After thousands of people contacted Brianna Rivera's employer asking for her to be fired for racist statements that appeared on Facebook, it turned out the whole thing was a hoax her ex-boyfriend put together [viaGawker].
Racists Getting Fired is a Tumblr that recently blew up; the blog posts pictures of ignorant social media users making hateful comments along with their place of employment. The blog then encourages readers to flood the employers with requests to get the racist person fired. Some people think it's a step toward ending racism, others think it's trampling over free speech in an attempt to do something that's ruining people's lives because they made dumb comments.
Then there's Rivera's case. Several days ago, this post went viral, in which a profile that looks like Rivera's posted insanely offensive comments about Ferguson and the Darren Wilson trial.
Not surprisingly, people were outraged by the comments and began bombarding Rivera's employer, AMC, with requests to have Rivera fired. Luckily, AMC realized these posts didn't actually come from Rivera and issued a statement. A police investigation is underway.
Racists Getting Fired, for their part, eventually also realized the mistake. Rivera's ex actually changed his profile info to resemble hers, made the posts, and then changed all his info back.
The lesson here? Don't believe everything you read on the Internet, especially if it came from some Tumblr page that doesn't even verify this stuff.
