This Is How A Woman’s Offensive Tweet Became The World’s Top Story

At 10:19 a.m EST. Friday, Justine Sacco, a PR director at InterActiveCorp (IAC), posted this tweet shortly before an 11 hour flight from London to Cape Town, South Africa.

She only had about 200 followers, but someone emailed it to Valleywag editor Sam Biddle, who told BuzzFeed. He published a brief item about three hours after it was sent.

He tweeted it at 1:30, to immediate notice of other reporters on a slow Friday afternoon. (The Duck Dynasty story had quieted down.
Other members of the media took notice, and began interacting with Sacco’s Twitter account directly.
As the story began to circulate, many Twitter users were at first flummoxed.
And it didn’t take long before confusion turned to anger.
Some people thought her account was hacked, a theory that lost ground after other insensitive tweets were found, and IAC made a public comment
More sites picked up the twitterstorm, including Business Insider, BuzzFeed and OMG Nigeria
Justine Sacco began trending in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Just before 5:30, a woman in Miami started the hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet.
Soon it was trending worldwide.
The whole world waited for one person’s plane to land so she could get back online and respond to her critics.
The firestorm was fueled in part by the fact that Sacco, who was on a flight without wifi, couldn’t get online to apologize or delete her tweet. Comedian Steve Martin shared an offensive tweet the same evening — but quickly deleted and apologized.
But Sacco was still in the air and offline — and unable to delete the tiny piece of media that had become Twitter’s obsession.
Famous twitter users and brands started tweeting about it…
Including Gogo, a company that supplies wireless Internet on flights. They later apologized for the tweet.
While everyone waited for Sacco to respond, plenty of photoshopped jokes began to pop up.