got the whole story.

The man celebrated for being the first person to reach one million followers on the uber-popular micro-blogging service, may have also been the first person to simultaneously piss off his over 8.2 million followers and cause him to take a break from the service.

"How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste." Tweeted Kutcher from his account @aplusk on Wednesday night.

The tweet was in reference to the dismissal of longtime Penn State Coach Joe Paterno. As information surrounding Paterno's termination was released on Wednesday evening, Kutcher promptly tweeted his dissatisfaction a little prematurely. That is before the 33-year-old Two and a Half Men star had the key piece of information about the reason behind Paterno's dismissal and the primary factor of provocation to his normally loyal "Tweeps."

The firing was in the wake of an alleged sex abuse scandal surrounding Penn State's former defensive coodinator, Jerry Sandusky. Paterno reported allegations of child rape to his superiors, but not to police.

Thirty minutes after Kutcher's tweet, he followed up with the following:

"Heard Joe was fired, fully recant previous tweet! Didn't have full story. #admitwhenYoumakemistakes"


"As an advocate in the fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more remorseful for all involved in the Penn St. case. "

"As of immediately I will stop tweeting until I find a way to properly manage this feed. I feel awful about this error. Won't happen again."

UPDATE: Kutcher posted a blog entitled "Twitter Management" where he goes into detail on how he made the error and how bad he feels over the mistake. Sadly, it appears as though Kutcher now is relinquishing the management of the feed over to his team at Katalyst Media.

"...Clearly the platform has become to big to be managed by a single individual... It seems that today that twitter has grown into a mass publishing platform, where ones tweets quickly become news that is broadcated around the world and misinformation becomes volitile fotter for critics."

Now if someone makes a mistake, Ashton Kutcher has someone else to blame instead of himself.

Lame.

RIP transparency.

 

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So how did Ashton Kutcher, a vocal advocate in the battle against sex slavery, tell the world that he allegedly supports child trafficking -- so long it's with college football staff? With a tweet of...
So how did Ashton Kutcher, a vocal advocate in the battle against sex slavery, tell the world that he allegedly supports child trafficking -- so long it's with college football staff? With a tweet of...
 
 
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Marie N
02:38 PM on 11/15/2011
The whole thing is a shame. I think it's a sign that celebrity has turned into a beast beyond reason. I mean, you're a celeb, people know who you are and that gives you influence that supports your career -- whatever it may be. Your fanbase makes you a safe bet. But, now celebrities are coddling their fanbases with management teams that scrub every word to make sure that the communications are as passionless and sterile as possible. Grooming your communications is boring and frankly, sometimes it's the mistakes that remind us we are alive and we are human. Not that I was a fan of Ashton's tweets before had, but I'm definitely bored with the new anorexic messaging. Listen, I like meat on the bones.

This sounds like he jumped the gun so fast he lost his pants. I mean, I even looked at the numbers in his twitter account to see if he lost followers. There was nothing significant at all. So, where's the problem? Oh a bunch of us wrote it up! OOOOH NO!

It's called Link Bait, Ashton and sadly your name is mighty tasty lookin' to online commentators like myself.
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ChelleAgain
It's Chelle ... again.
01:56 PM on 11/13/2011
This is faux outrage. I'm not even a fan of the guy and even I know he is a child advocate against trafficking and exploitation, and so he prematurely tweeted. These were clearly not his actual feelings when given the full circumstances, and so his only sin was putting in his two cents before he was educated. He deserved a wag of the finger for this, as the most.
06:57 PM on 11/12/2011
Yeah, really - what's the madder with all the fotter?
06:46 PM on 11/12/2011
Yeah - that volitile fotter is a real batch! A+ indeed, Ashton!
01:43 AM on 11/12/2011
Glad his shallow twitteracy won't be 'fotter' for the masses any more. Here's hoping his PR can use spellcheck.
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momoluvsu
We live in a parallel universe
11:09 PM on 11/11/2011
Ashton, you can back off from more than Twitter.
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Muzzle Me
NSA: Posting on the condition of anonymity
07:47 PM on 11/11/2011
How could he NOT know?? Especially, if he has so many followers, which would denote that "HE"!!! is was plugged in all the time to what was going on in the news. Or, is the real truth that he NEVER did write all his tweets. Talk about 'Y all being PUNKED!!!
03:54 AM on 11/11/2011
Any public personality or politician that tweets personally is wrongheaded. There's a reason we haven't always had direct communication with celebs 24-hours a day, something always goes wrong. It should be treated as PR like Obama does. All it takes is one drunken moment, why be set up for public derision? And once everyone realizes that tweets are basically from PR firms, the popularity will fade. These are the end of the good old days.
01:51 AM on 11/11/2011
Really this seems like jumping the gun a bit in his tweet, and about quite a disturbing scandal, but this is definitely not the biggest gaff I have seen on Twitter, and to me the immediate apology is worth something.The tweet was made on misinformation, but that is the case a lot of times, but not always known. At least it has made me a bit more aware of jumping on a story...
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01:18 AM on 11/11/2011
Maybe his team will know the meaning and spelling of "fodder".
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Halsey
"There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. T
11:17 AM on 11/11/2011
and volatile :-)
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11:23 AM on 11/11/2011
I missed that one.
hellinahandcart
Your silence will not protect you.
06:19 PM on 11/12/2011
and broadcast (broadcated).